May 8, 2017

Meet Kevin O’Connell of Kevin O’Connell Photography in Millennium Park

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kevin O’Connell.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Kevin. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I took a photography class in high school and was hooked ever since. I love using large film cameras the most because it takes time, patience and thought before you can take one shot. To me, that is calming. I love it so much that in 2000 I rented every camera that was sold, to learn how to use them.

I decided to travel to remote places around the world to photograph amazing landscapes and culture like Antarctica, Southern China and the Marshall Islands.

Since then I have won many international awards for my work and still love this almost 40 years later, as much as I did when I first started in high school.

With the digital age, I decided to start teaching Chicago Photography Workshops and others around the Midwest, because so many people have cameras now and would love to get some great shots of our wonderful city. My two hour class workshops are structured to teaching the most important steps one needs to get great pictures with manual settings, with creativity at the forefront of the lesson. Not just a workshop with a large group of people, telling them what to adjust your settings to and not teaching them the most important steps that they can use to keep getting better.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Most of my workshops have been with customers from out of town, mostly from other countries visiting Chicago. Maybe it’s because my workshops are not the cheapest, but I can attest that when you take just one workshop, you will be able to do it on your own for now on. The biggest struggle was being found in the search engines, which I am now close to the top.

Please tell us about Kevin O’Connell Photography.
My business is to teach a two hour photo workshop to anyone with any skill set, even none. I teach them what makes up the composition of a quality image, how to read there lighting histogram, what the three basic functions of photography are and how to implement them. How to get quality photographs at the workshop and be able to do it when they go anywhere. From that point, I teach them to be creative with their photography choices, not to be too technical about it.

I am know for creative landscapes, and long exposure unique photography. I have also worked on some photo documentaries with king Kabua of the Marshall Islands and Forgotten Souls of Chicago – so street photography.

I am most proud of my accomplishments with setting out with being one of the top international photographers in my field and have accomplished that.

My work ethic, getting back to clients fast. I always ask my clients how they found me and a pretty big percentage tell me that they first contacted the first person in there web search, but were never responded too, so then decided to contact me. I have many more years’ experience in both photography and cameras than my competition.

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
Playing guitar in a high school rock band.

Pricing: