I originally shot my image at Riverside Foods in the fall of 2024.  It was one of the first images I took.  I know the owner of Riverside Foods (pictured in the window), Peter Boutsikakis, fairly well and he has been nothing if not incredibly generous to me over the years in letting me shoot at his grocery store.  I scheduled the shoot, cast models, shot… and was not happy with the end result.

The idea was there–a parent and child on the bench, eating ice cream while watching Boutsikakis stack things in the window–but the cars on the street were wrong, I also didn’t like how the light pole bisected the water tower and the lighting was more pink than I was going for.  There were also people everywhere.  It seemed like a photo for a different series.  So, I talked to Boutsikakis again in 2025 and asked him if he would mind redoing the shoot.  He said he was game.  Then the fun began.

I figured out that what I needed was no one in the background.  No cars, no people, nothing.  I wanted to make it feel like the people on the bench and Boutsikakis were the only people in existence in this image.  So I filed a special permit with the Village of Riverside to not allow parking on the street for about a block and a half.  They graciously agreed and posted signs everywhere dictating the no parking for the shoot.  The only problem was that the signs were going to show up in the image if we didn’t do something about them.  My two assistants pulled up about 40 of the signs closest to us and dropped them off frame… and sure enough within the first 60 seconds, two people pulled up and tried to park on the street where the signs has just been.  It is the way of the world.

In the end, I got the exact image I wanted.  Given how small of portion of the photo the street takes up, it’s impressive to me how much the lack of cars makes this photo.  Special thanks go to Boutsikakis for shooting this twice and Emily Stenzel with the Village of Riverside for helping me secure the ‘no parking’ permits.