Amanda & Jose | Engagement

It is always a joy getting to experience new locations while doing photography. I’ve seen a ton of photos of Morton Arboretum and I’ve wanted to check it out for quite some time. So when Amanda told me that this was where we would be taking her and Jose’s engagement photo, I was very excited for their session. The day of this session was my first time there so it was good that Amanda and Jose had visited recently and taken note to stop in the arboretum for photos. It was a beautiful location for an engagement session and we even had some great weather for this late October engagement session.

Tuvara & John | Gender Reveal

One of the things I love most about photography is the fact that it brings a nice bit of variety to my life. In my work as a photographer I’ve certainly had quite the assortment of sessions and know that there are great deal more sessions that I have yet to do. I’m always happy when I get inquiries for a type of session I have not previously done. So naturally when Tuvara and John contacted me about photographing their gender reveal session, I was looking forward to capturing this moment for them.

Pielmeier & Peterschmidt Families

If these families look familiar, it’s because it wasn’t all that long ago since the other time I photographed them. The previous time I saw these families was back in late July when I was photographing the wedding of Katie and Dylan. On this day in mid October, I made the trek up to Holy Hill to both some individual and combined family photos. Started off this session by getting some photos of Katie and Dylan with their son. Then the timing worked out well so that right about the time that was winding down, Katie’s sister, Andrea, and her husband, Adam, showed up along with their three boys. From there I mostly focused on Andrea’s family, but also got a few shots in between of the two families together.

Janeth & Sean | Engagement

It’s interesting seeing firsthand how the world is so small sometimes and how people can be interconnected without our knowledge. I vaguely remember Janeth from high school since we both went to Waukegan and graduated the same year. However, the real surprise came after the shoot when I was telling my mum about how the engagement shoot had gone and happened to mention Janeth’s name. Soon my mum realized that she knew Janeth is a former paraprofessional my mum used to work with. In a situation like this you realize how small the world is sometimes.

Janeth and Sean’s engagement session happened in early October. Originally we were planning on having this session at a barn out in McHenry, however, they decided they wanted a bit more of a natural backdrop. So I suggested a couple different local forest preserves and they decided on Van Patten Woods after paying it a visit the day before our session. An added benefit of them visiting the day before was the fact that they had a pretty good idea of spots where they wanted to take photos.

October 2019

The work to life balance continues to be a little out of whack since I’m more focused on my business at the moment. For work I had interesting assortment of jobs in the month of October and took me to some new and interesting places for the first time. The first few weeks of the month, I had a gig of one kind or another. My first photo gig of the month was local as I did an engagement session for a former classmate of mine and her fiancé at Van Patten Woods. The first new location that I visited this month was Holy Hill in Hubertus, WI. Since the family session was later in the day, I decided to head up on the early side and do a little bit of wandering of my own. Then the following week, I ran a photo booth for my niece’s birthday party.

The end of the month turned out to be a little hectic as I had 3 different gigs over the weekend and the 1 final gig to close out the month. The final Saturday of October started out with me doing my first gender reveal session. Then in the afternoon on Saturday, I did some before photos of a house that a friend of mine recently bought and will be having remodeled. For Sunday, I made my first trip to Morton Arboretum for an awesome engagement session. To closeout the month of October, I had a friend of mine stop by for a headshot session.

Now as I previously stated, my social life was fairly calm this past month. After the family portrait session at Holy Hill, I came back home spent some time hanging with my buddy and former coworker, Carl, at his place. The following weekend, Carl and I managed to finally find a time when another former coworker, Chris Mallon, could join us. We ended up going out to Salutos for pizza and some well overdue catching up. Although, I did run a little late that evening because I decided to stop by ZombieWauk beforehand. Then on Halloween night, I decided to dress as Shaggy from Scooby-Doo and go on the Waukegan Main Street’s Boos and Brews Bar Crawl. I ended up catching up with the people on that bar crawl at Win Win and followed it up from there with 17 North and Green Town Tavern later.

The month of November is likely to be more of the same with mostly business with a little bit of fun mixed in. So far I have shoots tentatively planned for the next two weekends with a family session next weekend and an engagement session the following weekend. I’m also working to on getting together a Christmas mini session perhaps for Small Business Saturday if all goes well. My studio presents a unique challenge for me, but I’m going to work hard to figure out how to best utilize it. Currently, I don’t have much in the way of social planned, but I am looking forward to spending Thanksgiving with my family. Well, that’s all for now until next time.

September & October 2017

September found me with a few different photo jobs, but not an overwhelming work schedule overall. In early September, I had a Saturday where in the morning I had a maternity session in the morning at Greenbelt Forest Preserve and then in the afternoon I photographed a two years old's Sesame Street themed birthday at Old School Forest Preserve. Then in the middle of the first week of September, I went to the headquarters of Premier Build + Design Group to do a few headshots. In mid-September, I cleaned up my studio space and showed off some of my latest work during ArtWauk. During that same weekend, I had a headshot photo session in downtown Waukegan for a local actor.  The next weekend found me at Salt Creek Golf Club taking photos for the 2nd Annual Kick to Cure Cancer Foot Golf Outing. The final Friday of the month of September, I photographed the wedding of Steny and Lisa at the Highland Park Community House. Then I finished up the month of September by photographing the sixteenth birthday of my friend's sister.

The month of October was much less busy in terms of photo work. In fact all of my photo work happened on a Saturday in late October. In the morning, I photographed a courthouse wedding and then did photos of the wedding party down at Waukegan Harbor. Then in the evening, I was the photographer for Waukegan to College's Oktoberfest at Bernie's Book Bank. It was actually for the better that this was how my schedule worked out since it allowed me to spend most of my time finishing up working on painting my parents' house. I celebrated completing work on the house by going down to Suwannee Hulaween.

So far things are shaping up pretty well for this month. I'm excited to see ODESZA perform at the UIC Pavillion this Saturday. Also, I'm happy that for the first time in quite a while I can focus on being a full-time photographer and have a couple events this month. First, I'll be having a show during ArtWauk at the Undercroft Gallery. Then, I'll be participating in Small Business Saturday at the Parlor. Life looks like it's on upward trend here.