Monday morning greetings from Moab, Ut.!

It sounds like my friends in Central Illinois got pounded with a fair amount of snow this weekend! I feel somewhat bad, but not that bad that I’m going to be rushing home anytime soon! Yes, I’m horrible!

We are out West, so we’re avoiding all the fun with the weather back home. We’ve got a few days of shooting lots of nature photography here in Utah and are really looking forward to it before heading back onto Colorado for a gig next weekend!!! To me that’s a big part of life is to be able to get out and shoot some personal photography and recharge the creative batteries. We love shooting for our clients and helping them out and then to be able to get out and shoot some personal photos is always wonderful!!!!

We are starting something new this week! There will be some weeks where Jan and I are both out shooting photos, either for business or our personal photography and we want to share those with everyone. This is our first week of doing this and I think that everyone one will enjoy seeing how we both see the world differently! That’s why photography can be a wonderful thing because we all see things differently and in the world of creativity, we don’t have to do things the same way!!!

Here’s a couple of photos from our drive on Sunday from Colorado down to Moab, Ut. The first photo is a black and white photo of Jan’s from Fisher Towers and the second photo is my shot of the Colorado River and the bike path that runs along it just north of Moab, Ut.

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

Kev and Jan

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

It has been awhile since I’ve done a product shoot in a studio. I sold my studio more then two and a half years ago and it’s been a great decision and no regrets for me! It’s so rare for us to be shooting product shots anymore and usually if we are doing something like that, it’s on location in the clients space. In some ways I think that this is becoming a lost art shooting product photography and making those products look nice with great lighting. Lighting is the key to any studio type shot if it’s a product or if we are photographing people.

This shot was more challenging than I thought it would be. We had a clear glass trophy that was engraved with type. At first I thought it would be a pretty easy shot, but soon found out that it was going to be more challenging than first thought. There’s type on the top and the bottom of the award and the type is on two different angles which added to the degree of difficulty for this photo. Like anything else when you’re doing work like this, it’s all about trial and error with the lighting. You first try what you think might look best and then you modify how you are lighting the product. At some point you have it looking as good as it can look in the time budgeted for the shot. With this award, there were many angles to it, so making sure that there weren’t any bad reflections was also a big concern!

Here’s the shot that we were able to come for this award and I think it looks pretty darn nice!!!!

Thanks as always for checking out our work and we hope that you have a great rest of the week!!!!

Kev and Jan

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

It’s good to be home after being on the road for the first couple of weeks of the year! We do like road trips and it’s always good to get out of town for a few days. The shoot last week was in Bismarck, North Dakota and needless to say, being there in January can be a little chilly! Most of the shoot was inside, so it wasn’t too bad, but we did need to grab an outside beauty shot of the St. Alexius Medical Center. To get some really nice color in a night shot, you need to have a clear sky and in the winter time the temperature can really plummet. We got the camera set up and then had to wait for the right time to shoot. It took about an hour to get everything just perfect, but it was well worth the wait. I think that the temperature was around zero and with the wind chill, it was probably about -15 below zero. Being all bundled up really helped, but with no protection on the face, things did get a little bit chilly!!!! Oh well, it’s worth it when the shot works out the way that you know it will!

Here’s our shot of the St. Alexius Medical Center in Bismarck, North Dakota!

The weather looks to be very nice in Central Illinois this week, so enjoy that it’s not freezing cold out there!!! Thanks and have a great week to come!!!!

Kev and Jan

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Monday morning greetings from a cold Bismarck, ND!

What an incredible response to last week’s promo announcements! With everyone checking out the announcements, our website (http://blog.kevinmay.com/) doubled its busiest day ever and that is completely amazing ! We did have a few people thinking that we’re not going to be shooting still photography anymore since we are now shooting video. Don’t worry, we can see this being a 50/50 split between stills and video at some point down the road, but we’ll always do what the clients want us to do!!!!

We’ve been very fortunate this winter to not get blasted with a lot of snow and cold early in December like we did last year. We did have some snow and cold this past week, so in some ways we are a little bit spoiled in that regard. It does make us think of warmer spring days that are coming and maybe in some cases not soon enough for our liking. That’s ok, if we don’t have record snowfall like we did last year in Central Illinois, we won’t complain at whatever we do get!!!

