Tag Archives: Illinois

Riding the trails

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Monday morning greetings to one and all!!!!

We might have had the last nice weekend for 2014 here in Central Illinois. We’re going to get rocked with a nice Arctic blast coming out of Canada on Tuesday and it’s going to be down right nippy for the rest of the week!!!! We knew that summer and the warmer weather couldn’t last forever, so we’ll all just have to suck it up and bundle up!!!! 🙁

Here’s another one of my photos for the ongoing project for the Peoria Area Convention and Visitors Bureau to highlight all the things to do for the visitors that come to our area! One of the fun newer things that a lot of us don’t know about is the great new trails out at Wildlife Prairie Park to do mountain biking. It’s probably something that you didn’t know about unless you’re into trail riding in our area. I think it’s been around for a couple of years now and it opens up new trails for people in Central Illinois to ride at. I love to go trail riding, but have yet to make it over to ride at Wildlife Prairie Park. I’ll have to work on that next year!!!!!

Here’s a few of my snaps from the shoot and this is the kind of photography that I really like to do. It’s showing motion in something like riding the trails instead of just freezing the action with a fast shutter speed. To me I always want to show the illusion of speed, so I use a few of my photo tricks to make that happen durning a shoot like this!

I hope that you’re going to have a wonderful week and thanks for checking out my snaps as always!!!!!

Kev

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A Night for Richard

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Monday evening greetings to one and all!

You’re probably thinking that you would normally get the Monday morning promo on Monday morning, but as I’ve been saying, things have been crazy busy so you’re getting it on Monday night!!!

Last night I was up way past my bed time shooting photos at the “A Night for Richard” event at the Peoria Civic Center. For those that don’t know about the project, there has been a local Peoria group that has been working on getting a statue of Richard Pryor for the city of Peoria. It’s an expensive process to make a statue and a fair amount of the money had already been raised locally. Comedian George Lopez had heard about the project and decided to put together a comedy show to try and raise the rest of the money for the statue. With the help and coordination of the Peoria Civic Center (who generously donated the arena for the evening), everything was in place for the concert last night. George Lopez asked fellow comics Cedric the Entertainer, D.L. Hughley, Eddie Griffin, Charlie Murphy and Mike Epps to join him for the event and they all agreed to help out!

My night started out with me shooting a VIP “Meet and Greet” before the concert with some of the guys and their fans. Of course I had to get a photo with the guys too after I was done with all of the guests. The concert ended up being over four hours long with George Lopez as the MC and the rest of the guys preforming for the almost 6,000 fans in attendance. After the show, they had asked me to come backstage and shoot a few group shots of everyone and the last shot that you’ll see is all the guys with Jennifer Lee Pryor (Richard’s widow). I can tell you that all of the guys couldn’t have been nicer and so easy to work with. To have everyone donating their time and talents for this wonderful cause was incredible and shows the love that these comics have for Richard!

Here’s a few of my snaps from the evening from ‘A Night for Richard”

Have a great rest of the week and thanks as always for checking out my work!!!!

Kev

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Rebuilding Hope After a Natural Disaster

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

One of the things that I’ve taken great pride is helping out those that need help here in Central Illinois! We have so many great charities that are doing a lot of incredible work and it’s been my pleasure to help them out when I can!

I got a call from Mark Burdess and Barb Massey at Burdess and Associates back in July and they were working on a project for the Heart of Illinois United Way on a book to help people dealing with the aftermath of a natural disaster. The project came from the tornado that hit Central Illinois last November and was a way to try and help people effected both physically and emotionally from that disaster. Our goal as the creative team was to try and come up with photos that would convey each section of the book and help tell the different stories. Barb, Mark and I had a number of meetings to talk about what we were going to do and kicked around a number of ideas to help tell the story. The great thing about doing Pro Bono work like this is that for the most part you have unlimited creative freedom and also time to really work on a photograph and make it the best that it can be! Because of this, we were able to come away with better photos then if we had only spent a fraction of the time that we did! We really worked hard on this project and there was a tremendous amount of time making everything come together. I think that you’ll see all the effort that went into this book!!!

