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.

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.

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.

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.

Larsen Family | 2019

The annual family portrait session with the Larsens happened the last weekend of September. Just a few days before we were unsure if we would have to reschedule since there was rain in the forecast for that day. Luckily for us the weather held off and we managed to have their session as scheduled. It so cool getting to photograph the Larsen family year after year and seeing first hand how much the kids, Kitty and Rocky, have changed. Also, I was happy that we had this session at Roosevelt Park since I wanted to have one there for quite awhile.

Ryan & Billy | Wedding

To date, Ryan and Billy’s wedding in September is the furthest I’ve traveled to do photography. Their wedding happened at Brighton Acres in Oshkosh, WI. I was really hoping that we would get a chance to explore the grounds a bit more, however, we decided it was best to stay inside for photos since it was a very blustery outside. If you look at the full gallery, you may notice hints of Disney in some of the details. The reason for this is because they are big Disney fans and they even met while they were in the Disney College Program.