Happy Thanksgiving

Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving today. If posts about how to survive Thanksgiving are more in line with your reality, I wish you the best of luck in that regard. I am thankful that’s not how I feel about today, but then again I’ll be the first to admit I might not be overly excited about today if I was celebrating it with a ton of relatives. Normally, my Thanksgivings have mostly consisted of my immediate family and even that can be a little much sometimes.

Today’s Thanksgiving is looking like a fairly normal one over here. I’m definitely not going complain about that since at one point there was the possibility of my parents’ going up to Minnesota for Thanksgiving with my siblings that go to college up there. Instead those siblings have returned home and are here to enjoy our normal Thanksgiving festivities. Everything over here is fairly relaxed at the moment and I’m currently enjoying one of our newer holiday traditions of tequila sunrises in the morning.

It’s tough to say what I’m most looking forward to with the rest of the day, it’s a tough call between the game and the food. It’s definitely exciting that the Bears are playing on Thanksgiving for the first time in quite a while. I feel like every year I’ll watch a little bit of the Thanksgiving day games, but it’s a little hard to care when I don’t have much rooting interest in the games themselves. Also, it’s cool that it’s a meaningful game, which it feels like it’s been a while since that could be said about a Bears’ game this late in the season.

Then again, there are so many foods that I’m looking forward to having today too. The only drawback to the food, is the work needed to prepare it. Later, I’ll be helping out by making the green bean casserole, which has come to be known as my signature dish over the last few years. I also do my best to help out as needed to make the meal happen as well. The best part of all this is the meal itself. My mouth is just watering thinking about all the turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, eggnog, and pumpkin pie I’ll be having later. I’m most certainly ready to give thanks and enjoy the rest of today.

Veronica & Kevin | Courthouse Wedding

On a Saturday morning in late October, I was a at the courthouse to photograph the wedding of Veronica and Kevin. The funny part is that the last time I did photos for a wedding at the courthouse, it was the same weekend of the previous year. Surprisingly, the two days could not have been any more different from one another. First of all, the location has changed to the newly opened Lake County Court Tower after previously being performed at the Babcox Justice Center. Also, the wedding party for this one was a friend of the bride, while the one I photographed last year had the parents of the bride and groom in attendence

The biggest difference this year to me was the weather. I remember last year being surprised by how beautiful the weather was for late October. This year I was keeping an eye on the forecast and I wasn’t too optimistic about how it would turn out so I suggested we take photos inside the courthouse. For a moment when I arrived, I thought maybe my concern would be unfounded as the weather seemed alright. However, taking photos indoors looked like a very good decision when I went outside after the ceremony was over at received a greeting from cold weather and gusty winds. Plus, since the security at the courthouse knew I was a photographer they told me the best location in the building for portraits.

Cruz Family

This portrait session with the Cruz family closed out my very busy month of September. Lacy told me that she was inspired to schedule this photo shoot after she found their outfits during a trip to Gap. The day of this session I was a little worried there would be rain and luckily the weather held up making for a pretty good session. I tried my darndest during this shoot to get the little girl to smile for these photos, but she just was not having it. I’m pretty sure in the ones where she’s smiling a bit, I’m receiving assistance behind the scenes from her parents.

Tim & Korona | Wedding

I’ve been slacking once again on posting photos from the last couple of months so you can expect some new posts over the next week or so. I can’t believe that it has been almost two months since Tim and Korona’s wedding. I think part of it is the contrast in weather between that day in mid-September and today. I remember Tim and groomsman after the formal portraits at South End Park being happy to finally be able to shed their suit coats so they could cool down a bit. Meanwhile this morning after a brief trip out to my car grab something, I decided it was finally time to figure out where I had put my gloves and hat after last winter.

Well, enough about the current frigid temperatures we’re experiencing here and on to Tim and Korona’s wedding day. Their wedding was by far one of my favorite weddings that I have photographed. I always like when people I’ve known for awhile contact me about my photography service and I think that’s what helped make this wedding so enjoyable for me. Tim and a couple of his groomsmen were all connected by the fact that we went to Waukegan High School. It was truly a day where my job did not feel all that much like work.

September 2018

September was positive month for me with both my business and social life. My biggest victory of this month was the fact that I made my monthly financial goal. With the exception of one week, I had photo work of one kind or another every week of the month. I began September with Mariana’s Quinceañera, which brought me out to Des Plaines for the ceremony and then back to Waukegan for the reception. Then a couple weeks later, I had two very different photography gigs in one week. The first one was a 1st birthday portrait session in my studio on a weekday. Then on the weekend, I went out to Dundee to do photography for the wedding of a former high school classmate of mine. The next Saturday, I worked as photographer for Faith in Place’s Green Team Summit at the Field Museum in Chicago. Finally, the last weekend of September saw me having a family portrait session at Bowen Park.