Here’s a great electronic version of the book, “Rebuilding Hope After a Natural Disaster”

Here’s my ten photos that were used in the book and I’m very proud of what we created!

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

Kev

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Salt

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

It was another rocking week of work for me with shoots in Peoria and Chicago! It’s such a nice feeling to have the phone ringing with clients calling and needing some photography and I’m doing everything that I can to get them taken care of! There’s no sign of things slowing down till Thanksgiving, so I’ll keep rocking and rolling for the next month and a half! 🙂

One of the shoots that I had last week was my on going project for the Peoria Area Convention and Visitors Bureau. We have a number of things and places that we are trying to get taken care of before the end of the year. The photos will be part of the the new visitors guide for 2015 and will also be used through out the year to promote tourism in the Central Illinois area.

We had a number of stops last week and one of those being the Peoria Heights restaurant “Salt“. We stopped in during the lunch hour and were able to shoot a number of things and people. The other really good part of this shoot is that we also got to have lunch there at Salt and was a very nice treat! Everything about our experience was outstanding from the service to the food, so it’s one of those places that if you haven’t visited yet, you should!

Here’s a few of my snaps from Salt and you’ll see why I liked it so much!

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

Thanks again!!!!

Kev

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Pushing dirt!

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!!!

Well it was another rocking week for me with work and there is just so much going on right now, I don’t know if I’m coming or going! Don’t get me wrong, I’ll take this over the first half of the year when there wasn’t too much going on work wise! I have always liken business to a roller coster ride and at times like the first half of the year, the coster was going down hill with nothing going on. The past three months the coster has been climbing and for the foreseeable future it’s continuing to climb and that makes me very happy!

This past week I was out shooting photos of bulldozers pushing dirt and something that I’ve always enjoyed shooting. No see these machines doing what they do has always been a source of great joy for me. I’ve also always been fascinated by watching the farmers out working with their tractors in the fields or at this time of year with the combines harvesting the crops that they planted. I guess that maybe it’s the kid in me that just loves watch these machines out there doing their thing!

Here’s one of my shots of three Caterpillar bulldozers out pushing dirt in Central Illinois this past week!

It’s time for me to get rocking because it’s going to be another busy week and there’s lots of gigs for me to shoot! Have a great week as always and thanks for taking the time to check out my work!!!!!!!

Kev

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Rocking in Central Illinois!

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Monday Morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

Well it’s been another rocking week of work and there’s lots going on! I can tell you that working makes me happy and to have work is a very wonderful thing. I enjoy what I do, so I want to do it all of the time! When things are slow and I’m not shooting photos, it’s just not nearly as much fun, so being busy makes me very happy!

I’ve been doing some work these past few weeks for my friends at G & D Integrated here in the Peoria area and it’s one of those companies that does a lot more then I thought that they did! I’ve always thought that they were just a logistics company that transported parts around the country, but they are also doing some assembly of parts and that’s a big thing that I never realized as well. That’s one of the things that I really love about what I get to do is that I get to see inside a business and see what they are really doing! I guess there is more then meets the eye and that’s a good thing!

Here’s a few of my snaps with my friends at G & D Integrated.

Thanks as always for checking out my work and I hope that your week is a good one!!!

Kev

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Echo Valley Meats

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

Having a short work week this past week was a very nice one! Now we’ll have a full five day work week, but that’s ok! It’s good to be busy!!!

I’ve been shooting photos for Echo Valley Meats for a number of years now and it’s been great to see a local Central Illinois business doing so well! Dave Alwan started EVM about 16 years ago and things have been going nicely for him in terms of business all these years. Last year, Dave was picked to be on the ABC television show, “Shark Tank“. He made his pitch on the show, but his idea wasn’t chosen by any of the “investors” for financial backing. Well a funny thing happen the day after the show aired. The EVM phone started ringing off the hook with orders for Dave’s different meat packages. The calls were coming in from all over the country as viewers had flocked to the EVM website and liked what Dave was selling. Needless to say, business has been booming for EVM ever since!

