Stax Museum of American Soul Music and 300,000 hits

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!!!!!

I’m always blown away by the number of views that I get on my photography on the Flickr web site. Last September I hit 200k views and now here we are just eight months later and I’ve hit another 100k views and that to me is amazing. I’ve got over 3700 photos in 14 different categories on a wide variety of subjects! If you’ve never checked it out or haven’t been there been to the site in awhile, here’s a link for the different albums. https://www.flickr.com/photos/kevinmay/sets/

Over the Memorial Day weekend a week ago, beside checking out the Metal Museum, we also went to the Stax Museum of American Soul Music. This is another one of the many great things to see in Memphis, Tn. and well worth your time if you enjoy all kinds of music! I remember listening to AM radio when I was a kid and listening to Otis Redding to Isaac Hayes to Booker T. and the MG’s to the Staple Singers all on the Stax record label. The Museum presents all the different artists from the Stax label, but also covers the history of soul music from Detroit to Chicago. One of the things that I really enjoyed was reading and hearing the stories of the different artists and where they came from and who were their influences in music. The Museum has done a really nice job in presenting the material and the displays are fabulous! It’s another one of those places that’s worth checking out when you’re in Memphis the next time!

Here’s a few of my shots from an afternoon spent at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music!

I hope that you’re going to have a great week as always and thanks for taking the time to check out my photos!!!

Kev

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The Metal Museum

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Memorial Monday greetings from Memphis, Tn.

Hopefully you have had a good and safe Memorial Day weekend!!!!

We were able to spend the Memorial weekend down here in Memphis and as always it’s a wonderful time! Lots to see and do and also lots of great food!!!! We are always looking for new things to do where ever we go and this time found a great new place to check out. The National Ornamental Metal Museum or The Metal Museum as it’s also know is in Memphis and it’s a very interesting place. The museum is a campus of small buildings with a couple of buildings just showing art work. There’s also a working foundry and blacksmith shop as well, so there is lots to see and do! We were lucky to catch a blacksmith doing his thing working with some iron making some decorative pieces for a gate. This is one of those places that we had never heard about in all of our years coming to Memphis! Do yourself a favor and check it out if you’re ever in the Mid South!!!!!

Here’s a few of my photos from the day at the Metal Museum!!!!

Thanks as always for checking out my work and I hope that you’ll have a wonderful rest of the week!!!!

Kev

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San Diego

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Monday morning greetings to one and all!!!!!

Here we are a week away from Memorial Day weekend and it’s always amazing how fast time files!!!! It seems like just yesterday it was Easter and now here we are at the official start of summer. I’m not one to complain about having a three day weekend to regroup and relax!!!!

About a month ago I was out in Phoenix on a shoot and I was able to scoot over to San Diego for a couple of days! It’s always nice to get out to that part of the country and with the weather being so nice, I wasn’t complaining!!!!! There’s lots to see and lots of fun to be had as well in San Diego!!! I was able to hit Kona’s Surf Club Cafe and Balboa Park and really enjoyed shooting photos while I was there as well! I’ve attached a few photos from my time in SoCal for you to check out!

I hope that you’ll have a great week to come and Memorial Day weekend as well!!!! If you’re going to be out on the roads next weekend, be safe and have a fun time!!!!

Thanks as always!!!!!!

Kev

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It’s that time of year!!!

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!!!!

Well it is that time of year when graduations from schools are in full bloom! The hard work of school is over for a lot of these students and they are ready to join the rest of us out in the real world of work!

I was shooting photos this past Saturday at Spoon River College’s annual graduation. One of the things that I really like about the way that they end the graduation is by having all the professors line up on either side of the departing students. You’ll see high fives, hugs and tears from the graduates and professors alike and it’s really a very great way to end the ceremony! This year I saw all of the nursing students had decorated their graduation caps with some bling and other goodies! Here’s one of my photos from Saturday with the nursing graduates, professors and the crowd of family and friends!!!!

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

Kev

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Chihuly and Desert Botanical Gardens!

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Monday morning greetings from Nashville, Tn.!!!!!

I’m on my way headed South for a couple of shoots this week and it’s great to be back on the road once again!

A few weeks ago I was out West on some different shoots and I was able to have a little time to shoot some photos for myself!!!! I took a few hours when I was in Phoenix to get over to the Desert Botanical Gardens for some desert photography. Much to my surprise, they also had glass sculptures from Dale Chihuly in the gardens. I’ve been very fortunate to see Chihuly’s work in both the St. Louis and Dallas botanical gardens in past years. Seeing his work in those cities and environments was great and seeing them this time in Phoenix was really different. To see how some of the sculptures worked with the desert colors and textures was wonderful! It’s quite the contrast from our Midwestern grasses and trees!!! The other thing that was great as well was seeing the desert cactus and other flowers in full bloom!!! I’ve seen one or two types of cactus blooming in the past, but to see 10 or 15 different types at one time was amazing!!!

Here’s a few of my snaps from the Desert Botanical Gardens along with the Chihuly glass art work!

I hope that you have a great week and thanks as always for checking out my work!!!!

Kev

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Joe Bonamassa

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!!!!

I’m getting back into the flow of things this past week and I can’t complain!

