January 2024

I kind of feel like I’m still trying to get my bearings for the year 2024 and yet the month of January seems to have come and gone in the blink of an eye. I could have sworn it was just yesterday where I started off this year by going down to Waukegan beach to jump in Lake Michigan for the Polar Bear Plunge. The first week of the year was very light in the way of work and had a healthy dose of time to relax as the Christmas season wound down. The week was punctuated by my first photo gig of the year as I found myself in the familiar halls of the Lake County Courthouse to photograph another courthouse wedding. 

The second week of January served as the start of the year for me when it comes to work which meant I had a whole lot of editing ahead of me. The first collection of photos that I worked on editing this year were actually from my last photography gig of 2023 where I photographed my uncle’s retirement party. Then once I completed that, it was time to get to work on editing the photos from the courthouse wedding that I did as my first gig of the year. By the time the fourth week of January rolled around, it felt like life was settling more into the usual routine since I was now caught up with my editing. 

Location Ideas for Your Family Session

It’s hard to believe that summer vacation is drawing to a close for many people here in Lake County pretty soon. I’m sure there are plenty of people who are not the biggest fans of this time of year and I can’t say I would blame you for that. I, on the other hand, kind of like this time of year because I’m eager for fall to come and to have some family portrait sessions during my favorite season of the year. Today I’m going to write a bit about picking a location for a family session because I once heard that it’s all about location, location, location. Granted I think that was meant to be in reference to real estate and not so much family portrait photography.

First of all when it comes to locations, I believe that your choice of location is not going to be the thing that will make or break your family’s session. For this reason I hope that you don’t put any unneeded pressure on yourself when making this decision. Also, I’m always willing to try my best in helping clients to find a location that works for them. Although, I’ll be the first to admit that while I may venture around Lake County from time to time, I feel like my knowledge is actually a little limited when it come to good locations. Plus, don’t worry about picking a location that I’m unfamiliar with because I enjoy the opportunity to have a session in a location that is new to me.

When it comes to choosing a location for family portraits, you will find that normally one of my first suggestions is local preserves or nature areas. I feel like these types of areas are better suited for family portraits than an urban setting. Plus, I feel like living in this area, we are very blessed that there are so many great preserves that are part of the Lake County Forest Preserve system. The forest preserves that I'm most familiar with are the ones that are within the closest vicinity to me such as Independence Grove, Greenbelt, Lyons Woods, and Lake Carina. However, I'm sure many of the other forest preserves that I'm not as familiar with would make for great locations for photos. In fact, a couple of the locations that I'm hoping to have a photo session or two in are Ryerson Woods and Captain Daniel Wright Woods.

My other recommendation for locations would be local parks. One of the best parts about having your session at a park is that is you can you reward younger children for good behavior by going to the playground that is conveniently located nearby on location. Here in Waukegan the most notable park for sessions is definitely Bowen Park. I’ve definitely had my fair share of photo sessions at Bowen and find that since there’s so much space there it certainly is a good location. Another park in Waukegan that I think makes for a good location for a session is Roosevelt Park. 

Obviously this list is very far from being exhaustive when it comes to locations for a family session. And I just hope my suggestions have been helpful to you in picking a location for your family portrait session or at the very least sparked some ideas of your own for a cool location. Also keep in mind that finding the absolutely perfect location might not be as important as you think. At the end of the day, I would prefer my family sessions to be about the connection of your family and not have the location steal the show.

July 2023

The last couple days of June and the first couple days of July were a pretty hectic time in my photography business. On June 29th, I finished my second day of doing headshot photography for a Waukegan business. Then on the last day of June I photographed a courthouse wedding to start off the weekend right. Following that I did a photography session in a backyard for a pregnancy announcement. Finally to close out this busy stretch, I accomplished a personal first as I photographed a wedding on a Sunday morning. 

