Hunting Island

Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

A week ago we were down South on the East coast and we were able to get out for some nature photography and that’s always fun! We made a stop for the first time to Hunting Island, South Carolina along the Atlantic Ocean to check that area out. One of the things that I really liked is that it’s a bit remote and so there weren’t a lot of people there that day. It’s one of those places that you are making the trip to see because it’s not like you can drive along the coast and stop in and check it out! They have a lighthouse there on Hunting Island and Jan and I love to shoot the different lighthouses around the country and that’s why we made the drive. After shooting some shots of the lighthouse, we made our way down to the beach and one of the interesting things that we saw was an area on the beach where a bunch of very large trees had all washed up. It wasn’t like there were a couple of trees, it was more like there were 50 or 60 trees. They must have washed up onto the shore from a past hurricane or a pretty good storm. We were there for a couple of hours and I think we’ll have to go back again at some point down the road and spend a little more time exploring the area!

Here’s a couple of our shots from the beach at Hunting Island.

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

Kev and Jan

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kmchi21Mar16

A early spring break!

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kmcsm14Mar16

Slingshot

Monday morning greetings to one and all!!

We got to have some fun last week shooting some stills and video of the new Slingshot vehicle at Cupi’s Motor Mall down in Pekin, Illinois. For those of you that have never seen one of these, the Slingshot is classified as a motorcycle, but you sit in it like you would a car. It’s an open air vehicle, so it would be great on a sunny and warm day! The design of the Slingshot is very angular and in some ways it reminds me of a Lamborghini exotic car. They told us that it’s wicked fast from 0-60 mph, so it sounds like an adrenaline rush to say the least!

We’ve put together a rough TV spot for Cupi’s that we should be able to share in the coming month and we really had fun shooting it and editing that together! Here’s a few of the still shots that we got and you can see just how much fun the Slingshot is!

Thanks as always for checking out our work and we hope that you have a very wonderful week!!!

Kev and Jan

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kmccupis6mar16

Leap Day

Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

It’s the 29th of February and apparently 2016 is a leap year and today is a leap day! Wow! Talk about some excitement!!! Do we have the day off from school and work? I guess not because we have a shoot this afternoon, so I better get some gear packed up!

We had a busy week this past week with shoots in North Dakota and in the Quad Cities (Illinois for those not familiar with the state) for a couple of days to end the week. All and all it was a very good week and there was a lot of editing time on the computer this weekend trying to get caught up with all of these projects! When it rains it pours, so you just have to take advantage of the time to get caught up like we did this weekend!

We’ve got a quick snap this week of the beautiful wind turbines that dot the landscape here in the Midwest! I always enjoy seeing these giants spinning in the wind off in the distance of a farm field making the electricity that we all use and need!!!

Leap Day is here, so let’s all get to work!!! Have a great week as always and thanks for checking out our work!!!

Kev and Jan

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kmc29feb16

bringyourmeetinghome.com

Monday morning North Dakota greetings to one and all!

We’re up in North Dakota today for a quick shoot and we’ll be back home tonight! I think that we are in for a stretch of road trips coming up in the next couple of months with a number of inquiries from clients, so it will be interesting to see what happens!

We’ve got another video project to share with you that just started running on tv this past week! bringyourmeetinghome.com is a new campaign from the Peoria Area Convention and Visitors Bureau to have companies have their meetings and conventions in the Peoria area. One of the amazing things that I learned during this project is that the hospitality industry in the Peoria area employs over 5000 jobs! I was really shocked by this number just because unless you’re in that business, you don’t realize all the people that are employed by the guests that come to town!

This video that we’ve put together is the intro video that features four local Peoria people employed in the hospitality business. In the coming weeks we will be working on a video for each of these four people. Here’s the video that Jan and I made for bringyourmeetinghome.com

Jan and I both hope that you’re going to have a great week and thanks for checking out our work!

Kev and Jan

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Dog Show

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kmcsan16feb16

Back to school!

Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

Well it looks like we survived another Super Bowl Sunday yesterday! From the pre-game shows to football to the half-time show to the commercials, it sure makes for a long day, so hopefully you survived it as well! Jan and I had a nice quiet party with snacks and adult beverages and were able to avoid all the drunk crazy fans out and about at some of the local watering holes! The other good thing about being at home is having any kind of issues with the police who had said coming into the weekend that they were really going to crack down on DWI’s! Safe and sound is always a very good thing!

