Nothing like kids in costumes

These are from a costume parade I was taking pictures at last night (Wed. Oct 25)...thought there were cute and posted them (love the twins!)

Smaller Digi Cams = Bigger Instruction Manuels

A Shot I took for a color photography class were we had to develop a single concept, mine was the constrast between a real smal digital camera (this thing was tiny, thanks Brian for letting me borrow it) and all the books I could hold about digital photography.

"Magazine-ish"

In college some of our assignments (definitely some of favorite ones) were to "recreate" what would look an ad for a certain business or magazine. Below are 3 of my favorite (Rolling Stone cover, GAP ad, and cosmetic ad), enjoy and please feel free to comment.
PS - Thanks to my models "Metal" Mike and "Sexy Guy" Jonas...and the 2 large bags of Skittles

Disaster Drill

The annual disaster drill was held for Kankakee County over the weekend (October 21) and the photographers got to go all day and take pictures at each of the locations. The scenerio was that a tornado had ripped through Kankakee County, injuring and killing over 100-200 people that were gathered at an event that just happened to be in the way of the tornado.

Ambulances transported over a 100 people to the hospital I was "stationed" at (Riverside Hosital) and then I attended a huge press conference later in the day, followed by taking pictures of the "dead/injured victims" eating lunch and hanging out later. The drill was to prepare hositals and the city in case of a real emergency, and was pretty much a "photo playground" for us photographers (slideshow will be up later next week at daily-journal/multimedia.com)

New York, New York

These are pictures I took a few summer ago in New York City
(From: "War of the Worlds" Premiere, downtown NYC, and Ground Zero)

Wait a moment

Waiting for the moment...these are some of my favorite recent shots where I caught the moment I was waiting for

Fairy Tale is only a sunset away

These portraits were taken 2 years ago for my color photography class with Theresa Hernandez at Kent State - the project was to come up with a color concept and I chose "Fairy Tales" using "grown-up" models...I have another great one of my "prince" model which I'll find and post soon. Thanks again to Anya (Cinderella), Sarah (Snow White), and Andrew (Prince Charming)!

Columns from the "Old School"

The Corinthian columns from the former Eastern Illinois Trust and Savings Bank building, which was built in 1905 and was located in Kankakee, had been saved when the building was destroyed in the 1960s. The columns had been donated to the museum's artifact collection and were being stored and now are on display outside in the Column Garden at the Kankakee Historical museum. There were also historic bells, bences, flowers and a millstone placed in the garden that took over two years to create.

Rubbed the Right Way

Linda Estes (in the background), Caretech at Riverside Hospital volunteers her day to give free foot massages as Judith DuFresne, massage therapist for the Riverside Health center at the Riverside Medical Care gives Ethel Cole of Manteno a free mini-massage at the ACHIEVE women's health expo at the Riverside Bourbonnais Medical Plaza on Saturday afternoon, October 7. ACHIEVE, the largest women's health event ever staged by Riverside Hospital.

From This Day Forward...

These photographs are from two different weddings I photographed over the summer of '06 (Jen and Joe, and Ricci and Joe)...I'll be adding some more weddings pictures in the next few days, because I truly love photographing weddings (with my assistant Laura) and I take great pride in being able to capture the moments you see below:

Tilts, Twirls and just Hanging On

From left, J.J. Witherow,12, of Manteno, T.J. Christensen,12, of Manteno and R.J. Jackson,12, of Manteno ride one of the many rides that went straight up in the air while going in a complete circle around at the Manteno Oktoberfest in Manteno,Illinois on Saturday afternoon, September 23.

Max Aicher,8, of Manteno is over 20 feet in the air walking the ropes on the "Fear Factory" rope climbing and rope walking activity at the Manteno Oktoberfest in Manteno. (Picture Above)

(Picture Below) Aaron Ewerdt of Waupun, Wisconsin does his 14th rep on the 495 pound weights as the audience cheers him on at the Manteno Oktoberfest.

Emily Schieren, 9, of Manteno and Jessica Mueller,9, of Manteno enjoy the Tilt-A-Whirl at the Manteno Oktoberfest in Manteno.

Autumn evening falls on Illinois

The picture above was taken in the backyard of one of the newly restored Frank Lloyd Wright homes here in Kankakee (yes, this is what their backyard looks like)

The picture below was to my left on a main street in Kankakee, at the next red light I stopped, rolled down my window and stuck out my camera and took about 10 frames at pretty low shutter speed, I love the blue and the tree that is already bare in late September.