I wish it had been the case where this sort of busyness persisted throughout the rest of the month. Unfortunately, the rest of the month ended up being fairly quiet the rest of the way through July. One of the few benefits was the fact that it allowed me to be mostly caught up on my editing in the first week of July. Meanwhile, my reselling also had a bit of a down month as well. I think one thing that hurt my sales was the fact that I did a bad job of listing consistently.

The month of July treated me alright in terms of social and fun activities. For the 4th of July, I went on over to join a group of people in Arlington Heights to play ultimate frisbee and have a cookout. Then over the following weekend, I made it down to both nights of Scoop Waukegan. On Friday, I went down to see the broad variety of cars that were participating. And then on Saturday night, I went down to see Ivy Ford and her band perform.

Later in the month of July, my folks and I finally made it out to catch a Cubs game. We did not do a ton of planning for attending this game. In fact, it was only a little more than 24 hours before the game that we decided we'd go to it. Thursday morning we took a look at the weather and the probable starting pitcher (Justin Steele) for the day and were swayed that we should go. It ended up being a good decision as we had great weather and saw a tough victory over the Cubs' biggest rivals, the St. Louis Cardinals.

The final thing that I started participating in this past month was the newly established Drip and Culture Run Club. Recently I've been getting back into running on my own more consistently. So when my mum told me that her favorite coffee shop was starting a running club, I decided to check it out for myself. It provides me a nice change of pace from my solo runs I've been doing and maybe it'll even motivate me to eventually take on an organized run. 

I'm still here

I’m as surprised as anyone that it has been so long since I last posted on here. I’m definitely taken back a bit by the fact that my last time posting on here was all the way in early December 2022. Equally surprising was the fact that I haven’t posted anything at all in the year 2023 on here as well as a few other social media platforms. I could spend time here trying to form an explanation on why this is the case or I could simply move on and work on being better about posting. So between these two options, I’m opting for trying to improve on posting on a more regular basis and not making any excuses for my absence.

So in the time since my last my time posting, there have not been any drastic changes in my life. The month of December was a decent blend of time spent celebrating Christmas with family, going to a couple concerts with friends, a little bit of photography work, and fulfilling a variety of orders on eBay and Mercari. Then with the new year I resolved to break the bad habit I have of procrastinating and putting off doing tasks. It’s pretty obvious that the resolution has been a failure based on the fact that my first post of the year is finally happening on first day of May.

November 2022

November started as a fairly quiet month, but picked up as the month progressed. The first couple of weeks were fairly quiet with not much standing out from one day to the next outside of finally going to get my latest booster shot. Then by the middle of the month life started to pick up a bit beginning with taking a weekday trip down to Chicago to help my body move into his new place. A couple days after that I finally went on over to the DMV to renew my license after the deadline got extended a few times due to the pandemic. The next day, I went on up to the Kenosha Comedy Club to see Ian Lara perform.

The follow week seemed to fly by as I was kept busy by watching US Soccer play in the World Cup and hanging with family for Thanksgiving. Monday morning I struggled to focus on working because I was eager to watch US’s first match against Wales. By Wednesday afternoon my siblings from Minnesota had made it into town for the Thanksgiving. Over the next few days spent time hanging out with them for much of the usual Thanksgiving festivities as well as having a bonfire the following evening. One of the things I did miss out on though was when some of my family opted to got out for a hike on Friday while I decided I’d stay home to watch the US battle England for a hard earned draw.

October 2022

For many photographers the month of October is one of the busiest times of year for them. The previous two years that was very much the case with my photography business as I was booked for a lot of weddings in October. This year my October was busy, but it was with other work beside my photography work. The totality of my photography was done over the course of the last two weekends of the month as I photographed a courthouse wedding, an engagement session, and a family session during that time. Instead I was kept busy by working with my brother-in-law on doing some renovations on a house in Lake Forest for much of the month. Meanwhile, to end the month of October I was tasked with housesitting for my parents as they went out of town for a week long trip.

