Rich Saal is an editorial and commercial photographer and documentary filmmaker based in central Illinois

Soil & Soul: Farming in the Sangamon River Valley

Generations of farmers have sown and reaped a livelihood in the Sangamon River Valley, nearly 5,000 square miles of land in central Illinois, and home to some of the richest soil in the world.

These are the stories of the men and women rooted there, bonded to the land for generations.

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Presented by United Community Bank, Sangamon Experience and Long Nine Media, 2024

Windows to History: Restoration at the Old State Capitol

The Old State Capitol is where Abraham Lincoln served as a state legislator, and where he delivered his famous House Divided speech on the floor of the Hall of Representatives in 1858. It’s one of the jewels among the state’s historic properties. The effort to restore its massive windows to historical standards began in 2023 as part of a larger renovation and preservation project.

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Illinois Department of Natural Resources Historic Preservation Division, 2023

Best in Glass: The Frank Lloyd Wright art glass in the Dana-Thomas House

Early in architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s career, he won a commission to design a new home for wealthy Springfield socialite and activist, Susan Lawrence Dana. It was a blank-check project for Wright, who put his design not just on the building, but on the art glass used extensively throughout the house. It’s one of the largest and thematically unified uses of the unique and beautiful iridized glass in any Wright home, and Wright himself considered it his best example of the medium.

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Illinois Department of Natural Resources Historic Preservation Division, 2023

The Year in Stories 2022

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Friday Night Lights: A new athletic complex for Williamsville High School

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O’Shea Builders, 2023

Winter Postcard

A winter postcard from an enchanted place. This short piece is from an on-going project documenting the Springfield Dominican’s Jubilee Farm, Center for Ecology and Spirituality.

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Springfield Dominican Sisters, 2023

History Tours: Sharing Springfield’s Past

This summer, in a project for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Historic Sites Division, I produced three videos to promote the department’s new history tours in Springfield. They include a bicycling tour of the city that stops at some lesser known historic sites, hikes through Oak Ridge Cemetery where Abraham Lincoln is buried, and a walking tour through downtown that focuses on the 1908 Springfield Race Riot. During the riot, a violent white mob destroyed dozens of black owned homes and looted their businesses, and lynched two African American men. It prompted the founding of the NAACP the following year.

Illinois Department of Natural Resources Historic Preservation Division, 2021

“Something Pretty Darn Hard”

To most people, a 356-mile, self-supported gravel bike race through Kansas is an unreasonable challenge. For two friends, riding in the UnboundXL was riding into the unknown, and that was the hook. A short documentary follows their training and their ride in a notoriously difficult bike race.