It’s good to be home

Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

Well it sure is nice to be home at least for a little while! We were on the road for about 10 days out West shooting nature photography and flew home for about 12 hours to do laundry and repack photo and video gear. We got in the Explorer a week ago on Sunday and did a week long shoot in Alabama and then we got back home on Saturday night and I spent all day yesterday working on a video from the shoot that needs to be done in the next couple of days! Wow, talk about jumping right back into the fire! It’s all good though and it was nice to be sleeping in my own bed the last couple of nights!

Speaking of being out West and shooting nature photography, we are sharing a couple of photos from Monument Valleyin Arizona. As always, it never disappoints and we had a very nice day shooting! About the only thing that would have made it more perfect would have been a few clouds to add a little interest to the sky, but other than that we had abundant sunshine all day long and that’s always great!

Jan’s photo is of the Rain God Mesa and mine is of the Totem Pole area. For those that aren’t hikers, you might not know what the significance of the stacked rocks are in my photo. They are called Cairns and are used to mark hiking trails out in nature. I liked how the Cairns mimicked the Totem Pole formation in the background.

All right, we’ve got to get going because it’s going to be a busy week! Thanks as always for checking out our work and we hope that you have a great week to come!

Kev and Jan

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Recharging the creative batteries

Monday morning Page, Az. greetings to one and all!!!

Well it sure is nice to be back out West once again for a little R & R! Mind you, for some people R&R means rest and relaxation, but for us it means shooting nature photography and that’s our relaxation! It’s so good to be getting out and hiking around and seeing nature and all of its beauty. It’s also good to be out shooting photos for yourself and the creative freedom that it brings. There is something that is very rejuvenating for the mind and the soul and the great thing is that when we get back home and are shooting photos and video for our clients again, we will have recharged our creative batteries and that’s a very good thing!

Our first stop on this trip was to Bryce National Park in Southern Utah and it’s always a great place to come out and shoot photos. For those that have been there, you already know what I’m talking about and for those of you that haven’t, you need to put it on your bucket list and make it one day! The scenery is spectacular and there’s probably no other place like it on earth! The thing that’s nice is that you can see it with a short walk from your car or you can get out and hike the trails and see it from a completely different perspective!

Here’s a few of our shots from Bryce National Park!

Thanks as always for checking out our photos and we both hope that you have a great week to come!!!!

Kev and Jan

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Down in the park

onday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

We busted through another month and here we are into October and the last quarter of 2016! Amazing! We just keep knocking them out and to think that we are about seven weeks from Thanksgiving and then 11 weeks to Christmas is amazing too!

The fall season really is my favorite time of the year and with the humidity coming down from the highs of summer, it makes for better outside photos. We get those nice blue sky days which I really like and it makes everything look so much better. We’ve been taking advantage of the better weather and have been able to work in some outdoor shoots for our different clients. David Vaughan Investments is one of our clients and we try to come up with different seasonal photos of the outside of their building. We were able to get over there and get some shots before the leaves started to turn. The other fun thing is that their backyard is right next to Forrest Park Nature Center, so they have a lot of different animals that stop by for a little food in the morning. I’ve seen a ton of birds, squirrels and turkeys there at different times of the year. When we were there for this last shoot, I did get the chance to shoot some photos of my first deer at their place. There was a young buck and a couple of doe’s that had come in from the park to eat a little corn. The deer all kept an eye on me, but with a longer lens I was able to get a few shots of them before they took off to go back to the park!

Here’s a couple of my shots from David Vaughan Investments.

Thanks as always for checking out our work and we hope that you have a great week to come!

Kev and Jan

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PRM

Monday morning greetings to one and all!

Well we’ve got another busy week on tap coming up and that’s always a very good thing! It’s nice to look in the calendar and see things getting booked up for the week to come! When things are slow, I’ll look at the calendar and there’s not much or nothing booked and that’s never a good sign! When things are busy like they have been, you’ll look at the calendar and hope that there is some time available for clients and that you can get everyone worked in!

Jan and I are starting a big charity project for Peoria Rescue Ministries and it should be a good one. We’ll be shooting a full day of video on Thursday at the different locations that PRM has here in Central Illinois and then putting a video together in the coming weeks. We started this past Friday night in downtown Peoria and for those that have been by the SW Adams St. PRM location, you’ve seen the iconic Jesus Saves sign. They just had the sign refurbished recently and it looks great, so we made it down to shoot some video and stills at night to capture how good it looks. I was able to get some nice video that we can use in this big project and Jan shot a bunch of stills as well.

This week we are sharing Jan’s photo of the Peoria Rescue Ministries building along with their great Jesus Saves sign!

Thanks as always for taking the time to check out our weekly work and we hope that you have a great week to come!!!!

Kev and Jan

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Now that’s living!

Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

Well it was one of those weeks where it went from nothing to everything in the blink of an eye! Sometimes things are like that where you can be swamped with work and then nothing or in the case of this past week, it was the complete opposite. We had a couple of small gigs early in the week and then all at once we had a bunch of video editing projects that had some very short deadlines. Needless to say, the computer has been rocking and rolling these past four days and we’re pretty close to having things wrapped up on these video projects!

One of the gigs that we’ve been working on for the last few weeks was shooting some photos of College Place Uptown in Bloomington, Ill. CPU is located right next to Illinois State College and besides some retail shopping also includes student apartments for ISU students. Having never been there before, I really wasn’t sure what to expect of the place, but I was pleasantly surprised! If I was an ISU student, this would be the place that I’d like to live! Besides all the other amenities that they offer, they have three beautiful courtyards that were constructed by Bellas Landscaping. Now that’s living!