A few months ago, ABC brought their cameras back to Central Illinois to do a follow up story on the success of EVM since being on the Shark Tank show. This past Friday night ABC aired the follow up story on EVM and I have a feeling that Dave’s phone will be ringing off the hook again this morning!

Here’s one of our shots for the new web page that EVM will be rolling out very soon!

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

Kev

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It’s that time of year!

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Tuesday morning greetings to one and all!

We’re back to work after a nice three day holiday weekend! Hopefully your Labor Day weekend was a good one and also a safe one!

One of my favorite times of the year is upon us with the start of football season. The high schools and colleges started playing games this past weekend and the NFL will start playing this Thursday night and coming weekend! As much as I love watching football, I really love shooting the games even more! Most of the high school games are played on Friday nights and from a photography standpoint, night games aren’t all that great to shoot. Most high school fields have poor lighting for photography, so it really makes it hard to get good photos. I usually have to wait until the regular season is done and for the playoffs to begin before I can shoot any games. The high school playoffs are played on Saturday afternoons and usually the weather is very conducive for good photography. As luck would have it for me, we had some storms and lighting in the Central Illinois area on Friday night and a few of the games had to be postponed because of the bad weather. One of the games that ended up being played on Saturday morning was a match up with Washington Community High School taking on Bloomington Central Catholic. Both teams were a little rusty in the first half and there were a lot of penalties and not much to shoot in terms of the football action. Things picked up in the second half of the game and I was able to get a few good action shots and that made me very happy!

Here’s one of my photos from this past Saturday’s game with WCHS vs BCC.

Enjoy the short week of work and I hope that your week is a good one!!!

Thanks as always!!!

Kev

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DAL

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!!!

Wow, this is it, the last week of summer is upon us and it’s going to be a hot one here in Peoria! The heat index will be well over 100 degrees today and we really haven’t had that kind of heat this summer! We’ve had our warm days, but thankfully most of the summer was relatively mild and that was great! The good thing is that after a few hot days, this should be the last of the really hot weather!!!

One of my oldest clients here in Peoria is one of those companies that you’ve probably never heard of unless your a dentist. DAL or Dental Arts Laboratories has been in Peoria since 1934 and they make all kinds of dental products that our dentists use to make our smiles better! If you go to DAL’s website, you’ll see my photos of the different products that DAL makes. This past week we were able to go into the labs and shoot some working shots of the different things that were going on and the people making it happen! It’s probably one of the best parts of what I do is to go and see the behind the scenes workings of a business like this. There are a lot of people that work at DAL and to be able to see what they are doing to make there different products is very interesting to me!

Here’s a few of my shots from this past week with my friends at DAL!

Labor Day Weekend is coming this weekend, so if you’re going to be traveling for the holiday, have a great time and have safe travels!!!!!!

Thanks and have a great week to come!!!

Kev

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Ignite Peoria 2014

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all,

We had quite a art event here in Peoria this past weekend. It was the first year for Ignite Peoria 2014 and in essence it was created to jump start the Peoria community in the world of art. This event has been in the works for a long time and I can’t even begin to imagine how much work went into this.

It was a real smorgasbord of things going on durning the Ignite event on Saturday; music to theatre to the visual arts. There really was something for everyone and that’s always good to see! The other thing that I liked is that they had a lot of activities for the kids to do and to get involved with and that was a big part of this event. It seems with kids having so many activities like sports and school stuff, to get them off of the computer or video games is a good thing!

One of the activities that I really enjoyed seeing and photographing was some of the different “world” dancers. They had everything from little kids to adults dressing in their native countries garb. They had their music and would do a traditional dance and it was wonderful! I just loved the colors of all the costumes!

Here’s one of my snaps from the first Ignite Peoria event.

I hope that you’re going to have a great week to come and thanks for checking out my work!!!

Kev

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