One of the goodies that I shot this past week was a concert with blues guitarist Joe Bonamassa at the Peoria Civic Center. Joe Bonamassa is probably a musician that you haven’t heard of, but he is a guitar player’s guitar player. He did a really interesting thing for his Peoria Civic Center show. The first half of the show was him sitting down and playing an acoustic set of songs with a three piece band and they were all ‘unplugged”. There was a very nice array of songs and different genre’s of music as well. Once the acoustic set was done, they took a 15 minute break and got ready for an electric set. The other thing that I really liked about his electric set is that he had a completely different group of musicians playing in the band for this set!!! Again, a great group of songs and genre’s of music that really made it interesting!!!

Here’s a few of my snaps from the Joe Bonamassa show at the Peoria Civic Center.

Have a great week as always and thanks for checking out my photos!!!

Kev

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4650 miles!!!

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!!!!

Wow, that was one heck of a road trip!!! When I got back to the house on Sunday afternoon, my trip gage told me that I had traveled 4650 miles on my trip these past two weeks!!!! The thing that I so love about a big road trip like this is that I was able to combine a photo shoot with a lot of personal photography on the way!!! It’s one of the perks that I have always enjoyed is to be able to go somewhere and do a shoot for a client and then to be able to spend some personal time shooting photos for me! In this case, the road trip took me from Peoria to Phoenix for my shoot and then out to the West coast to see my folks for a few days before heading back and shooting all along the way!!!! It’s so nice to be able to do that and just go where ever you want and where the road will take you!!!!

One of my stops on the way out to Phoenix was at the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forrest National Parks. The area of the two parks are located just off of I-40 just outside of Holbrook, Az. They are two radically different areas with the Painted Desert being a big wide open area with vast panoramic areas! At sundown it is so beautiful to see the earth tone colors of the land! The Petrified Forrest is just down the road 10 miles and it’s landscapes are radically different with more subtle tones with the iron colored petrified wood dotting the landscape!!!!!!

I have two photos for you today, the first is from the Painted Desert and the second is a piece of petrified wood with it’s rich iron colors against the background of the “Blue Mesa” area of the park!

Painted Desert http://kevinmay.com/kmcpd20apr14.jpg

Petrified Forrest http://kevinmay.com/kmcPF20apr14.jpg

Alright, it’s time to get back in the saddle and busy with work!!! There are more imagines that I’ll be sharing from my Western road-trip in the coming weeks!!!! I hope that you have a wonderful week!!!!

Kev

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24 years and I’m still rocking!

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Monday morning greetings to one and all!!!

Here it is my anniversary this week of working for myself and it’s been 24 amazing years!!!! It’s funny how time can go so fast for some things and for others it seems like just yesterday when it’s been all these many years ago!! Needless to say I’m incredibly blessed to be doing something that I so enjoy doing! I’m also very fortunate to have been able to make a living doing photography and taking that from a hobby to a profession. The business of photography is changing and it has been changing for a number of years now and being able to adapt and change has always been a big part of any business! The question that I now get a lot is how much longer am I going to continue doing photography before retiring. My answer has always been that I’ll keep doing it as long I’m enjoying it and once I’ve had enough, I’ll be shooting nature photography for myself in my retirement! For the time being, I’m not going anywhere!!!! 🙂

Speaking of work, I was out in the Scottsdale, Az. area shooting some photos for a client this past week and I’ll be sharing some of those photos when the magazine gets printed! One of the things that I’ve always enjoy doing is to try and shoot some personal images when time permits! In this case, I was staying in Fountain Hills, Az. and little did I know that they have the fourth tallest fountain in the world! Needless to say I had to get a shot of it and this image at sundown seems like the perfect image to finish off my 24 years in business!!!

Thanks as always for checking out my work every week and I hope that you enjoy seeing these images as much as I enjoy shooting them and sharing them with you!!!!

I hope that you’re going to have a very wonderful week!!!!

Kev

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They are ready to go!!!!

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Monday morning greetings from Holbrook, Az.!!!!

I’m on the road again this week and I sure like that!!!!! It’s been a few weeks since I was out of state on a shoot, so it’s nice to do it again!!!! If you do too much of anything it can get old, so to have a nice mix of work in town and out of town has always been wonderful in my eyes! The other thing that I like is that I can combine some work for my client with being able to shoot some nature photography for myself! It’s never upsetting when that happens! You’ll be seeing some of those snaps in the coming weeks!

Well in Central Illinois, our farmers are really chomping at the bit to get going and start planting their crops. Our winter has lasted way longer then it did last year, so they are really behind compared to 2013. Last year at this time most of the farmers were well on their way to getting there crops in the ground, while this year they haven’t even started! There is still some frost in the ground and the top soil is too wet to get the planting equipment in the ground! It will happen at some point, but probably not as early as any of them would like!!!!

Here’s a few of my shots from last weeks shoot for my friends at LG Seeds!!!!

I know I’m going to have a great week here out West and I hope that you do as well!!! Thanks for checking out my work and have a great one!!!!

Kev

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Weihenstephan

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!!!

In the business of photography things have always been “Feast or Famine” as far as having work goes. Last week was one of those famine weeks! Until things start to green up a little bit here in Central Illinois, there’s not always a lot going on work wise. I had a couple of shoots get postponed because of the weather and that does happen a bunch when you’re trying to shoot outdoors at this time of the year! Fortunately the next couple of weeks are going to be of the feast variety and that will be a welcome change! Having a week with not a lot to do just gets boring and I’m always the type of person that likes to be busy. As our Boy Scout leader said to us many times, “Busy hands are happy hands!”

Since I wasn’t out shooting photos for clients this past week, I did the next best thing! “Prost!”

I hope that you have a wonderful week and thanks again for checking out my work!!!!

Kev

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