Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

It’s hard for me to believe, but it’s Christmas week. It really has snuck up on me this year and I was thinking that we had another week, but I was wrong. It’s that time of the year when things from a business standpoint really slow down and there’s not too much going on. For the most part, clients have finished up their projects for the year and are in clean up mode. It’s a good time to get the desk cleaned up and papers filed and put away for the year. I know that I’ll have to work on that as well after the first of the year and that’s always a good feeling to start the year off on a fresh step.

I’ve got a time-lapse video to share with you today from White Sands National Monument in New Mexico. These are always fun to do, but they do require a lot of time depending on how long you would like the video to be. For this video, I spent a couple of hours and in some sense it can be a little boring because once you set up the camera and get started, you just have to be patient while the camera does its thing.

Here’s my time-lapse from White Sands National Monument. https://youtu.be/TowFZkYHA4o

We hope that you’re going to have a very Merry Christmas and Holiday season this coming week! If you’re traveling to visit family and friends, be careful and safe out there. We want you to come back in one piece! Thanks as well for checking out our work!!!

Kev and Jan

Click on the image to see the time-lapse video

Rainy Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

Yes, it rains in Peoria in December! Thanks to a very strong El Nino this year we are having very atypical weather here in Central Illinois. You would expect by the middle of December that we should have already had a couple of snow falls and some cold weather, but that’s not the case this year! The best part is that you don’t have to shovel rain, so I’m not complaining!!! We are supposed to have a more mild winter with warmer temperatures and less precipitation and that’s just fine with me after having been blasted with a lot of snow the past couple of years. It was just two winters ago in Peoria that we had a record snowfall for the winter! That’s quite a contrast from yesterday with the temperature in the 60’s and rain, but I’ll take it!

One of the things that has been somewhat hurt with this warm weather has been the PNC Winterfest in downtown Peoria. Right next to the Peoria City Hall and the Peoria Civic Center, they have constructed a winter wonderland with a temporary and artificial ice skating rink. Despite having these warm temperatures, they have still been able to make ice and people are out there skating and it’s great to see! I’d been meaning to get down there and shoot a few photos, but have been so busy that I just haven’t had the time. I was finally able to get there this past Friday night and on the drive there it was drizzling and I was thinking that no one would be skating and it would be a waste of time to be taking photos, but I was wrong! The rink was packed and there were a ton of people from young to old out there skating and having a great time! They also had an ice slide as well and it was fun to watch those that were younger flying down on saucers and tubes! All and all everyone had a great time and a little drizzle never hurt anyone!

Here’s a couple of snaps from the PNC Winterfest and the fun that was being had this past Friday night!

Let’s all have a great week and thanks for checking out these photos!!!

Kev and Jan

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

We got back into the workflow this past week and that’s always a great feeling. We cranked on the computer with a ton of video editing for most of the week and this coming week it’s more of the same. It’s something that I’m getting more comfortable with and it really does help to be doing a lot of it. It’s so easy to learn something and then if you don’t use it for a period of time, you can forget how to use it and that makes things a whole lot tougher.

I’m sharing a few snaps from Thanksgiving week in New Mexico. For me it’s so much fun to get out and hike around in the desert. The terrain and vegetation are so different from what we have here in the Midwest and that’s what makes it interesting. There’s something very therapeutic about being out in nature and not having any people around. Sometimes as I’m hiking I won’t see much that interests me to shoot a few photos of, but I just keep going because I know that there could be a shot just a little further on the trail. The other thing that I really pick up on is the sound of the wind and maybe even an occasional hawk or a raven flying overhead.

Here’s a couple of my snaps from Las Cruces at Soledad Canyon and Baylor Pass.

Alright, the computer is fired up and Final Cut Pro is ready to go! It’s time to start editing!!!

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

Kev and Jan

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Monday morning greetings to one and all!

Well it’s time to get back to work after having had a very nice long Thanksgiving weekend to get away and unwind! At this time of the year, we’re all trying to get things wrapped up with the holiday season fast approaching. We’ve got a big push of video editing the next couple of weeks, so there’s going to be a lot of computer time coming up!