Thinking of warmer days makes us think of spring time and all the things that happen when things warm up!!!! One of those ongoing projects that we’ve worked on is shots of the Central Illinois area for the Peoria Convention and Visitors Bureau. One of our shoots from this past fall was a shoot out at the beautiful Weaver Ridge Golf Club. We picked a perfect day to get out and shoot a few photos and it shows in the results that we got!!!! Here’s one of the photos from our gig at Weaver Ridge!

Ok, it’s time to get outside and freeze, but we are loving it regardless of the conditions!!!!! We hope that you’re going to have a wonderful week and thanks for checking out my work as always!!!!

Kev & Jan

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2015 Peoria greetings to one and all!

I hope that you had a wonderful and safe Holiday season between Christmas and New Years!

I’ve got two big announcements to start off 2015. During my 25 years of self-employment, one of the most asked questions that I’ve gotten is, “Do you shoot video?” and the answer till now has been no. Today, I’m officially announcing that the answer to the question “Are you shooting video?” is YES!!! This all really started with the advent of DSLR still cameras having the ability to shoot 1080 HD video, as well as shooting traditional still photography. For these past couple of years, as I have been doing a still shoot and saw that something would make a nice clip of video, I would get a little “B” roll for the client, as well. From there, this has mushroomed into some small video projects which have been helpful getting my feet wet in the world of video shooting. I now feel comfortable shooting video projects that are within my ability and if I can’t handle a project, I’ve got plenty of videographer friends that can handle a bigger project like that.

I’ve put together a demo reel with some of the things that I’ve been shooting these past couple of years and I’ve uploaded the reel to YouTube. Here’s a link for my demo reel! http://youtu.be/EQ5wCvyYDnE

The second big announcement is that I’m hiring Jan Ebling to work with me full-time. Jan has helped me in the past on a freelance basis, but now I can see where I need her help full-time. Besides assisting me, Jan will also be a second shooter on many of these shoots. Jan’s expertise of being a photo stylist for many years will be invaluable for numerous projects that we’ll be doing!

I’m incredibly excited about these two announcements and I know that this coming year is going to be a great one!!!! 🙂

I hope that you’re going to have a wonderful 2015 and we are both looking forward to helping out when needed!

Thanks again!

Kev

Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

Well we are just about at the end of the 2014 and what a year it’s been! I have always likened the business of photography to riding a roller coster. When things are slow, the roller coster is climbing up the tracks and you never think you’re going to reach the top. When things are booming that roller coster is going a 1000 MPH and you never think it’s going to slow down! That’s how 2014 was in a nutshell! The first seven months of the year I couldn’t buy any work! It was slower then slow and I really was starting to question myself and thinking that maybe I was over the hill and it was time for them to put me out to pasture. Then the last week of July comes and the flood gates opened and there was more work then I could handle and not enough hours in the day to get everything done! Things have been so crazy since the end of July that I’m now just getting caught up on things that I’ve needed to get done for months! I’ll be using this week at the house to get caught up and hopefully be ready to rock for 2015! Already there is no sign of things slowing down next year and I’ve already booked a number of shoots in January and even into February! I guess that when it rains it pours!!!

Well here’s a look back at my year and they ten best photos of 2014. These are photos that mean something to me and I think “Wow, I took that!” I’ve made this into a PDF and it’s about 14 megabytes, so you’ll probably have to view it on a computer with a good internet connection.

Thanks again for being part of my year and sharing the adventures that I’ve been up too! There’s more coming and more fun to be had next year and I can’t wait to get started!!!!

Have a safe and fun New Years and we’ll see you next Monday in 2015!!!!

Kev

Click on link to see the PDF with the photos

2014TopTen

Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

Well it looks like we’ve made it to the week of Christmas and that’s a good thing!!! We are starting to get to the point of the year when things are slowing down in terms of photo shoots and that’s a good thing. I’ve still got so much computer work to do and it’s going to take a number of days to keep banging on it to reduce the amount of stuff I’ve get done! In some ways, it’s good that things are a little slower and I’m able to regroup in the next few weeks and get everything cleaned up and be ready for 2015!!! The calendar is starting to fill up for January and that’s something that hasn’t happened in a number of years. It’s really a nice feeling to see that, but it also makes me realize that I really have to kick some butt these next two weeks and get my plate cleaned off and be ready to rock on January 2nd!!!!!

I hope that you and yours will have a very safe and wonderful Christmas week!!!!

Thanks as always for checking out my work, it’s very much appreciated by me!!!!

Kev

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