Tag Archives: kevmaydude

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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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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Haliaeetus Leucocephalus

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

And you’re probably wondering what the heck is a Haliaeetus Leucocephalus? Yes, it’s the American Bald Eagle!

It’s been that time of year when we can see the Bald Eagles here in Central Illinois. I was over at the Mississippi River this past week to try to find some eagles to photograph. It’s getting to be the end of the season when they are more visible, so with the cold weather and the rivers being iced over in spots it’s about as good a time as any.

If you’ve never seen a Bald Eagle in person, there are a couple of things that really stand out about them. The first thing is their size, they are a very large bird and if you’re able to get close to them, it’s very apparent. One of the other things that I really noticed is that when they are flying close by, you can hear the whoosh of the wind as they flap their wings. They are incredibly powerful and also can fly very fast!

Do yourself a favor if the opportunity presents itself and get out and see these birds!!! You won’t be disappointed!!!! Here’s one of my snaps from last week of our national symbol!!!

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

Kev

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You can do it too!

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

Sometimes I know that people think that the reason a photographer like myself is able to get good photos is because of the professional cameras that we are using. In some photos that’s true and there are some technical things that a more professional camera can do that a camera with less features can’t do! In the case of this weeks photo, the camera was my iPhone 5s. It’s amazing to me the technology that’s packed into this phone and to be able to get great snaps from a cell phone as wonderful. One of the other great features of the phone is a “panoramic” function with the software. By panning across a scene like this nature landscape, the phone is able to record the image and ‘stitch” the multiple images together into one very nice panoramic image! It’s truly amazing to see how far this technology has come in the last 10 years and it will also be interesting to see where it goes in the coming years as well!

Here’s my iPhone panoramic photo from Las Cruces, NM.

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

Kev

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Welcome to winter!!!

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-42 degree wind chill Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!!!!

Yes folks that aren’t here in the Midwest, the wind chill this morning in Peoria is -42 degrees and that’s pretty darn cold!!!!! It’s not like this happens every year to us, but we do get blasted every few years with a -20 degree wind chill, so it’s not completely out of the question! The thing to do on days like this is to stay inside if possible and out of the elements! I know that barring an emergency on Monday, I’m not going anywhere!!!!!!!

Here’s a little something to warm you up on a cold day! I’ve put together some of my photos and video from the Big Island of Hawaii from December into a nice five minute slideshow! I know on days like this to see the tropical vegetation and have the warm trade winds blowing on you is pretty darn good! It will probably be awhile before we see temperatures in Peoria in the 80’s, so this will have to do!!!

Enjoy the show! Turn up the music and drift off to paradise for five minutes!!! Here’s the YouTube link for the Hawaii slideshow!

Alright, stay warm and inside if you can and know that spring is coming, just not soon enough! Have a great rest of the week and thanks as always for checking out my work!!!!!

Kev

It’s a wrap!!!

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Year end Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

Here we are at the end of 2013 and we’re just about ready to turn the calendar to a new page and a new year! It was a good year with a lot of great shoots and I was on the road for a number of them!!!! I’d always like to have a nice mix of shoots in town and on the road and this year it seemed like that was the case. Too much of either of those is not a good thing!!! I picked up some new clients in 2013 and that’s always nice as well!

All right, it’s time to get busy and get rocking in 2014! I’ll be all ready to go after having had a nice couple of months in November and December! Things are traditionally slow work wise, so it’s always been a good time to leave town on vacation!!!! As they say, “I’m tan, rested and ready to go!!!”

Here’s one of my shots from a couple of weeks ago in Kona, Hawaii. The cruise ships come into port in the morning at Kona and sail at night to their next destination. This ship was Norwegian Cruise Line’s “Pride of America” which sails to the different Hawaiian islands!

I hope that you’re going to have a very safe and fun New Years tomorrow night!!!! Have a great 2104 as well and let’s make it the best year every!!!!! Thanks as always for checking out my photography and it’s very much appreciated by me!!!! 🙂

Kev

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The Painted Church

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Monday morning Peoria greetings!!!!

Wow, reality once again!!!! Flying back from Hawaii yesterday and you already know the weather is not going to be as nice as what you left behind less then 24 hours earlier! Oh well, we can’t all live in paradise!!!! 🙂

We spend 12 days on the Big Island of Hawaii and as always, it didn’t disappoint!!! There is just so much to see and you’ll never do it in a week or even a year!!! One of the places that we saw and shoot photos of back in 2008 when we were there before was the Painted Church on the Big Island. The offical title of the church is St. Benedict Roman Catholic Church, but on the island it’s know as the Painted Church. It was painted by Father John Velghe in 1899 and the inside is something that you’ll probably not see in a church outside of Hawaii!!

Here’s one of my many snaps of the inside of the Painted Church and as you can see, it’s not a very big place! This imagine is a 180 degree view of the front half of the church!

It’s Christmas week and I know that a lot of you will be off of work and spending time with family and friends! I hope that your week is a wonderful one and also a safe one if you’re traveling!!!!

Thanks again for checking out my work and have a great Christmas week!!!

Kev

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