Springfield, Illinois, and wherever the job is

The plan and the camera,
same person.

I am Mindy Pastrovich. Message Matters Co. is where I work out what a business needs to say. Driven by Story is where I produce, direct and edit it. Most months involve both, and that is the whole idea.

Tell me about the job See the production work

FourRoute 66 seasons documented

EightYears running a Route 66 drive-in

Twenty-Five+Years behind a camera

A red Ford Mustang convertible rolling down a downtown street past a brick building, with the chrome grille of a maroon 1956 Chevrolet filling the right side of the frame.

Mindy Pastrovich laughing behind her camera in the middle of a closed street, a crowd lined along the barricades behind her and a Route 66 festival banner at the curb.

Mother Road Festival, downtown Springfield. Four years of festival days behind the barricade line.

Four ways in

Start where your problem is.

This page is the short version. Anything with a number, a date or a price on it lives on the four pages below.

Business strategy

Message, positioning, offers, and the next practical decision. This is the Message Matters Co. side of the desk, and it is where most jobs should start.

Strategy and rates

Production

Photography, video, event coverage, commercials, and the edit afterward. What it costs, what you get back, and how a booking actually runs.

Hire me to shoot

Route 66 in 2026

The centennial schedule, the events I am covering this year, and the galleries from the ones already shot.

See the schedule

Galleries

Cars, and plenty that is not cars. Old growth creeks, festival crowds, standing corn, downtown at last light, whatever the morning hands over.

See the images

Mindy Pastrovich leaning against one of two weathered stone pillars on a park path, camera in one hand, a tall fountain jetting into a pool behind her and green trees beyond.

Behind both names

A little about who I am.

Decades of marketing and production sit behind the two names on this site. I have owned a portrait studio. I shot for the Illinois State Senate for four years. I spent eight years running the calendar and building the events at my family's Route 66 drive-in in Litchfield. That teaches you more about a crowd than any workshop ever will. I have also sat with organizations that could not say what they do in one sentence. I stayed at the table until they could, then went out and shot the photography and video the campaign needed to run.

Both businesses sit under one name because the work does not really come apart. A strategy nobody produces ends up as a PDF in somebody's downloads folder. Photographs made without one look fine and get used twice. Run them together and the images already know what they are for before the shutter moves.

Central Illinois is the base, not the boundary. Litchfield and Springfield are a short drive. St. Louis and Chicago are a regular trip. Washington State, New Orleans and Nevada are a flight and a rental car. Migrating whales are further out than that. If the project is right, I am there.

More about how I got here

The Mother Road, centennial year

Route 66 turns one hundred this year.

The road was certified on November 11, 1926. That makes 2026 the centennial, and it is the busiest year the Illinois stretch has ever had. I have been hired to photograph these gatherings for four years running, which means I know where the light goes at four in the afternoon on Sixth Street and which corner the good cars park on.

Coming up next: the International Route 66 Mother Road Festival, September 25 to 27, downtown Springfield.

See the 2026 schedule Browse the galleries (opens in a new tab)