Tag Archives: USA

Rain, rain go away…

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!!!

Well we’re sure had more than enough rain here in the Midwest these last few weeks. It seems like everyday day we are getting some rain and things are getting a little soggy! I ended up getting my yard cut yesterday and normally I would wait for things to dry up before cutting it, but I saw a break in the weather for a few hours and thought I’d better get it done. The whole time that I was cutting it, the ground was wet and my shoes were nice and squishy! We’d love to send some of this water out to the West Coast where they don’t have enough!!!

Back at the first of this year I made the announcement that we were starting to shoot some video for clients. I’ve been truly amazed at the number of projects that have rolled in this year. We just did another one last week where I was shooting video images and Jan was shooting still images for the client, so that was a lot of fun!

We have learned so much in the past few months about the whole process and ways to do things better. There are technical things that we never had to deal with shooting still images and now we are learning about video. One of the biggest things that we’ve learned was getting better audio for a video commercial like the ones we’re sharing today. There was some trial and error in the beginning, but with the help of an incredible video mentor, we are getting things where they should be! These spots are a great example of that!

We’ve been doing a series of TV commercials for our friends at Goldfine and Bowles. We learned so much about audio recording doing these commercials and ways that we could make it sound even better. Like anything else in life, we learn from our mistakes and try to not make them again!

Here’s a couple of our new spots for Goldfine and Bowles!

Thanks as always for checking out our work and we’ll keep rocking and we hope you will as well!

Kev and Jan

Off they go

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

Well we sure had quite the Sunday of weather in Central Illinois. In the afternoon the thunderstorms really heated up and the winds were rocking. I heard on the radio that about 10,000 Ameren customers were without power at some point yesterday, so that’s a pretty good storm!

We were recently helping out our friends at UnityPoint with some photos. We were trying to show some of the projects that the UnityPoint Health – Methodist / Proctor Foundation has funded. One of the many projects was this project that we are featuring today. When a child is going in for some surgery at the hospital, there is a point where they have to leave the parents and head in for that surgery. This can be a little scary for the child to leave the safety of mom and dad, so to ease that anxiety they get them all gowned up and ready to go. Once they do this, they have a couple of battery operated cars that the kids can drive to surgery. It might not sound like the biggest thing in the world, but it’s probably that little bit that makes things a little easier during what could be a very stressful time for the child.

The one funny back story to this shoot was that we had three sisters aged 7 to 4 and we were going to have the oldest one drive this little yellow Hummer for us. Well as sometimes happens, she got scared and didn’t want to do it. We then tried the middle sister and she wanted no part of it either and then on to the youngest sister and the same results. We ended up putting the youngest sister in the Hummer and the nurse pushed the gas pedal and as soon as the other sisters saw what was happening, they both couldn’t wait for their turn. I think we got this photo with the youngest sister, but we photographed all of them so they would each have a turn driving the Hummer. Sometimes when you think something is’t going to work like this, you get lucky and get the shot that you’re after!

Here’s one of our photos from this great project that was funded by the UnityPoint Health – Methodist / Proctor Foundation.

We hope that you’re going to have a great week and thanks for taking the time to check out our work!

Kev and Jan

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In the Limelight

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

Jan and I are rocking and rolling as always and things have been pretty darn busy of late and we can’t complain about that!

One of the things that I’ve always enjoyed seeing is live music! It doesn’t matter what type of music it is, to see musicians playing live has a wonderful feel and there’s an energy that you get from them and their music. I can recall from my days here in Peoria when I was going to Bradley University, a bunch of us would get out to the Second Chance (for those from the Peoria area and also old enough to remember that place) and catch some local and regional bands. It was a great venue to see bands and I really miss the place! Well not to fear, it looks like we’ve got a place here in Peoria that’s fitting the bill as a local place to see live music. The Limelight is an entertainment complex on the North side of Peoria and it’s a great venue to catch live music. I was there for the first time yesterday for a Generations show with local bands from yesterday and today. My guys, The Rave who I’ve photographed for over 30 years and featured here on the blog were there and did a 10 song set of original music. Let me tell you from a photographic standpoint, 10 songs sounds like a lot of time to get photos, but it’s not! I was really banging the motor drive on the camera and trying to get as many images as I could in such a short amount of time! It was a great show and as always the guys rocked!!!!

Here’s a few of my snaps of The Rave rocking the Limelight!

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

Kev and Jan

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Shark Tank and Echo Valley Meats

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

Well there was big fun in Peoria this past Friday night! Dave Alwan from Echo Valley Meats was on the ABC television show Shark Tank for the second time in the past couple of years. The first time that Dave presented his idea to the Sharks they rejected it, but the response for Echo Valley Meats was huge. The phones and internet started ringing with orders and this caught the attention of the producers of the show. They asked Dave to come back and pitch his idea one more time. Dave had all of his ducks in a row this time and had three of the sharks making him an offer and he chose the offer from Mark Cuban (NBA Dallas Mavericks owner) and now they are partners and that’s great!

On Friday night when the show was going to air on tv, Echo Valley Meats had a big viewing party with over 100 guests. When the show came on, they projected the video on the wall for everyone to see. Dave came in and made his pitch to the sharks and when he announced on the show that he was teaming up with Mark Cuban, the whole room erupted with cheers and applause!!! Smiles and congratulations were in order and the party was on! The other thing that I thought was really cool is they had set up a computer and a big screen that was showing all the analytics on the Echo Valley Meats web site and the traffic that it was getting during and after the show! The amazing thing is that with-in 13 hours of the show airing on Friday night, the EVM web site had an additional one million hits to the site! It really shows you the power of a hit TV show like Shark Tank!

Here’s a few of the images from a great evening with Echo Valley Meats and their big news!!!

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

Kev and Jan

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It’s time to get back to work!

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Monday morning greetings from Omaha, Nebraska!

The Thanksgiving holiday weekend is over and it’s time to get back to work! I’m heading back from a nice week off of work and being able to spend time with my folks! It was also nice to be able to spend time in some warmer weather from what’s been back home in Peoria at this time of the year!!!!

Here’s one of my shots from one of my favorite places in New Mexico, White Sands National Monument. White Sands is just west of Alamardgo, NM and it’s shifting sands are heaven to me! At this time of the year with the shorter days, the sun is going down in the 5:00pm range and that makes for some great photos. In the summer time, you can get these same photos, but you’ll have to be out at the park till 9:00pm or 10:00pm and we all know that’s way past my bedtime!!!! 🙂

Well it’s 24 days before Christmas, so I guess that it’s time to get busy and make that final push to the end of the year!!!! I hope that you’re going to have a great week and thanks as always for checking out my work!!!!!

Thanks again!!!!

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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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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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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