The Dan Walsh Classic 09/25/09

Last evening I had the good fortune to be a part of the Dan Walsh Classic at Swope Park Golf course.


The tournament is an annual event hosted by Connie Twenter with the aim of funding a scholarship in Dan's name to help defray the tuition of an at-need grade schooler who will be attending a parochial high school - one of Dan's life's passions.

It was great to see so many familiar faces and so many friends from my time at St. Elizabeth's - the Walshes, Twenters, Listons, Switzers, and many others. Getting a great meal from Waldo Pizza was an an always welcome bonus...

Here are some of my favorite shots.

My dad and his foursome on the teebox with the downtown skyline in the background.

Two of the Walsh sons-in-law, Tom and Bart enjoy what I think is the best part of golf: driving the cart.

These gentlemen were actually not with the tournament - they were the first pair to play after the tournament went through. Despite the delays they were in good spirits so I got a shot of them too.

If, in the 23rd century, Ernie Els and one of the bad guys from the Road Warrior had a love child and it played golf, I'm pretty sure he'd look like this:
Connie on the mic with Patty Walsh (happy birthday Patty!) at his side.
Ryan Flood, Dan's grandson, picks a winner out of the bag. He gets extra points for taking his responsibilities extra-seriously: you might not be able to tell at this resolution but his eyes are squeezed shut to make sure that it was a fair draw.
A (very) enthusiastic Denny Liston celebrates his win.
Walshes, Bowens, and Mrozes (oh my!). Sounds much better than lions, tigers, and bears (oh my!)

My man Jake. The only person to call me out for sweating alot while shooting his aunt Kelly's wedding last summer. He's quite the character.

Thanks again to Connie and all his little helpers for putting together a great day for a worthy cause in honor of a great man.

Vincent & Elizabeth

Carol & Mohsen brought Vincent and Elizabeth to meet me for what I'm hoping will become an annual tradition - a portrait session at Loose Park. Last year poor Elizabeth nearly froze so we moved it up to September this year and were rewarded with perfect weather. It was great to see everyone again! Joy. Exasperation.

Attitude.
Elizabeth steps out a little bit to burn off some energy. No photographers were harmed in the making of this image.

Speaking of expending extra energy, why don't you go for a little run kids? Two laps then we're back to it... Carol decided to be in a few pictures as well. Good decision IMHO.

Sarah & Alan's Wedding

Sarah and Alan were married at Stony Point Manor just outside of Baldwin, KS. In addition to being a stellar couple, they came with the added benefit of Sarah being the daughter of my neighbors Tim and Claire and the granddaughter of Beach Tuckness, my sophomore year gym teacher at Rockhurst and to this day the only person who has ever threatened to "throw (my) a** into the shower". To his credit, I probably deserved it. To his further credit, at 88 years young I'm pretty sure he could still do it to me if he wanted to.

The happy couple getting ready to meet.

The aforementioned Coach Tuckness. It was great to see him again and to meet Mrs. Beach.
A fireworks show just for the happy couple. How cool is that?
After the fireworks, Sarah asked if I would take some pictures of her and the bridesmaids in the bathroom. Seriously. Sounded a little strange to me too. We got in there and I saw why she wanted pictures - pretty cool for a bathroom.

Ruthie, Charlotte, Frannie, & Ike

Kelly and Guy brought the kids to meet me for a session at Kauffman Memorial Garden on an unseasonably mild August afternoon. Either Kelly & Guy are doing something right because the kids smiled and behaved the whole time or the Starburst bribes really worked.

Children's Mercy Hospital/Vocera

Well this was a fun shoot.

I got a call from Anne Stacy who was interning at Fleishman Hillard this summer that they were looking for someone to take some shots of one of their clients' products in action - a communications device for hospital personnel. We convened at Childrens' Mercy Hospital and met up with the FH representative, Elizabeth Carttar who had made arrangements with the staff and procured a couple of minimodels to act the parts of kids in need of medical attention.

Here's some of what we ended up with (that's the product hanging from the Nurse Practitioner's lapel):

Jay & Erin Vontz 7/18/09

What a horrible way to end what was an otherwise perfect weekend.

Jay and Erin were married on July 18th at the Steamboat Grand Hotel outside in perfect weather under the pavillion with a reception following in the hotel's ballroom. All was well and good up to that point - happy bride and groom, happy families, perfect weather, picturesque location -the whole nine yards.

Then, Sunday... After a two hour breakfast at the local Village in (well, a fifteen minute breakfast that followed a 1:45 wait) we hopped in the rental to head back in to Denver to catch a flight leaving 4.5 hours for the three hour drive to make sure we had plenty of time to catch the plane. The problem: the three hour drive took five hours. So we made the mad dash through the terminal (after getting upbraided by the TSA security guard for jumping the line) to the gate... which had changed. Then, on to the new gate in time to board the flight which was fortunately 35 minutes late. Unfortunately that put us in the path of the storm that was blowing in from three directions and kept us on the ground in the plane for an extra hour and a half. So a day that was supposed to have gone from leisurely breakfast to nice mountain drive to quick flight into Kansas City became a Kafkaesque nightmare journey lacking only John Candy as an overly-chatty shower curtain ring salesman and an overnight on the Amtrak to make it a real life Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.

But enough about that. As miserable as that was the rest of the weekend more than made up for it. I was honored that Jay convinced Erin to let me (Jay's cousin) be a part of the celebration. Here is a selection of pictures from the weekend (pictures of the Village Inn, rented Chrysler Pacifica, traffic jam from Silverthorne to Golden, CO, towering thunderheads to the East, West, and North of the plane, and the spectacular view of the tarmac of Denver International Airport not included for the sake of relative brevity and the author's sanity).