Monday morning Peoria greetings to all my friends around the globe!!!!

I was able to do a little time lapse photography in El Paso, Texas when I was down that way visiting my folks this past Thanksgiving week! I found the perfect spot to shoot this from on the hill that over looks the city and in the background you can also see Ciudad Juarez, Mexico (not one of the safest cities in the world right now).

I’ve got a great time lapse video showing the transformation of the city from day to night that you can check out on Youtube.

It’s time to get busy, so I hope that you have a wonderful week and thanks for checking out my work!!!!

Kev

Monday morning Peoria greetings to all my friends around the world!!!!

We’re all back at it for another week of fun and games after the Thanksgiving break! We’ve got less then one month to Christmas and the end of the year is fast approaching! Where has 2011 gone? Wow!

“The Ferrari is a dream – people dream of owning this special vehicle and for most people it will remain a dream apart from for those lucky few.” Enzo Ferrari

Right before I left for Thanksgiving vacation in New Mexico, I had a very special car in the studio for a couple of days. The Ferrari 360 Stradele is one of those cars that you just don’t see everyday in Peoria, so to be up close and get to shoot it was a real treat!

When I was shooting some of these images, I knew that the shots were coming out great and I was really happy with what I was getting. When I got them into the computer and started to work with them, it dawned on me that we just don’t get to do lighting like this very often anymore! It’s really a shame because I think that the art of lighting in some regards is going away. Back in the days of film, you had to do lighting and make products look good because there wasn’t any Photoshop to enhance or tweak a photo. Digital photography in my opinion has been the biggest thing to happen to photography since George Eastman started Kodak! Now, I don’t want to go back to the days of film because I so love what I can do with a digital image, but I wish that we would take our time making photos like we did when I started all these many years ago! My hope is that in some regards we will get back to the art and craft of lighting products and making killer images in the camera!!!!!

Here are some of my snaps from a two day shoot in the studio with this incredible car! I truly think that it’s some of the best lighting that I’ve ever done! Everything looks clean and crisp and I couldn’t be prouder of these images!

It’s time to get rocking and rolling and get this week started! I hope that you have a wonderful week to come and thanks as always for checking out my work, it’s very much appreciated by me!!!!!

Kev

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Monday morning greetings from Las Cruces, N.M.,

This is going to be a short week (or no week at all) for work for a lot of my American friends! A lot of people have already taken off this past weekend for the Thanksgiving week while others will leave Tuesday and Wednesday to get home to be with family and friends! I made the journey down here to Las Cruces to see my folks and spend Thanksgiving with them and it’s always a wonderful time of year here in New Mexico!

I was able to grab a quick snap when I got to town last night and it was a perfect sunset as you can see!!!!

If you’re traveling in the next few days or you’ve already taken off, be safe this entire week!! There’s going to be a lot of people out on the roads and in the airports, so you have to be careful!!!!!!

Have a great Thanksgiving and I’ll be back in Peoria for next Mondays promo and ready to rock your socks with some of the best work that I’ve ever done!!!!

Take care and safe travels!!!!

Kev

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to all!!!!!

I normally don’t comment on famous people that have passed, but this week I want to quickly remember boxer Joe Frazier. As a kid growing up, I loved watching boxing and especially the heavyweight division. To see Muhammad Ali and Joe Frasier in the prime of their careers was incredible. “Smoking Joe” was the polar opposite of Ali and these two were fortunate that they had each other to fight because I think that it made both of them greater and larger then life! I liked them both, but I really liked “Smoking Joe” because he never backed down from Ali! If you’ve been to my studio, you’ve seen a lot of the autographed memorabilia that I have here and one of my prized pieces is a boxing glove signed by both Ali and Frazier! I’ve attached a quick photo to check it out! http://kevinmay.com/IMG_0324.jpg

I was able to get out to shoot a IHSA football playoff game on Saturday with Joliet Catholic taking on the Washington Panthers. When Joliet ran on to the field for the first time, you knew that Washington was going to be in trouble! The Joliet players were bigger, stronger and faster and it really was a case of men vs boys! The final score was 56-7 with Joliet winning, but it wasn’t even that close!

Here’s one of my snaps from the game!

A lot of people here in the US will be traveling starting next weekend for Thanksgiving, so if you’re one of those traveling, be safe!!!

Have a great week as always!!!!!!!

Kev

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to all!!!!!

As a photographer, one of the things that really grabs me is color! I love my colors to vibrant and snappy and I think that it’s one of those things that people see in my photography.