Kelly & Thomas

Currently, if I have free time during a weekend and the weather is nice, I often choose to go out to any one of the numerous picturesque nearby locales to do some wandering and photography. Part of me embraces this opportunity to explore and capture the world on my own. Meanwhile, the portrait photographer in me also wants to capture people in these settings. This is why I offer an open invite for a free mini portrait sessions during this time when I'm out doing photography during the weekend. 

A couple weekends ago, Kelly and Thomas took me up on this offer for a mini session over at Illinois Beach State Park in Zion. I arrived about an hour before golden hour so I could do some hiking before their session. Then I headed over to the beach a little before our scheduled time and found a location I liked for their portrait shoot. 

Mid Year Evaluation

Since July is the halfway point of the year, I feel like it is a fitting time to evaluate how things are going in the year 2022 so far. At the start of the year I had a number of goals that I was going to start small on and build up as the year progressed. This planned worked fairly well for the first month or two as I managed to accomplish most of the goals I had set during that time and as a result was feeling pretty good about myself. Unfortunately when March came around I sort of fell behind and failed at following through on a lot of my goals. I think the only goal that has stuck around has been reading more as I’ve read 11 books in total.

Kelly & Jeff | Wedding

At the beginning of June I traveled up to the Milwaukee area to photograph the wedding of Jeff and Kelly. They had a nice ceremony attended by friends and family at Adoration Lutheran Church. Following that we did some formal portraits at Boerner Botanical Gardens. After that we headed on over to Root River Banquet Hall for a fun filled reception.

April 2022

This is my first time posting one of my monthly update blogs in quite awhile. There’s no sense in trying to give an update on everything that has happened in the mean time. Plus if I’m being frank I feel like there might not even have been all that much that happened since then either. So instead I’m just narrow this post down to writing about last month and what’s coming in the month ahead.

The beginning of the month started off with a busy weekend as I kicked off the month with taking some portraits of family over at Bowen Park on April Fool’s Day. Then the next day I had my first wedding of the year as I photographed the wedding of Ana and Abraham at a community center in Gurnee. However after the rush of photography of those couple of days to begin the month, business slowed down significantly the rest of the way. The next time I had some photography work was Easter weekend when I photographed the courthouse wedding of Lluvia and Heberto.

The other thing that I have started this month is offering free mini portrait sessions on select weekends at some of my favorite Waukegan and other surrounding area locations. The availability of these sessions was limited this last month since I came up with this idea late in the month. Also, the weather plays a factor as well because these sessions are mostly going to be outdoors. My sole attempt to do this was April 23rd when I was out at Bowen Park wandering to do some of my nature photography and was ready to get photos of people with the Siberian squill if people were interested.

Currently for the month of May I potentially could be offering free mini portrait sessions a couple weekends in the middle of this month. So if you are interested in the opportunity to have a free mini portrait session, follow me on my social media accounts on Facebook and Instagram. On weeks that I plan on offering free mini portrait sessions, I’m going to try to post to my story on my social media accounts which day(s) I plan on having sessions on a weekend. Then the day(s) of I will post a story about what my location will be on that given day.

This coming weekend I am doing prom photos for my nephew, Gabriel, and his girlfriend so that’s why I’m opting against any additional portrait sessions this coming weekend. Then the last weekend of the I’m taking off since it’s Memorial Day weekend and also I’m planning on going to Summer Camp Music Festival on that Sunday. That’s pretty much the only set plans for this month so there could be some chances to meet up with me for a portrait session. 

The main thing I’m going to be working on this month is completely rebuilding my website. It has been a very long since I have made any sort of update to my website so it’s much overdue for some changes. Over the last week or so I’ve been doing a little research and come up with some ideas of how to improve my site and I’m looking forward to starting to institute them in the coming weeks. Hopefully when I post my next monthly update blog, my visitors will be greeted by a much different site.