I’ve always talked about my Flickr page and it’s such a great place to see a lot of my images. I’ve had my images there for about nine years now and it’s been a great place to share these images over the years. One of the fun things that just happened is that my images have now been viewed more than 500,000 times. Jan also has a bunch of her images on Flickr as well and I’ll be sharing a link for her page too. We both love to shoot photos and sharing our work gives us an incredible amount of pleasure and satisfaction. Here’s a couple of links for both of our Flickr album pages and you’ll see a wide variety of subjects.

Jan’s Flickr Page: https://www.flickr.com/photos/janebling/albums

Kevin’s Flickr Page: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kevinmay/albums

I’ve also got a few snaps from my visit last week to White Sands National Monument, N.M.. As always it’s one of my favorite places to shoot and with the clouds, sun and sand, it can make for a lot of great photos!

Alright, let’s get to work! There’s lots to do, so we both hope that you have a very wonderful week!!!!

Thanks as always for checking out these photos!!!

Kev and Jan

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Monday morning greetings to one and all!!!

It’s Thanksgiving week for all of us here in the US and that’s a good thing. Unless you’re working in a retail or a service industry, you’ve got this Thursday off from work and probably even Friday as well. Having a little break like that to get away from work and just relax and unwind is alway a huge positive for most of us! It’s also nice to be able to spend time with family and friends as well. It’s great to be watching a Thanksgiving parade or a NFL football game along with some great food during the course of the day. Hopefully you’ll be able to do a few of those things this Thanksgiving!

We are both very thankful for so much this year and this is a great time of the year to reflect on that. Our business has been really good and we have been busy from the start of this year and it hasn’t stopped. Most of the rest of this year is already booked with shoots and editing and we are even starting to book time in January! That to me is amazing because normally there is a bit of a lull to start any new year and then at some point, the phone will start raining and things will get going.

Here’s a couple of snaps from our trip out to the East Coast. Jan’s photo is from the Eastham, Ma. of the Nauset Beach Lighthouse and mine is of the gate at The Breakers in Newport, Ri.

If you’re traveling this week to spend time with family and friends, make it a safe one. Enjoy the time and cherish all the moments spent with them!

Thanks for checking out our work and have a wonderful Thanksgiving!!!

Kev and Jan

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

We got back in the saddle this past week from our East Coast road-trip and it’s so nice to be home for at least a couple of weeks!

While we were out shooting in the Northern Virginia area, we were able to spend a few hours in the mall area of Washington DC. It’s probably been about 50 years since I’ve been there, so it was great to see some of it again! The weather couldn’t have been nicer with the temperature at about 70 and beautiful sunshine all afternoon. It always makes things a whole lot nicer when the weather is super comfortable like it was that day.

We started our little tour at the White House and then walked into the mall and took photos at the Vietnam Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Korean War Memorial and the Washington Monument. There is just so much to see and we hardly scratched the surface with all of the memorials and museums that are there in the area. It’s one of those things that I learned a long time ago that you don’t try to do it all in one day and you save something for the next time you come back! Hopefully it won’t be another 50 years in my case!!!!

Here’s a few of our photos from an afternoon spent at the Washington DC Mall.

Let’s all have a great week to come and thanks again for checking out our work!!!

Kev and Jan

Click on image to see a larger version

Click on image to see a larger version

Monday morning greetings to one and all!

We were rocking and rolling with all kinds of different gigs this past week, so things are still crazy busy. I continue to be amazed how much is going on and we have been doing our best to keep caught up on everything!

One of the gigs this past week was a number of shoots for our friends at Homeway Homes. Homeway is a great company here in Central Illinois that builds houses and also commercial buildings. We have been traveling around Central Illinois shooting photos and video testimonials from Homeway customers for a couple of weeks now. One of our stops was the town of Dwight, Illinois about halfway between Chicago and Bloomington on I-55. Dwight was also one of the many towns along famous Route 66 and one of the spots is the historic Ambler’s Texaco Gas Station. Ambler’s Texaco stopped pumping gasoline in 1999, but it has the distinction of being the longest operating gas station along Route 66. It’s also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Here’s one of the snaps from our visit to Ambler’s Texaco in Dwight, Illinois.

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

Kev and Jan

PS, for those of you not old enough to remember the title of this promo, here’s a Texaco TV commercial from the 1960’s
https://youtu.be/b1zxOTDHIBQ

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