One of the stops on this past road trip out west was Salt Lake City and it was a quick side trip. We were there for only a day and a half, but it was well worth the drive! Just east of the city in the Wasatch Mountains are a couple of great drives if you’re every out that way. The first is Little Cottonwood Rd. and it runs up to the ski resorts of Snowbird and Alta. The second is Cottonwood Rd. (Rt. 190) and the road goes right up over the top of the mountain and comes down on the other side in Park City, Ut. The snaps that I’m sharing today are from both of those roads! The colors were absolutely glorious and we really lucked out and had some sun both days and that always makes a huge difference!

Here are a couple of my snaps of the Aspens and also a little autumn color from the Salt Lake City area!!!

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

Kev

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Monday morning greetings to all!!!!

As most of you might know, this is my favorite time of the year!!!! For those of us here in the Midwest, the humidity of summer is long gone and the temperatures are very comfortable in the 50’s and 60’s! I also love being able to put on the jeans and a sweatshirt and everything is right with the world!!!

This past week the weather was darn near perfect and I took the opportunity of a slow afternoon to get out to Forest Park Nature Center here in Peoria and hike around and grab a few snaps! Even though it was a Thursday afternoon, I was surprised at how many people were out on the trails hiking and enjoying the day! If you want to get out there sooner rather then later, you’ll be able to see some of the great fall foliage while it’s still on the trees!!!

Here’s a collection of my snaps from Thursday and I think you’ll agree that it looked pretty wonderful out at Forest Park!!!!

I’m hoping that you’re going to have a great week to come and thanks as always for taking the time to check out my work!!!

Kev

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to all!

I was able to get out this past Saturday night and see the Broadway show “Wicked” right here in Peoria at the Civic Center and if you were on the fence about going, “Do it”!!! Everything about this show is first rate and and it’s only here in town for one more week! You won’t be disappointed!!!!

I remember going to Yellowstone National Park when I was a kid and seeing the “Old Faithful” geyser and being pretty impressed back then. Having not seen it in 40 plus years, I wasn’t sure how spectacular it was going to be and was it just built up in my mind because I was young. Just like the show “Wicked”, it was incredible! I had a couple of cameras rolling for the eruption and it was on schedule with-in a couple of minutes of when they thought it might erupt! It was a perfect ‘Kevin May Blue Sky”©, so you knew the photos were going to turn out great!

Here’s one of my snaps and it’s a stitch of the whole “Old Faithful” area in all it’s glory!!!!!

Thanks as always for taking the time to check out my Monday morning photos and I hope that you have a great week to come!!!!

Kev

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Monday morning Salt Lake City, Utah greetings to all!!!

I’m wrapping up a nature shooting trip out West and I’ve got lot’s and lot’s of great images that I’ll be sharing in the coming weeks! The trip started last week in South Dakota at Mt. Rushmore and I have to tell you that it’s a pretty special place! When you’re driving up to Mt. Rushmore, you can’t see anything and then all at once, there it is! It’s impressive as all get out and you just marvel at what it took to put Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln up there in granite!!!!!

Here’s one of my snaps from the day and it’s a more close up of the mountain and the men chiseled there!!!!

It’s time to get rolling back towards Peoria!!!! Thanks as always for checking out my work and I hope that you have a great week to come!!!!!!

Kev

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Monday morning Mauston, Wisconsin greetings to all!

In the photography business, so much has changed over the past ten years with digital photography and the internet. I got an e-mail last week from the editor of a Swedish magazine called, SSAB World. They needed a industrial photographer to run up the road to Moline, Il. and shoot some photos of an engineer that was going to be getting an award. After a couple of e-mails we were able to get everything arranged and the shoot was scheduled and ready to go. The client wanted to have a shot with the engineer standing by a combine and holding some grain in his hands. It sounds like a pretty simple shot and to some degree it is, but we added a little bit to the degree of difficulty by doing some lighting outdoors which can sometimes be a real adventure! We shot the images into the laptop and we knew that everything was looking really good. Once we got back to Peoria and I was able to get the images into the studio computer and see them on a color corrected monitor. The first thing that I said when I saw them on monitor was “Wow”! The shots came out better then I thought that they might when we were shooting them. I was able to upload the images to the SSAB World’s server in Sweden and the gig was done. The client was ecstatic with the shots and that’s always a great feeling to make someone so happy!

This gig shows you just how much things have changed from the way that I was contacted by the client to the delivery of the images over the internet!

Here’s one of the snaps that we got from our shoot along with a nice behind the scenes look at the lighting equipment and gear that we used to pull this shot off!

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

Kev

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to all!

Autumn is a great time of the year to be out and about in Central Illinois and it also happens to be my favorite time of the year! The humidity of summer is gone and the days are cooler and crisper, so I took advantage of the nice day on Sunday for a little drive and made my way over to the Mississippi River and Burlington, Iowa. The Great River Bridge is one of those structures that grabs me as a photographer and it makes for great photos! Here’s one of my snaps of Burlington and the bridge at sundown yesterday!

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

Kev

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