A little back story… In September of 2008, I met Stephanie. She has been my one and only friend here in Illinois. Sad. I know. I guess I’m super picky about my friends, but the friends I do make end up being life long friends. You see, I had a really hard time making friends. Aside from everyone being intimidated by me (ALL of my friends have said they were intimidated by me at first… I don’t know why… hahah) everyone I worked with was at least 10+ years older than me, and everyone I went to school with were all at least 5+ years younger than me. On Friday night, I worried about where my husband and I were going to eat for dinner. Everyone I went to school with was concerned about which party they were going to and what drugs or alcohol were going to be there… Columbia is an art school… A private art school. Naturally, the majority of the students don’t believe in responsibility, they’re usually stoners, they have parents who are paying their ungodly tuition bill, etc. It would make me SOOO angry that I would work four 10 hour days so I could have one day at school during the week. I’d show up on time, have all of my work done, participate in class, and work my butt off for a good grade, yet many of my classmates would just not show up to class or when they would they would be late, texting on their cell phones, sleeping, projects and homework weren’t done, etc and they’d get the same final grade as me. Needless to say when Stephanie approached me and started talking to me and I learned that she wasn’t like the majority, we became really good friends really fast.

Going back to my 101 in 1001… One of my objectives was to take public transportation to the city and spend a day in the city taking pictures by myself. Well, I sorta had to modify that but I was still happy with what I did. I had plans yesterday to hang out with Stephanie in her new city apartment at 1. I woke up around 10:30 and got a call from Colby asking if I wanted to have lunch with him at Moody. I said sure, so I hurried to put my make up on, tend to the dogs, and drive out to the city to meet him for lunch. After lunch I did take public transportation to Stephanie’s apartment and took some photos. We went to a bakery to get her a cannoli. We went back to her apartment and then Colby joined us a little later when he got off of work. We then went to Thai Spoon for dinner, all the while taking photos. After dinner we walked Stephanie back to her apartment. We decided not to say our final goodbyes there and to try to hang out one more time before I leave but Stephanie got teary, which in turn choked me up a bit. She’s meant so much to me over these last, almost, 2 years.

Stef-I don’t even know how to begin to describe how much you’ve meant to me over this last, almost, 2 years. I was hugely surprised to find someone like you at Columbia, much less a girl as small as you downing a foot long meatball sub at Subway! lol! I will NEVER forget that! Aside from the funny and fun times, you’ve helped me get through a lot in these last couple of years. You  believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. We’ve had some excellent conversations about so many things and you are one person that I really feel “gets” me. You’re an amazing friend and I so wish I could take you to Florida with me, or move all of my Florida peeps up here, but let’s face it… My Florida peeps wouldn’t survive in this climate! lol!! BUT! You always have a place to stay in Florida and we are definitely going to have to go fishing if you get to come visit and we will do what we can to try to catch you a sword fish! Maybe two! lol!

So while I was in the city yesterday, I did take a few photos I wanted to post for my new Chicago fine art collection below.

Here are some of my regular photos.

Remember the movie The Notebook? Their story is very much like that story. That movie made me cry. It was one of the sweetest love stories I’ve ever heard, at least until I heard Molly and Pops’ love story. As he spoke about how much he loved her, I could see in his eyes that he still looked at her as though they were falling in love in third grade all over again. Every morning, he changes her sheets, spends time with her, eats breakfast with her, and cares for her the way no one else can.

Molly is a very lucky lady. It’s hard to find a man that stays by your side and loves you no matter what happens, who’s faithful to you even when you don’t remember him, and who spends every day with you, even when you’re not at home. He recalled several stories of how so many of the folks there don’t have people who regularly visit and how many of the male spouses have already moved on to someone else. Not Pops, though. He adores Molly. I think she adores him too. Here are some photos from the visit.

Colby reluctantly drove us to Indiana to pick up male #3. Yup. That’s right. He was known as Male #3. I had already decided I wanted to name him Bentley. Jerry had given in and decided to get Male #1 and name him Tyson. We met at a McDonald’s parking lot (because the breeders drove up from Kentucky). They were the size of a hamster. So tiny and cute! We made the exchange and were on our way back to Chicago. Both Tyson and Bentley slept together most of the way. I remember pulling up to Jerry’s condo and handing Tyson over wondering if the brothers would ever see each other again. And, well, they haven’t… because Bentley tries to kill other dogs… He’s not tough, but he thinks he is.

Over the last 3 years, he’s turned into the cutest little boy EVER. He has such a great personality and cute mannerisms that keep us cracking up daily. I think his little voice is the cutest. Yes, he is somewhat spastic and has little dog syndrome, but I’ve learned to love it. All of it. So, happy birthday Bentley! Momma loves you little boy!

These are for sale on my fine art website. To visit and view my fine art work click here. To purchase one of the camera paintings directly, click here.

Jen Shannon Photography, Fine Art

So… For the most part, Colby is usually who plans our trips. This time, I planned our trip, but when we got to the parking area for Cowles Bog, Colby found a map and misinterpreted where the trail actually started. Needless to say, we went way off in the wrong direction, though there was a clearly defined dirt trail… It was all good, though. I got some great pictures out of it! Anyway… So once we realized there was no more trail, we got our iPhones out and started trying to find our way with the GPS. We tracked back to the first fork in the road we saw, stopped to give the dogs some water, and then headed down the trail that we thought we should go down. Long story short, it, too, was the wrong trail, but I made it work. We made it to the beach and after all was said and done, we walked on a road back to the parking lot where we saw the sign for the actual Cowles Bog trail. Yeah… we suck.

