December 2019

Here we are in the back half of the month of January and I’m just now writing a blog post about the month of December. I figure that even though this might not quite be the ideal time for my post about last month, I’ll do it anyway since I’m finally mostly caught up on work. I would say that the month of December ended up being a decent blend in regards to my business and personal life.

On the business side of things I started the month off with a few familiar faces as I had an outdoor session with the Deininger family. Also early in December, I worked for the Association of Music Partners at Waukegan High School in order to provide posed photos for the high school students at their concerts. Then later in the month, I had another photo shoot with my nephew, Gabriel. My final bit of work for the month of January was an engagement session with my buddy, Raul, and his fiancé, Frances. I’ll most likely be posting about that session tomorrow so be on the look out for that.

Meanwhile on the personal side of things, the month of December provided a good mixture of friends and family. Yet again I got together for breakfast with my buddy from middle school, Tomasz. Also, I had a lot of fun going to a party for my friend’s birthday. My friend, Dee, rented out a very cool loft space and then had some of her D.J. friends perform. It was a ton of fun between the music and getting to hang out with friends that I hadn’t hung out with in awhile. My final bit of social closed out the year as I went to the Chop Shop on New Year’s Eve to see Russ Liquid, Marvel Years, and Artifakts. I went alone because it was a solid lineup and then ended up being surprised when I ran into some friends of mine at the show.

Of course the month of December isn’t quite complete without spending some time with family. This is especially the case in my family since in addition to the holidays, we have quite a few birthdays. My dad, mum and myself all have birthdays near the end of the month of December. For Christmas, most of our family comes together on Christmas Eve. In recent years, my mum has invited most of siblings along with their children to come over in the afternoon on Christmas Eve to decorate gingerbread cookies. Then in the evening we have chili for dinner and then do our family gift exchange. Then on the actual Christmas day, Christmas is pretty calm at my parents’ place with it being just my parents, my 2 siblings that were in town, and myself. The last few years, we’ve even shifted from an elaborate, traditional Christmas meal to lasagna instead.

Gabriel

If you’re friends with me on Facebook, you might recognize my nephew, Gabriel, from my “Family and Friends Friday” project that I work on sporadically. Back in September last year, I had a portrait session with him. I guess I must have done an alright job because he contacted me about doing a shoot over his winter break. Originally we thought about trying for an indoor location for this shoot. However, the weather on this particular day was so nice that I felt like we’d be foolish to pass it up. Plus, I had some locations in downtown Waukegan that I thought would make for a good backdrop in his photos.

Deininger Family | Winter 2019

This was my second time photographing the Deininger family and both times it has been around the same time of year in early December. Originally we had planned on having this session in late November, but the weather was not looking particularly good for the date we initially planned. It ended up being a case where once again the beginning of December was the time that worked best for everyone. The last time I had a family session with them, I remember it being unseasonably warm for that time of year and I’m sure we were all hoping to be as lucky once again. While we weren’t quite that fortunate, we go weather that was good enough to be comfortable outside and get some great photos.

Adylie & Avery | Holiday Mini Session 2019

When I decided to try out the whole holiday mini session craze, I reached out to my siblings to see if their kids could be my models. I was happy that my sister, Abby, and I found a time that worked I got to photograph my darling nieces, Adylie and Avery, and put my holiday setups to work. Originally I was thinking we’d spend most our time using the fireplace set. However, we spent the majority of the time on the wintery setup and even hand the opportunity to have a indoor snowball fight with Avery.

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.

November 2019

I did not make as much progress during November as I would have liked. However, I’ll count my progress this month as a victory anyway. I headed into the month looking forward to doing quite a bit of photography with a couple outdoor sessions scheduled early in the month and finishing the month out with a Saturday filled with holiday mini sessions. It was a little disappointing when it didn’t work as planned. My one of my outdoor sessions ended up getting rescheduled due to the weather and the other was cancelled due to an illness in their family.

Meanwhile despite my effort to make 2 very cool sets for my holiday mini session, I did not receive much interest in booking a session with me. Granted I think since my holiday setups didn’t get much use this year, I don’t feel too bad about running back the same set up next year. I mean this year so far this year they’ve been used sparingly with only one paid session on Small Business Saturday. My other bit of paid work during this month was doing event photography for Faith in Place’s Annual Luncheon and Fundraiser.

This month was interesting since I reconnected with a couple people that' I have not seen or talked to in quite awhile. The first person that I was surprised to reconnect with was Tomasz Plonowski. Tomasz and I had been friends in middle school before he moved with his family to Poland when we were in the 8th grade. His family moved back to the area about a year later, but they settled down a town over in Gurnee and really never got in touch with each other. I’m pretty sure there was a time during a college break where I got together along with another friend from middle school. So prior to going out for breakfast with Tomasz at Denny’s, it had probably been at least 10 years since we last hung out. So you better believe we had a lot of catching up to do.

The other person I was surprised to run into was Daniel Bressler. I know him from our time in college as members of the same fraternity, Pi Kappa Phi. I actually ran into him while I was at the local Walmart buying decorations for my holiday mini sessions. Meanwhile, he is currently working seasonally for Nintendo so he was there that day helping to setup a display at the store. I really just happened to be wandering the store at the right time to run into him. We talked for a little while and made plans to get together at some point in the new year.

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.