Spent three hours shooting one of our 2014 Senior Spokesmodels yesterday evening.  We used two familiar and popular places before heading down to the West Bottoms, a grungy and eclectic district that is made up of rail yards, old factories and junk/flea market type shops. Our spokesmodel had a pink prom dress that I wanted to photograph in a rundown, grungy area.  We shot her on a loading dock with a green door behind her and then moved her to an open, somewhat trashy lot and photographed her with surrounding buildings and some of the Kansas City skyline in the background.  On camera, the images looked fantastic and I hope they look as great when we pull them up on the computer and begin editing them.

We also shot at Kaufmann Memorial Garden again.  It's quite beautiful with the many varieties of tulips blooming right now.  Here is a panorama I shot with my iPhone the other day.  Click for larger view.

We had a great day here yesterday for on location photography.  Weather was mid 70's with a slight breeze and we spent nearly three hours at a couple different locations shooting.  We have another shoot this evening and it's a bit warmer today.  We'll be going through a lot of photos the balance of the week as well as finishing up our packing for vacation.  We're only four days away from some sunny skies, warm (even hot) temperatures and some amazing scenic views.  Looks like Congress did what Obama could have done himself and now the air traffic controllers are no longer furloughed so our flights should run on time.  

I created a video last night that features our studio's new Signature Album collection.  It features one of our recent seniors and Jodi did all of the design work.  We have the album as a sample for the studio and the clients who have seen them so far absolutely love them.  We expect them to be big sellers this year.  Here's the video I created.  Click on the word "Vimeo" in the lower right hand corner and you can view it on a larger scale. 

Yesterday evening, we had a senior session with our first client from Kansas.  They found us via a Google search so the SEO work I've done on the website is paying off.  We spent over an hour in our studio and this senior was a little bit of a challenge.  Her mother told us she really didn't want to do this and she was stiff and nervous as well.  It took some time to get the right shots and timing her best smile was key to getting a natural look.  Her sister is a junior and wants to be one of our Spokesmodels.  Apparently she is very enthusiastic about getting her senior portraits done and is excited to share our company with her classmates. 

A thought on Boston:

I wonder if Bostonians are now OK with a massive police presence, door to door searches without consent and basically the inability to leave their homes while a terrorist runs loose, all in the name of their personal safety.  I can tell you that I would not be.  I don't understand why the police feel they can search your home without consent as they did there.  I can tell you that is a terrorist had come into my home, they would have found him rather easily as he would be dead and I would have dragged him to the street and put him in the gutter where he belongs so that they could come collect him. 

I know that this will come as a shock but these terrorists did not have licenses for the guns they used in their spree.  What?  You mean to tell me that these criminals didn't abide by the State laws in palce?  No! That cannot be!  You mean criminals don't obey our laws?  But we need more laws, the Liberals and victims of violence tell us that is all we need to make our nation safer.  Enough sarcasm.  Once again, it is proven that new laws won't do crap. 

Back from a three day trip to St. Louis.  Unfortyunately, the Cougars were swept this weekend so the baseball side of it was not good.  On the other hand, we got to spend some time with both JD and Kyle, I got to see my my brother Dennis for a while and I spent a good deal of time with my mother.  I also went to the shooting range with my friend Chris and ran some lead through my Glock 19. 

Not much time today so let's go with one of my famous "Photo Fun Days".

My prayers go out to the victim's of yesterday's horrible event.  It's hard to believe that this kind of thing can take place on our own streets but there is no guarantee of safety.  I understand that and am fine with that because I would much rather live in dangerous freedom than safe slavery.

I am sure that with our current administration in place, this event will bring forward new policy's or even laws that will take away some of our personal freedoms.  Our own President can't even bring himself to use the word "terrorism".  Just like they use the term "enemy combatant, rather than Muslim Extremist" or "Muslim Terrorist".  Our leadership is hardly what I would call leadership.  We have a President who does nothing for our country but try to address social issues.  There are no jobs, there is no robust economy and we are $16 TRILLION in debt headed to $22 TRILLION in the next 3 years or so.  Instead, the focus is on gay marriage, creating amnesty for illegal immigrants and gun control.  Apparently these are far more important issues than jobs and debt.  But at least our President and his family are well rested after all of the vacations they've taken.  Who knows, maybe Jay Z and Beyonce will be visiting again soon.  Who could go for another concert at the White House?

Well, JD's start did not go as we all had wished.  It appeared he struggled locating his fastball and that will always make things difficult.  I haven't had a chance to talk with him to see how his arm was feeling or if there was something else going on but it's behind him now and hopefully he has better results the next time out.

We were suppose to finish up a client's senior portrait session yesterday but the park they wanted to use has not colored up yet so we've postponed it for two weeks.  They did come by and looked at their images from the indoor session and selected the images to use for the graduation announcmeents and grad party cards. 

