This is the photography blog of Nancy Barker, professional photographer. The blog is a combination of portraits, family and other personal interests.
Nancy is the owner of NmB Photography in Freeport, IL. Many other examples of my work may be found on my Flickr site and the Highland Community College website.
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Things were “moving” along this morning when I stopped on my way to work. More of our parking lot (we’ve lost 50+ spots) is getting dug up and dumped on the north grass. This is the location for the new sanctuary. The company we are working with is Brown Church Development Group – they ONLY build churches.
I’m going to try and photograph the progress of our church addition every day that I’m in town.
Yesterday, all I saw at the church to indicate something was about to begin with our construction project, were the little “do not dig here” orange flags. But today, Tom notified us that there was a steam roller in the parking lot. Glad he told me what it was because I have a hard time knowing what to call these pieces of heavy equipment. I’ve been driving by every day since Sunday anxiously waiting for the opportunity to photograph our progress.
My earlier post totally left out any updates about Molly’s boys: Jason, Nic and Mark. Jason is now thirteen and finally recovered from last year’s broken ankle. He’s getting older, filling out and doesn’t look like he walks on a pair of tooth picks. He did basketball and track this spring despite his ankle still being weak and swollen. His current passion is shooting the air-soft guns. Nic is learning his fourth instrument; the saxaphone. First, there was guitar, piano and the viola. I was entertained by a private piano concert with even some beautiful, original music created by him. He also plays lacrosse but states that when he grows up he’s planning to be the CEO of his own company. But he’s SO musical – we will see. Then, there’s Mark who is super busy trying to coach teams for the boys while travelling for work.
We finally got to meet our newest grand pet (not counting the two chickens in Iowa City) and Jim tells me I exclaimed how cute Lucy was a few too many times. I didn’t like her chewing on my Ron Jon flip-flops or those oh, so sharp puppy teeth but other than that, she’s a sweetie. She was really well behaved when we took her to Nic’s Lacrosse game never barking and being gentle with other puppies. She does chase Nellie, the cat, but that’s what dogs do, right? Our own Bogie was scratched by a cat at the kennel when we were picking him up last night drawing blood and totally hurting the feelings of our exhausted Wire Fox Terrier. Lucy’s Mom is a Puggle (pug and beagle) and has a Yorkie dad so she currently weighs in at only seven pounds. Makes it easy to scoop her up and get frequent wet, puppy kisses.
Teresa Williams and I had a great time watching the progress of the installation of my photography last Monday. It was finally happening!! It proved to be quite a time-consuming job but we are SO happy about how they look and the great job that Gitz-Meier did with the installation. Teresa was so easy to work with on this project – I hope we get to do it again soon.
I have not been blessed with very many newborns to photograph yet so I was thrilled when Sarah and I found each other on Craig’s List. We did maternity photos for Sarah first and then, last Friday, I met this little sugar-plum. She sure wasn’t sleepy (most kids are not when they come to my studio) but we still managed these beautiful images.
This is the best view I got after Howard Norman landed his plane and we returned to church for the rest of our celebration. Park Hills broke ground for a new addition and my job was to take aerial shots of the crowd. I’m so sorry we both missed seeing Mark Balmer’s grinning face as he drove this bulldozer around from the south end of the church to replace the people digging with hand shovels. You can see more photos in this slideshow. Howard and I were in the air for over an hour and I was feeling VERY queasy by the time the crowd finally appeared so I wasn’t able to stick it out much longer. I’m surprised at how sharp the photos appear since the brisk breeze caused for a great deal of bouncing around – both my stomach and my camera shots suffered a bit. It was really wonderful to see our house, the golf course and Highland from way up there this morning.
Park Hills Evangelical Free Church Groundbreaking
For the past several weeks I’ve been working on a large photography project for Highland. The photo below shows the seven images which are 30″ by 40″ laid out onto the Board Room tables where Teresa and I, along with Dr Kanosky and Dr Davidson were able to preview them last Thursday. The next step will be to mount the images between layers of Lexan and then to install them onto the curved wall of the Science Center lobby. It looks like we will meet our deadline by next Wednesday, May 6th, the date of the Nursing Wing Dedication.
Board Room Review