September was a much more active month for my social life than I originally expected. Going into last month, I was planning on staying in and only going out to catch Modest Mouse at the Genesee Theatre. Instead I ended up getting a little caught off guard by people inviting me to different get togethers and events. One of the bigger events that came out of nowhere was a buddy from high school inviting me out to catch the Cubs playing the Reds for a rare Friday night game at Wrigley. Then another Friday night, I went out to Palatine to catch a couple jam bands performing at Durty Nellies. In addition to these bigger events, I went out to a few local establishments and hung out with a few different groups of people.

Despite being nearly a week into the month of October, I’m not entirely sure what to expect of this month. At the moment, I do not have much scheduled for photography work. In fact, the only day of photography work I have could possibly be in the form of two weddings on a single day with a courthouse wedding in the morning and then a different, formal wedding in the afternoon. On the side, I’m back to helping my brother-in-law with some of his contract work on an as-needed basis. Meanwhile, I don’t have a ton planned for the next couple weeks for the social realm. Although, I am looking forward to going to a music festival later in this month.

Promise | 1st Birthday

Last Thursday was my first time having a photo session specifically for a 1 year old when I had Promise in the studio. It was also the first time where I had a session that included a cake smash. The main challenge in sessions like this is usually finding a way to get some cooperation and attention from the child. Promise was no different as she was intrigued by all the space in my studio and wanted explore the area in the room beyond the backdrop. Another challenge was getting her to look in the proper direction and seemed to be pretty interested in ceiling even though it wasn’t running at the time. Finally, going into the session I was hoping that she would one of those babies that would really get into the smashing the cake. However, as you can see in these pictures, she wasn’t very eager to make and mess and play around with her cupcake.

Mariana's Quinceañera

I began the month of September by photographing Mariana’s quinceañera. It has been a couple years since I had last photographed, but I did a good job picking it back up pretty easily. The ceremony part of quinceañera took place at Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Des Plaines. I was unsure of what to expect since was unfamiliar with this church. Part of me was a little worried since I was not completely sure if the ceremony portion would be indoors and the weather forecast was looking a little troubling. In the end, the ceremony was held outside on a sizable veranda and the weather actually turned out very nice as well. The reception then was held at the Arches Banquet Hall in Waukegan. While it wasn’t my first time being at the Arches, it was my first time having a photography job take me there.

August 2018

Photography work was minimal for the the month of August. One of the bookings that I thought I might have at the beginning of the month for a Racine couple's 10th anniversary fell through unfortunately. Meanwhile as I posted about in my last blog entry, I did the Larsen family portrait yet again this year. Also noteworthy for my photography is that I will have a few pieces on display at the Family Piano Company. Currently the photos on display are from summer since my plan is to have pieces that coordinate with seasons of the year. It's definitely a very cool opportunity that Family Piano Company has allowed me in using their space.

My big adventure for the month of August was going out to Colorado to see Pretty Light Live perform at Red Rocks Amphitheater. I'm very happy that I ended up finally making a trip out to Colorado after talking about it the last couple years. It was a great weekend with great music and friends in a beautiful environment. The only complaint I can possibly think of is that we did not do more exploring. Granted I'm hopeful that I'll make it back out that way some time to explore Colorado further. 

The month of September will definitely be an interesting one. On the first day of this month, I had my first big gig of the month as I photographed a quinceañera. Right now, I'm less than 2 weeks away from photographing the wedding of one a classmate from high school. Meanwhile as far as fun activities, we are now in the midst of one of the most exciting months on the sports calendar. College football started this weekend with my favorite teams, Notre Dame and the Ohio State University, winning their opening games. Then this weekend, the N.F.L. kicks off and the Bears face off against the Packers. And there's also my Cubs making a strong case once again to participate in playoff baseball again.

Nahf Family

This family portrait session occurred on the last Friday evening in July. Originally we had planned on having this photo session a week earlier, but it ultimately got pushed back because the weather forecast looked iffy for most that afternoon.  Seeing as the weather was much better the day of this portrait session, it turned out to be a great decision to re-schedule. Everything went well with the only real trouble was getting the dog, Percy, to not be distracted and look at the camera. 

Veronica & Ronnie | Engagement

This is the second set of pictures from earlier this year. This session was actually from the beginning of March where we really lucked into some mild weather for this laid back engagement session. This session was a departure from what I'm used to for most photo shoots, but I think we all really enjoyed it since it is an honest reflection of this couple and their easy going, fun attitude. It was great having a little bit of a break from what I'm what I'm normally used to photo sessions.