Our bride and groom also came by to make their selections for their large portraits and their album.  The bride has been dealing with some health issues related to her pregnancy and they are finally getting around to selecting their pictures.  Jodi is designing them a custom album that I know they are going to be thrilled with.

The banners we did for the high school baseball team are to be ready today.  I plan on delivering them this afternoon so they can be displayed for today's game if they get it in.  It's raining here this morning and it rained some last night as well so they may not get to play. 

We're looking forward to our trip to St. Louis this weekend.  We're coming back mostly to watch JD's team play and his girlfriend, Megan, will be coming with us.  Megan has begun to work with us in our business in the role of social marketing.  She is using Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram to help promote our business.  Combined with the launching of our new website in the next week, we hope our marketing plan really takes off and drives a lot of new business our way.   

JD will be pitching tomorrow at Belmont.  You can watch the game live by going to the following link, scrolling down to the game listing on the schedule and then clicking "video".  Game starts at 1pm.  

http://siuecougars.com/sports/m-basebl/2012-13/schedule 

JD has been named the starting pitcher for this Sunday's game against conference leader Belmont University.  The series is in the Nashville area.  Game time is 1pm and I believe the game will be available both on the internet and audio, via SIUE radio.  Here is a link to the article naming JD the starter.  http://siuecougars.com/sports/m-basebl/2012-13/releases/20130411oj931s

With JD's arm injury, I haven't had much to report this season. However, he's slowly making a comeback and last night he came in for three innings of relief, struck out 5 and held the hot hitting St. Louis University baseball team scoreless. Unfortunately they were already down 7-5 when he came in and that wound up being the final but it was a great outing for him after being on the shelf for some time now. He's still not 100% but we can only hope he continues to get better. Here's the writeup on last night's game.  SIUE COUGARS BASEBALL

Head over to our website and check out the images from our recent studio session with Katie.  I love the dance photo and I expect to see that ordered as a very large print.  Katie's Photos on our blog

The last two days have been pretty busy as we've been busy with work related to our business.  On Friday, we met with our new Liberty High Senior Spokesmodel, Ashley, who will graduate in 2014.  She will be helping us market our business to her fellow classmates in an effort to earn print credits and cool prizes.

Later on Friday, we did a studio session with Jessica, a friend of JD's, who will be graduating this year.  Jessica is a dancer so we did some creative shots of her doing dance moves along with more traditional poses.  I will post a few pics from here session here as Jodi gets them processed.

Yesterday morning, I took photos of the Liberty North baseball team seniors.  The team contacted us about doing banners for the seniors like we did last year.  The coach also asked if I'd stay and get some action shots during their game to use on the school team website, which I gladly did.  It was fun to do some sports again I I got some great shots, including a home run swing of JD's former team mate, Zach.

Our photo lab just launched their Signature Album line and offered a sample album to us at a steep discount so that we could have one to show our clients here at our studio.  Jodi designed an album and we submitted the order earlier last week.  It is scheduled to be delivered tomorrow and we are excited to see it.  It should be a very popular item with our clients. 

I've been working on an entirely new website and I was able to do a small amount of work on it yesterday to get it closer to what I want it to look like.  I always seem to have way too many irons in the fire and learning all of these things that I want to be able to do is quite difficult at times.  Although I have always liked learning and have put in much effort to do so in the things I'm interested in, the website work proves to be the most challenging to me, therefore it's a slow process.  I hope to have it where I want it in about two weeks.

I'll leave you with a photo of my new recreational vehicle, when I hit the lottery.

With airline tickets booked, it is official.  We are taking our first real vacation is 18 years.  ALl of our travel has been primarily for Justin's baseball.  We've been to Atlanta, Chicago, Cooperstown, NY,  Memphis, Southaven, MS, etc.., but haven't traveled just to travel and get away. That all changes next month.  We're going to Phoenix and San Diego for 8 days and I'm honestly looking forward to it.  I'm a homebody but I'm looking forward to seeing the Grand Canyon again, a ghost town or two, and the drive through the desert through Palm Springs and into San Diego.  We're told the drive is very scenic once you get into California so I'm sure we'll be stopping a lot to take photos. 

Jodi and I really enjoyed our Easter visit to St. Louis.  I was able to get a little shooting in with my brother and friends prior to the rain coming in on Saturday.  Sunday wound up being abeautiful day and I enjoyed being with family.  Fun to have the little ones around and seeing Kyle and Justin while we were there.

It looks like Kyle will be quite busy with the upcoming construction projects.  One job is building a fertilizer plant and could last 3-6 years.  It will be good for him to have steady work as an apprentice and complete the program.

We're getting ready to make over our photography website.  I think it's going to be pretty awesome and a little more hip and trendy than our current site.  Business is picking up again as Spring is here and warmer weather has people thinking about photos again.