Wanderlust

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of heading down to Champaign to photograph an engagement session with Brooke and Jared, new clients of mine that went to school at the University of Illinois. I got there early to scout a few locations and decided on the U of I Arboretum for most of the shooting. It was a really windy day but luckily the sun came out and I was blessed with some great light and shadows. They were so wonderful to work with and I can’t wait to see them again for their wedding in July!

I just got back from an amazing weekend at the IPPA photo conference in St. Louis. I am feeling more inspired, excited and enthusiastic than I have felt in awhile and I can’t wait to get back to work and start on some new projects. I just want to personally thank everyone who came and supported the organization and to everyone for all of their hard work. Speaker Erik Lunsford made us all laugh with his stories and taught us the importance of learning to “verticalize” our pictures, Liz Baylen touched and inspired us with her amazing multimedia work, David Eulitt shared some amazing portrait and personal work and made us all want to run out and buy a Diana camera and Josh Meltzer showed us how to be “content aware” and shared his work from Guadalajara, Mexico. If you missed anything, the contest and speaker presentations are all online on the IPPA website.

It was a fantastic experience and I don’t think anyone could possibly forget Chris Sweda’s hilarious photo of a monkey riding a dog…

I didn’t take many photos over the weekend but here’s one I really like of John L. White mimicking Lewis Hine’s iconic powerhouse mechanic photograph at the City Museum yesterday. Keep in Flight!

Spent the better part of yesterday in Champaign scouting and shooting an engagement session for a couple whose wedding I will be shooting in July. (I’ll post those photos once I’m done editing!) I had an hour or two to kill so I wandered around the University of Illinois campus with my friend Adam. We came across this amazing bell tower and I couldn’t help but make some portraits.

In an effort to get better at my portraits, I have been breaking out my Speedlites and having some fun. I’ve gotten so used to shooting everything with natural light that I thought it might be a nice experiment. The first is a self portrait I did with a bare 580 EXII on the right.

Luckily I convinced a friend to step in for a couple of photos as well. The first is my mock “Corona ad” which I also did with my 580 EXII bare and the second is shot with a beauty dish over the strobe.

Thanks for looking!

I recently took a little vacation to Toronto for the New Year. It was great to get out of Chicago and be a tourist for awhile. Spent most of my time downtown wandering but did get a chance to make it to Niagra Falls and see the insanely great Honest Ed’s, a local discount shop that has everything you could want and more. Here are some of my favorites from the trip!

I was recently asked to photograph 11-day-old Tuesday for a local family in Chicago. I was so honored to document this young family and spend some time making photographs. I decided to shoot with all natural light and luckily they had a great window where spent most of our time. I was really excited about how the images turned out and congratulations to Heidi and Joe on their beautiful new daughter!

Looking for a feature the other day and I decided to stop at the Leaning Tower of Niles and make a few pictures. I love these quirky, American landmarks and I’m inspired to make a map of them and have a little road trip fun.

Back in August I had the pleasure of photographing a local pregnant mother for a feature the paper was doing called Oak Park: Our home, our lives, our stories. Each of us found a few people to interview and photograph and everything was put together as a separate paper full of the stories. I met Lisa and her son Jackson who were both really wonderful.

I just got back in touch with her to catch up and meet the new baby Sam. I spent an hour or two hanging out with Jackson and the rest of the family and made some portraits at their house. It was such a wonderful surprise to see one of the photographs I had taken earlier framed in their house. How great!