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).

Laura & Michael's Engagement 06/02/09

Sadly, I won't be there when Laura shows here relatives in Colombia these pictures and gets to explain why in Kansas City we have gigantic shuttlecocks outside our art museum...

Laura & Michael took a tour of midtown for their engagement session (Kauffman Garden, Nichols Fountain, Southmoreland Park, Nelson Art Gallery) and ended up with some great pictures.. Here are a few from the session.

J,M,A,C, & E

Poor, poor Megan. At least that's what my mom thinks. As the mother of three boys she has a special insight into Megan's plight. At least that's what my mom would call it. You'd think that my brothers and I misbehaved to hear her tell it...


But we're not here to rehash my misspent youth. We're here to see a few of the pictures we took on Saturday morning of the Daly boys.

I woud have been disappointed if we hadn't gotten at least one shot like this:

Having gotten that one out of the way, it was nice to get one that looked like this:

What is it about me that elicits this kind of response from youngsters?

Thanks for getting together with me guys. I hope that you've recovered.