Organization and Patience are the Keys

Recently I had the pleasure of working on a family portrait session for my friends Deanna & Kevin and their son, Nathan. When Deanna first mentioned doing a portrait at her beautiful farm in WI, I thought...sure, this will be easy. Then she mentioned she wanted not only Kevin, Nathan, and herself in the picture, but her 3 horses and Nathan riding his pony. YIKES! As a photographer I have quickly learned just how difficult it is to get ONE person and ONE horse both looking at the camera, smiling, and ears pointed forward. How in the world was I going to accomplish this with 4 horses, 2 adults, and an active energetic 6 year-old?

Let me tell you - patience. And lots and lots of patience. Did I mention patience?

I should have known that my uber-organized friend Deanna would have everything under control. When I arrived, she was putting bridles on all three horses, and had invited two friends along to help control the chaos and handle horses. She had Kevin & Nathan dressed & ready to go, and everyone marched out to the back fence of her large pasture for the photos. Deanna had thought of every detail, from bringing a towel to wipe horse noses to having one of her friends shaking a coffee can full of sugar cubes to get everyone's ears up.

Here is a fun picture of her army of helpers in action while we walked out to the pasture!



It took many many shots to get the "winner". In so many photos, there was maybe just one thing happening that would throw off the shot, or sometimes, many things at once. Let me give you a quick synapsis of what was happening in the below picture. George (far left) was about ready to bite Boo (2nd from left) while Deanna is backed up into shadow and laughing because their naughty dog ran into the picture, while Kevin is also now looking down at the errant dog, and good boy Nathan is smiling pretty for the camera.


After a lot of time and patience, the stars were finally aligned with mars and I managed to get the below image, my absolute favorite from the session!



Here are a few more of my "favs" from this fun family session! Enjoy!

Cyclocross Racing

What exactly is cyclocross racing, you ask?

Believe me, I had no idea either until I showed up, gear in tow, to cheer on my co-worker and best buddy Bryan as he competed this past Sunday. The race was at a park in St. Charles, IL and the competitors couldn't have asked for a more beautiful, sunny day! I actually wondered how the race organizers would handle the fact that the horrendous rains all week had turned grass to mush and created mud pits everywhere you went - then I arrived at the race and realized that rain and mud was their objective - these competitors are nuts!
A quick synopsis from a spectator point of view would be that the race consists of a large group of crazy men and women, who enjoy sloshing through the mud, riding up hills, through ravines, hairpin turns, and getting off their bikes to carry them over barriers and jumps.

I'm not kidding. They spend almost as much time carrying their bikes as they do riding them! I watched with much amusement as many people ended up at some point during the get off the bike, pick up the bike, heft the bike over the jump, put the bike down, get back on the bike, pedal away section of the race would end up making some type of critical calculation error and end up dropping their bike, falling off, tripping on a jump, falling in the mud...
The really great part was to see how relaxed this competition was. Don't get me wrong - people were out to win - but they were also out to have a good time while doing it. Cheering sections had banners, horns, flags, and yes - cow bells! People even hang over the race barriers offering the competitors things as they ride by - I watched someone try to hand off a severed leg (don't forget, this was the day after Halloween), water, cookies...you name it. Mandy of the competitors were in costumes, too - I'm not sure if that was just for Halloween, or if that is a normal occurrence at these races (I wouldn't doubt that it is not limited just to Halloween).
All in all, I had a great time tracking Bryan as he worked hard to remain in the front line of the race and not fall on his butt while running and carrying his bike. Some of the expressions in some of the pictures are just priceless! I was proud of Bryan for hanging tough and coming in a very respectable 6th place, and hope he continues to do as well or better next time out!
View a slideshow of more fun pictures from the race here:
Bryan's Bike Race Slideshow