PhotoAbuse – The Blog

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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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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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I consider myself a lucky man to  have such a cool family! I get to go to 2 great reunions every summer. Today was the Sheehan reunion.

Even though we didn’t win the egg toss this year,  I had a great time. It’s always good to see family. The weather was great and the food was plentiful. It looked like a good time was had by all.

Can’t wait til next year!

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I know I had a great time! This is always my favorite weekend of the summer. A big tip of the hat to Jim and Jeanne for their hospitality, Brett and Nick for once again whipping up some fantastic chicken, and everyone else for making this the coolest family in the world!

If you have any questions about the pictures, please don’t hesitate dropping me a line!

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Friday we ventured downtown to check out the Blackhawks Rally with a couple million of our closest friends. After the confetti settled, we meandered around the Loop for awhile in hopes of finding a McDonalds that wasn’t bursting at the seams with hungry Hawks fans.

Found one!

After lunch, we headed east to Grant Park to check out my favorite festival of the year, Bluesfest! After spending 3 1/2 hours wandering around in the heat it was nice to sit down in the park and listen to some good music. Bluesfest has always signified the beginning of summer for me. The crowd was light but it was starting to fill up a little. It was pretty early as far as Bluesfest goes. Sorta nice though compared to the rally. Couldn’t move around much at all there, that’s for sure!

I didn’t make that many pictures this year. I was more interested in people pictures for the rally and the fest this year and kept my eyes open for potentially interesting frames at each venue. Bluesfest always has an ample supply of interesting people so it’s not that tough to find a few!

We ended up staying around for only a couple of hours but it was quality time, that’s for sure!  I’m glad we stopped by on Friday. Saturday had to be a wet one.

I started uploading my pictures to Lightroom as soon as we got home. I pretty much filled 3 cards and Kieran filled 1. It was going to take a while!

Helloooooooo Summer!!!