We had a very nice shoot last week with our friends over at Methodist College here in Peoria. For those of you that are unfamiliar with Methodist College, they train nursing students and they graduate with a degree in nursing. They’ve been located downtown for a number of years now and the good news for them is that they purchased the American TV store out on Route 150 here in Peoria and will be moving into it sometime this summer. Renovations are underway as we speak and it sounds like it’s going to be a heck of a facility. For this shoot, Methodist College needed to get some new photos of the students for upcoming brochures and their web site and they had a big challenge for us as well. They wanted us to minimize the background in the photos to hide the current facility so that these photos could be relevant for the new facility next fall! Needless to say it takes a little bit of creativity to try and hide the background and make it as non-descript as possible! The good news for us is that we were able to come away with some great photos that we are sharing today!

Here’s a few of the images that we captured for Methodist College!

It’s time for us to get to work, so we hope that you’re going to have a great week and thanks for checking out our work!

Kev and Jan

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kmcmc7Feb16

One down, eleven to go!

Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

Wow, this year is off to a rocking start and with one month down and 11 to go, I can see that things are going to keep cranking along! January is in the books and Groundhog Day is Tuesday! I wonder if Punxsutawney Phil will see his shadow, but I’m hoping that he doesn’t!!! 🙂

We had a very good week this past week with a number of shoots. A couple of the gigs were still photography and a couple were videos, so that means that this week there’s going to be a lot of computer time coming up. The still images have to be processed and the videos will need editing along with some other video projects that need to be edited as well. It’s kind of funny how that all works and you’ll shoot a bunch of stuff and then you’ve got to work on it afterwards to get it finished up. It’s not too upsetting to have to be inside in a nice warm house on the computer when the weather outside in Central Illinois is less than conducive for outdoor activities. Now if it was 70 and sunny outside, I’d probably be singing a different tune, but it will be a few months before that happens. For now I’ll be happy to be inside and working on the computer! 🙂

I’ve got a couple of last shots from out West from Jan and I. Sure there’s 1000’s of images from our Western road-trip a month ago, but we don’t want to burn anyone out with them.

It’s time to get to work and the computer is waiting. We hope that you’re going to have a wonderful week as always and thanks for taking the time to check out our work!

Kev and Jan

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kmcAz1Feb16

We made it!

Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

Here in Peoria this past week, we missed all the big fun that our friends in the South and East Coast got to experience with the big snow, ice and rain storm! Everything went south of Peoria, so we lucked out and for a change didn’t have to deal with any of that mess!!! I’m sure it’s going to be a few days for everything to get back to normal for everyone out East and hopefully it will be sooner rather than later!!!

Last week Jan and I made a quick trip out to Golden, Co. for our annual MSHA (Mine Safety and Health Administration) training and it was a long way for such a quick trip! We drove out there on Sunday and we were back in Peoria on Wednesday night, so it was a couple of thousand miles for a four day trip! We did have our MSHA training on Tuesday and for something that could be a very boring day, the Colorado School of Mines made it a very interesting and fun experience. By getting our annual certification with MSHA, we can now go into mines and quarries that require that certification. I think we’re both happy to have it done for another year!!!

Besides sharing a great photo of Jan and I with our MSHA certificates, we’ve also got a few photos from our trip out West at Christmas. It’s always great to get out to the desert and shoot nature photos of some of the things that interest us! In this week’s photos we’ve got a few photos from Arizona and some of the vegetation and even a butterfly as well!

Here’s the photo of Jan and I with our MSHA certificates and our smiles! http://kevinmay.com/kmckj25Jan16.jpg

Here’s a couple of our nature photos from Arizona! http://kevinmay.com/kmcaz25Jan16.jpg

Thanks as always for checking out our work and we hope that you’re going to have a very wonderful week!!!!

Kev and Jan

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coverbig

Training Day!

Tuesday morning greetings from Golden, Colorado!

Jan and I are out in Golden, Co. today for our annual MSHA mining training at the Colorado School of Mines! It’s one of those things that we’ve got to do so that we are legal to go in and shoot photos and videos at the various mines and quarries that we end up working at for our different gigs. This is the first time that we’ve taken our training at the Colorado School of Mines, so it should be interesting!

We’ve got a couple of photos from a few weeks ago when we were down in Bisbee in Southern Arizona and it’s one of our favorite little towns. Bisbee is an old mining town that has turned into a very eclectic little area with a ton of local artists and lots of little shops. There’s one main drag that runs from one end of town to the other and you can spend hours walking around checking everything out. We had a great time checking things out and then also snapping a few photos along the way. One of our favorite spots is the courthouse for Cochise County which was built in 1931 and the architecture is all in the Art Deco style of that era. Jan’s photo is of one of the front doors at the courthouse. Very cool indeed!

Here’s a couple of our photos from Bisbee, Az. http://kevinmay.com/kmcbis17Jan16.jpg

Ok, it’s time for us to get to class, so we’ve got to get going! We hope that you have a great week as always and thanks for checking out our work!!!

Kev and Jan

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kmcbis17Jan16