So anyway, we didn’t see any dunes or anything cool like that, but we climbed up this one crazy incline (which probably was a dune, but not the beach dunes we were hoping for) that had the loosest sand ever and was incredible steep. My legs were like Jello. I had Riley lead the way. Thanks to his nature of pulling (that’s what Malamutes are bread for) he assisted in getting me up the hill, though he slipped a couple of times…

We got to the Dunes Beach and it was desolate. No one was there. It was pretty amazing. The fog was really bad, though the forecast said it would be sunny. It made for some pretty sweet pictures because the fog looked just like Lake Michigan. We let Jayda off of the leash and she had a blast. It’s hilarious. When she was younger and we lived in Florida I would take her to the beach and she’d bite at the waves as though they were a toy. She hasn’t been to Lake Michigan in over 3 years and I didn’t think she’d remember they were a toy, but I was wrong. She had a blast biting and pouncing on the waves! Riley enjoyed it on the leash and Bentley, well, he was scared of it. He watched from afar! haha!

Overall we had a great time! We’re planning to go back next weekend, only this time, we’re going to Mount Baldy. Maybe we will try Cowles Bog again but in reality, where the actual trail would have taken us wasn’t that far away from the beach we ended up at, and even though we couldn’t see very far because of the fog, I’m not sure it looked that much different…

After we came home, we washed the car, inside and out (it was well in need of it) and we bathed the dogs. We found a couple of ticks on Bentley. Then we took showers. When I was in the shower, I went to wash my back and felt a lump that I quickly freaked out and threw off of my back. Turned out that it was a tick too. I was so grossed out… I was completely covered almost all of the trip (except at the beach where I took my sweater off) so my theory is it was one of the ones I took off of Bentley and it was angry about it, so it found it’s way out of the napkin I had picked it off of Bentley with and it found it’s way to my back. Gross…

Here are the photos. I just love the fog. I was pretty disappointed at first because the sun wasn’t out, but the fog just looked amazing.

Jen Shannon Photography

It was very inspiring to hear the stories of where everyone started. From corporate executives to current interns, INROADS has done a tremendous job in helping to shape diversity in the corporate world. I was very honored to be documenting such a milestone in the company’s history. I had a fabulous time! Here are some photos from the evening.

I wanted to start with a collage of some of the attendees as each shared their current positions in the corporate world.

Jen Shannon Photography

Jen Shannon Photography

Here’s Monty

From time to time, we have clients bring in their cats to be photographed. As you can imagine, this doesn’t usually go over very well… At all, actually. The training room that they give us to set up and do the photos in smells like dog, so automatically, cats typically don’t like the smell, but not Saturday. Nope. Saturday we had the most awesome cat in the world (which restored my faith that cats can be good) come in to get photographed. The cat’s name was Maverick and is a bengal!  It was the most beautiful cat I’d ever seen. Here are a couple of favs.

All in all, we had such an awesome time. Saturday was pretty slow but Sunday was pretty much non stop. I’m so thankful to all of the pet owners who bring their sweet animals by to be photographed and to PetSmart for inviting us back, again, to be a part of their Adoption weekend. And, of course, $2 from each session went back to PetSmart charities.

FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS: Here is our set up, in case you are interested.

We also had my friend, Stephanie, intern with us on Saturday. I hope to some day be able to pass the PetSmart legacy on to her for after we move!

Jen Shannon Photography

Below is a list of business’ from the cards I collected.

GSS, Inc

Down Under Endeavours

SuperMedia

Eclectik Design, LLC

Renee’s Raw Chocolate

Janelle Jansen Lake-Harpist

Karen Joy Handcrafted Jewelry

Rain Nutrition (one of my favs!)

NeatlySimple

The Anti-Cruelty Society (I truly believe in what this organization does)

Red Carpet Concierge

Enid Kent of Mary Kay

AMC Accounting Solutions

Neumann Family Services

Crescendo Apparel

The Body Work & Massage Source

CDM Software Solutions

Chicago Cosmetic Surgery and Dermatology

Jen Shannon Photography

So a little about this outing. Today is an incredibly windy day. My boss let us off early today and Colby was off of work today so we decided to spend an hour shooting and come back home so I could work on photos while he worked on his resume. The first few photos of the chicken/horse barn I’ve been wanting to take photos of for awhile. A couple of years ago when I was in my photo 2 class (color film) I went out there and shot it and just never went back. It’s literally a 30 second drive from our house. It was hard to hold the camera steady with the winds gusting at 50+ miles an hour but it’s 80 outside today (unheard of for April) so it wasn’t cold. That was nice! We drove a little further down the county road and made stops along the way for me to take pictures. I like to think that Colby and I are a little photo mob and I do the dirty work while he drives the getaway car. The problem with going to these run down places is that you never know what you’re walking up to. You don’t know if someone owns the property and is watching you from a distance, if you’re walking up to an abandoned barn full of crack addicts, etc. So we sorta have to use our best judgement. It’s a bit thrilling though, which is always fun! I like a good thrill! Enjoy the photos!

Jen Shannon Photography, St. Augustine Wedding Photographer