PhotoAbuse – The Blog

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Saturday night was the final show of the New Lenox Concert Series for 2010 and it was a good one. Blue Oyster Cult and Kansas both sounded as good as they did back in the day. The sound was great as usual and the crowd sure seemed to enjoy the cooler weather. A very good night to listen to some great music. Kieran got to shoot his first concert and had a lot of fun. He made some really good pictures and even got to meet the bands!

I for one can’t wait to see what New Lenox has up its sleeve for next year!

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The weekend started out busy with an assignment Friday evening  to shoot the surprise homecoming gala for Captain Russell Litko in Tinley Park. A very emotional event that was attended by about 350 people. The good captain never saw this coming!

Saturday morning we headed out to Highland IN with the Northwest Indiana Meetup Group to photograph a battle re-enactment. This was a lot cooler than I thought. This was my first meetup with this group and it was a lot of fun. A good group of people for sure!

Luckily I checked my email as soon as we got back. One of my editors had an assignment to shoot a “Movies in the Park” event. The movie was Toy Story and a few of the kids were really into it!  Finished up with that and went fishing until the mosquitos tried to carry us away! Thought my picture making was done for the day until I found a Cicada on my slider right before bedtime!

Sunday we just chilled for most of the day and went fishing later on in the afternoon. Fun weekend but sort of sad. School starts this week and Kieran is heading back to his Winter Home Tuesday night. Gonna feel pretty empty around here for a few weeks.

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Geez, the Air Show was this weekend already! It seems summer just started and it’s already ending. At least it was cooler by the lake! This has been one hot summer.

We caught the train to go downtown and were pleasantly surprised to find it was an express and not the usual milk run. The train was packed though. I think a lot of folks who got on after us had to stand. Once downtown, we hopped on the el and headed north and after a quick stop at McDonalds, we headed for the beach.

We have been going to the Air Show for years and I always find it interesting in one way or another. I’m not really thrilled by the military planes but the stunt guys are pretty cool. Pretty nuts too. They do some crazy stuff.

This year however, the dragonflies caught my attention. There were hundreds of them. And they weren’t small ones either! Almost every picture Kieran and I made had a couple of them in the frame. Whenever there was a break in the action I would try making a picture of one. Not an easy task I gotta tell ya! Fun though. Then there was the kid digging a big hole in the sand. He spent a lot of time digging and when I went over to talk to him I saw that he was packing the sides so it wouldn’t collapse. Smart guy! North Avenue Beach was packed but it didn’t feel packed. If that makes sense. After the show there is usually a bigtime traffic jam at the bridge going over LSD and this year traffic slowed a little but never stopped. That was almost as nice as an express train! Read the rest of this entry »

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I went to New Lenox on Saturday night for round 2 of the 2010 New Lenox Concert Series. Once again, the place was packed and everyone seemed to be having fun. It started out pretty warm but as soon as the sun went down, things cooled off a bit.

I showed up a little later than usual this time because my editor didn’t need pictures of the first band. This is one time I’m sorry I didn’t see the whole show. The lead off band was called Probable Cause and they are a pretty darn good cover band from what I could tell. I will have to check them out in the future.

The second band up was Fastball. Good show here too. Nice paced and good musicians.

Survivor came on stage a little late but it was worth the wait. I wasn’t sure what to expect from these guys but they put on a helluva show! A whole lot of energy and some great music. The sound was great. Loud of course but it was very clear. Tip of the hat to the sound guys on that! I think that of all the shows I have shot there, Survivor got the most people on their feet. A solid show to say the least.

It was a fun night. I ended up with a lot of keepers from this night. Always a good thing.

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We haven’t made it out to Bourbannais for Bears camp yet so we decided to head up to Soldier Field to see the Bears.

Family Night turned out to be more fun than I thought it would. There was a band playing outside the stadium and quite a few vendors to check out.

We had nosebleed seats but they weren’t all that bad. Good view of the field. Watching the practice was sort of like watching paint dry from that distance though. It did get a little more interesting once they started the 7 on 7 and 11 on 11 drills though.

There was a fireworks show right after the practice. Great show. It was right on top of us! We were in the north end zone and they were launching them from right outside the stadium!

We parked in the south lot and it was total gridlock. Everyone was in good spirits ‘cept for the woman who kept laying on her horn. I thought it was just someone messing around but when she got near us you could clearly see she was dead serious on getting out of that lot. She must not get out much.

Overall, it was a good Friday night. I hope we can get down to camp so I can get some better pictures of the players. We’ll see….

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It must be something about Saturdays lately. I got bored sitting around and thought it might be nice to go out and make a few pictures of the deer near me. The other day I wrote about looking around when you are out making pictures and that couldn’t have been more true on this walk.

I hadn’t even taken my camera out of my backpack yet and I noticed something crawling on a milkweed leaf. A pretty big caterpillar! I quickly pulled out my camera and  put my trusty Sigma 50mm macro on. Then I thought to myself, “Why not use a little flash?”. I busted out an sb600 and set it to a low power via CLS and started experimenting. Once I thought I had the picture I wanted, I shot a few more frames just in case and picked up my stuff and moved on.

I hadn’t seen any deer and was starting to think it might be a short walk when I saw a thistle with a few bees on it. I pulled out my sb600 again and thought it might be fun to see if I could make a picture of them flying around. It worked out better than I thought! Next time I might bring a small umbrella though to diffuse the light a little. Again, I picked up my stuff and moved on.

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