Wurlitzer, Alive@5

In Great Falls, Montana, one of the things to enjoy in the summer is Thursday evening's Alive@5.  (Yes, I know it's almost Christmas, but I believe I have mentioned before that I am just a little behind!)  Back to Alive@5. . .  It is held every Thursday from June until August in the Great Falls Downtown Historic District.  They sponsor a local live band, and there is food and other entertainment.

Scott was asked by one of the local bands, Wurlitzer, to come and photograph them playing on August 11th, at Alive@5.  Each of the bands gets to set up in an enclosed utility trailer.  Since it is set up facing the street, there is room for dancing!

So, thank you, Wurlitzer, for trusting JSV Photography to photograph your performance!

Santa Clause Came to Longfellow

Santa Clause is coming to town. . .

CTA and several Great Falls businesses come together to give the kids of Longfellow Elementary School a gift and some Christmas cheer.  Frank, a Great Falls CTA employee, dons his Santa outfit, slings a bag of gifts over his shoulder and enters Longfellow with some additional help from some CTA elves!

The children enter with excitement!  They give Santa their wish list, and receive a little bag with gloves, hats, toothbrushes, and candy.  Scott gets a photograph of each with Santa.  (The portraits will be printed off, courtesy of Sam's Club, and given to the children before Christmas break!)

 Thank you to all those who donated their time and money to bless some kids with a little Christmas cheer!

May you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

The Blue Angels!

This last weekend we had the pleasure of having the Blue Angels come to Great Falls, Montana.  They put on a show up at the airport Saturday and Sunday.  And, Scott being the photographer that he is decided to use the opportunity to practice catching crystal clear pictures of fast moving jets!

Since it was quite a job to get up to the airport (traffic and all).  Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that our kids seem to have a very short attention span!  We decided to view the air show from Warden Park, one of the higher elevations in Great Falls.

Warden Park also provided a great place to get a patriotic photograph.  The Blue Angels were so awesome to watch.  The tricks they performed were incredible!

The formations were so precise and my hat goes off to them.  I was definitely impressed!

Thanks to the Blue Angels for showing us some of the capabilities of fighter jets flown by very capable pilots!

CMR Boys' Basketball

A couple of the parents of players on the CMR Boys Basketball Team asked Scott to take some basketball photographs.  So after showing up at one of the games here in Great Falls, Montana, he decided that it was a good time to get a new camera!

With a weeks worth of practice, he took the new camera to a couple of CMR games here in town and got some great action shots!

Thank you to the parents who asked Scott to take photographs!  It was a great experience!

Santa at Longfellow

One of the guys who works at our office has been dressing up as Santa and visiting local school kids for several years now.  Last year, he decided to ask a few people if they would be interested in helping out by purchasing some little toys and candy to give the kids.  Before he knew it, quite a lot of money was available for the cause, and several hundred kids each got a bag of goodies, including gloves, candy, toothbrushes, and toys.  Seeing how much it touched the children, he wanted to do it again this year.

Thanks to some generous people and businesses, Santa was again able to hand out goody bags for the kids at Longfellow this year.  Some of the kids were a little shy.

Some were definitely not.

But they all seemed very appreciative.

It's interesting to me that so many of us seem to be generous with our time and/or money, but it often takes one individual to get the ball rolling.  Perhaps we occasionally need that one person to remind us of all the other people living outside of our daily routines.  It's not that we don't want to help those in need, it's just that we're usually too busy trying to survive our own lives to notice the struggles of others.

It's good to get little reminders like that.  But it's also good to give them.  Hopefully we can take turns reminding each other, and not just during this time of year.


~~ Merry Christmas~~

CMR vs. Flathead

As I said, I was asked to take photos of the CMR vs Flathead high school football game here in Great Falls on the 15th.  Here is a peek at what I was able to get!

Ryan's Football Game

I was asked to take photos of the CMR vs Flathead high school football game here in Great Falls on the 15th (photos of that game coming soon!).  Knowing that I wouldn't be allowed on the field, I decided to rent a lens I've heard good things about - the Canon 300mm F2.8/L IS - to give me a boost from the stands.  While this lens is certainly an attention grabber, rest assured it does its part to help capture great images.  Even though this was my first time using the hefty lens, and I'm sure there is ample room for improvement with more practice, I was very pleased with the results.

I need to give a shout out to my nephew Ryan, who was thoughtful enough to have a flag football game on the afternoon of the 15th so I could get a few exposures fired off to practice.  So, the shots of Ryan's game were truly my first with the lens.  Again, though, I'm pretty happy with how these turned out.  I just wish it'd been a little warmer.  Those little guys are pretty tough!

Bobcat Football!

I drove down to Bozeman, Montana, with my brother and our two oldest boys to watch MSU-Bozeman play Eastern Washington this past Saturday.  Special thanks to CTA for the tickets and to the Bobcats (especially Bill Lamberty) for the freelance photographer's field pass.

It was a pretty nice day for late September - actually almost too hot.  Had some fun playing with a rented lens (Canon's 100-400mm F 4.5-5.6L IS) and watching the Bobcats tear up the Eagles.