Here’s one of our photos of the courtyards at College Place Uptown.

Well it’s time to get rocking, so we hope that you’re going to have a great week to come!!!

Kev and Jan

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Pekin Marigold Festival

Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

Well this past weekend sure had some great weather for us here in Central Illinois. On Saturday morning the rains rolled through and brought with it a nice cool front and lower humidities and that was a welcome change for us. I love it when it’s hot, but not so much when it comes to the high humidity that we get here in the Midwest! Oh sure there’s lots of places that are a heck of a lot worse when it comes to summer and humidity, but I’m glad that I visit those places and don’t live there!

You know that it’s getting to be the fall season when the Pekin Marigold Festival is held and they couldn’t have had better weather on Saturday afternoon. We were there to shoot some photos of our friends in the band, The Rave. The guys were back on the stage on Saturday for a set at the festival and as usual they kicked out the tunes! Lots of great music on a picture perfect day, so everyone there enjoyed the show!

We’ve got a few snaps of The Rave (Jeff, Jay, Greg and Aaron) and we’re sharing a few of those today!

We hope that you have a great week to come and thanks as always for taking the time to check out our work!

Kev and Jan

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Out in the country!

Tuesday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

Well for most of us, we’re back at work today after the Labor Day weekend and boy was it a nice weekend weather wise here in Central Illinois. We had a break from the rain and the hot and humid temperatures that have been seemingly with us for the entire summer! It was great to be able to turn off the air conditioner at the house for a few days and open up the windows and air out the place. Of course we’re right back to the hot and humid weather this week with the heat index back up to 100 today! At some point it’s going to cool back down, but not soon enough!

Jan and I were able to get out in the country for a nice little drive on Labor Day Monday and it was great to just check things out and shoot a few photos. Driving through farm country and seeing all the corn and soybeans and knowing that the farmers are going to get started with the harvest in the next couple of weeks will be great! It’s always fun to see them out there with the combines working the fields and bringing the crops in for the year! I’m sure at some point we’ll be getting out to shoot some of that as well!

Here’s a couple of our photos from our drive out in the country!

We hope that you have a great week to come and thanks as always for checking out our work!

Kev and Jan

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TIUFTT 2016

Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

Well here we are at the end of the summer season with Labor Day Monday being next week! The summer has truly flown by and it really does seem like it was just Memorial Weekend and the Fourth of July! This also marks the end of our busy season of work and traditionally May, June, July and August have been our busiest months and this summer was no exception. We spent a lot of time on the road for a number of different shoots and it was really fun to be out all across the USA shooting photos and video! We never know what will happen for the rest of the year in terms of being busy with shoots, but if it’s not, we’ll be out shooting photos for ourselves as we always do!!! 🙂

This past Monday in Peoria we had the 8th annual Tee It Up For The Troops  and it’s a great event that raises a lot of money for the local Peoria veterans organizations. This year both Weaver Ridge Golf Club and Mt. Hawley Country Club hosted the day’s events and the weather couldn’t have been nicer! In the morning, it’s all of our great veterans that get to play these courses for free and then in the afternoon, it’s all the sponsors that are providing all the financial support for the day’s events. Between the morning and afternoon’s golf, they have a great ceremony that honors and remembers all that have served our great country and the sacrifices that they have made to help keep us free and safe as a country. During the course of the ceremony, a bugler will play taps and when you hear that, there isn’t a dry eye in the place!

Here’s a few of the snaps from the day at the 8th annual Tee It Up For The Troops. http://kevinmay.com/KMCTIUFTT2016.jpg

If you’re going to be out traveling this coming Labor Day weekend, make it a safe one and we’ll see you next week!

Kev and Jan

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MBG

Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

We made it back safe and sound from a road trip this past week out to West Virginia for a shoot. We were shooting photos and video of the reconstruction of the TPC course at The Greenbrier Resort in White Sulfur Springs. That area of West Virginia was devastated with massive flooding just a few months ago in June. Besides the incredible property damage that was done, 23 people lost their lives in the flooding! With so many of the golf holes destroyed, the decision was made to completely redo the golf course. I was talking with the head contractor and amazingly he told me that they will have all the greens replaced by September 15th and the rest of the course will be rebuilt by Thanksgiving of this year! It’s truly amazing that they can complete all this work in such a short amount of time! The course will be ready to go for next year’s Greenbrier Classic in July!

On the way home from our shoot in West Virginia, we were able to pop in to St. Louis for a day and stopped in at the Missouri Botanical Gardens. MBG is a place that we’ve featured a few times over the years in our promos and it’s a favorite stop for us! It’s interesting to visit there at different times of the year because there are flowers and plants that are blooming all throughout the year.

Here’s a few of our snaps from an afternoon spent at MBG in St. Louis!

Thanks as always for taking the time to check out our work and we hope that you have a great week to come!!!

Kev and Jan

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It’s all about the beans!

Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

We had another busy week and as always a lot of fun as well! It’s always great to have good shoots where we can also have some laughs and get the shots that we need to get for the clients.

We were out shooting for our friends at LG Seeds and as always it’s great to get out on the farm and see what’s going on! We were able to come away with some new people shots and also some new field signage photos. As always it helps to have a great day to shoot and we lucked out as we sometimes do on the weather and had some nice blue skies despite the higher humidity that we can get at this time of the year!

Here’s one of our photos with our friends at LG seeds!

Thanks as always for taking the time to see what we’re shooting and we hope that you have a great rest of the week!!!

Kev and Jan

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