Did you know you can take an elevator to the top of Liberty Memorial? The 360-degree view at the top is incredible!

The Liberty Memorial is easily the most recognizable landmark in Kansas City. It’s part of the National World War I museum, the only American museum solely dedicated to the war. It’s really cheap to go (around $10-$12) and it’s filled with lots of interesting stuff. Most people say you need about 2-3 hours to take it all in at a relaxed pace. If you just want to go up on the tower, it’s really cheap ($4) and only takes a couple minutes. They’re open Tuesday – Sunday, 10AM – 5PM (check the website for all the details).

NOTE: I actually shot this video blog last year, but I just discovered the footage on a camera recently! I didn’t like the clips when I first shot this last year. After stumbling upon it again- when I was clearing HD space, I decided to do a quick edit and post the video. I’m proud of KC and I love this town! So I figured I wanted to pass on the good word of another fun thing you can do here in KC.

Do you remember how good Kansas City Royals were at baseball in the 80’s? How about the amazing KC Chiefs in the 1970s?

I want more than anything to have a hometown winning team again.

People talk about what an exciting time it was to live in this city during those years. Yesterday, was a glimpse of what it would be like to have a winning home team …and a soccer team at that! 52,000+ people watched the KC Wizards beat Manchester United. Sure it may have been their “B” team players (but there were at least 3-4 of their top tier players in the lineup for ManU). Below are a couple of my favorite photos I took with my point-n-shoot Canon S90. You can view the whole slideshow on flickr.

This past weekend, I continued my recent 2010 i-run-in-races obsession new hobby by participating in Brew-to-Brew. I took my camera with me to capture moments of my friends in their running glory. I’ve posted all the picture to my flickr.

So what is Brew-to-Brew? It’s a day long relay running race in which your team runs a combined 43+ miles from Kansas City to Lawrence, Kansas (you run from one beer brewing company to another). I had a blast at this race. It’s much more relaxed than most. I ran the last leg of our team’s relay. 4.6 miles of “remember-the-college-days-gloryness” running into gorgeous Lawrence, over the river and past City Hall

There is one unique thing about this race thing I observed; running is typically a very solo, individual, self-motivated sport. This relay race format, makes it very team focused (which is awesome!) You can’t help but be cheesy supportive to your teammates, yelling and cheering them on during each of their portions of the relay. If you’ve got a group of friends into running- check this out next year, it’s a great time.

I’m awestruck when it snows. Even as a grown adult, I’m captivated by it. This is a short, simple video blog, that I filmed of the snowfall this weekend here in Kansas City (direct link here).

Be sure to increase the “HD” button to see the full details of the video. Or watch it in HD on Vimeo.

Note: this style of video is different than the “event casting” video blogs I film. This is intentional. As part of my goals for 2010, experimenting + learning with this style is what I want to get better at.

I dragged my friends outside for 10-minutes during the snow this weekend to take some quick pictures. I wanted to practice, practice and practice. This is one of the many things a friend of mine, Rebecca Peters has taught me. I’m thankful of her +other great friends who motivate me to get better and better and the things I love to do. The photos I took are on my flickr account.

One of my best friends, Adam, gets serious for a photo.

My roommate, wears these boots- and I like the colors on them- so i wanted to try using them as a focus for a shot.

Self portrait. I’m pretty sure the neighbors thought I was crazy when I was out standing in the snow taking this shot.

It’s been snowing a little super-ridiculously here in Kansas City. And get this;

it was colder here this weekend than it was in Anchorage, Alaska!

Some people really hate the cold and the snow, but all I wanted to do was GO SLEDDING! My best friend Scott and I tore up the slopes hills with our manly plastic purple sleds I was daring enough to grab my flipcam and shot this short-n-sweet vblog. Great footage of the wipe-outs and why my body is extremely sore today (special thanks to my Twitter friends @AngiePedersen @TheKCBigE @ksaim @Jayblondie315 @8Ball_ who reassured me you are never too old to go sledding!)

Fall is absolutely gorgeous in Kansas City. I took these photos walking through the neighborhood on a sunny weekend afternoon. There were a few days in October and November when me and my friends just drove around to check out all the gorgeous trees around the neighborhood.

Each year- the Tour of Missouri bike race comes through Kansas City. I’m not a huge fan of professional cycling, but I was intrigued when I found out that the majority of the riders from this years Tour de France (except for Lance Armstrong) were in this race. I have never seen a bike race before- so myself and a couple friends decided to check out the race.

What’s great about this year’s race, was the course wasn’t just routed through in Kansas City- the ENTIRE race was a closed circuit within Kansas City. That said, it was fun to move to different areas on the course to get a different view of the bikers each time they came through.

In my opinion, bike races aren’t really that exciting live, but it was a fun experience- especially seeing world class athletes race through the streets of Kansas City. I took photos with my camera which you can view the slideshow on flickr or check out my video blog for my perspective of what it was like to be there.

Here’s 3 favorite photos I took with my Canon 40D at the Tour of Missouri bike race here in Kansas City. You can see the full slideshow of photos on my flick account.

This past weekend was the annual Kansas City Downtown Air Show and I vblogged it (full disclosure: they hooked me up with free press access again!).

Overall, last year’s show was better (last year’s vblog here), but there were some highlights. I had a chance to interview pilots who fly the A-10 “Warthog” and the Apache helicopter. I snapped some pretty sweet photos too. The Harrier “jump” jet was cool- something I personally had never seen first-hand +easily the loudest jet I’ve ever heard. The other highlight of the show was the F-16, it’s speed and nimble ability to perform tricks was incredible to watch. Check out the full video blog on YouTube (below).

PS: I’ve been editing my video blogs with my new Mac! (that’s right, I made the switch). While I’m still a PC fan- I can confidently say my Mac Pro desktop rocks-my-socks off in editing HD video. It handles HD like a champ!

The annual downtown Kansas City Air Show was this weekend- and I was eager to photowalk the event and see what I could capture. Each time I get my camera out- I sometimes find myself in situations that remind me of a quote Mike McMullen shared with me (in a video blog) last year. While it’s not the most elegant quote, it’s completely on-point and accurate. He shares:

“Sometimes that perfect composition slaps you up side the head- and wow, I’m so lucky I’m here- all I can do is screw it up.”

As I’m learning and trying to improve more and more with my own photography (as a hobby), I know first hand what he means. There are those times when you find yourself staring at the perfect photo- it’s almost yelling “HEY YOU, this is the shot right here!” It’s up to you to just get it just right and not screw it up.

All that said- I was pleased and surprised with some of the shots that came out from this year’s air show. Tracking and following speeding airplanes through the sky isn’t something I find myself doing a lot of Enjoy the photos and check out the full flickr slideshow here. Here are some of my personal favorites (below).

Recently I was interviewed by ink magazine about my Event Blogging that I cover here in Kansas City. One aspect feature piece for the magazine / website was photos of each Kansas City blogger- and I brought my camera to use for my shoot and I figured while I was there, why not record a “behind the scenes” take on what it was like to be there. I’ll be the first to admit- I don’t think this vblog is one of my more compelling ones, but it does give you an candid look at my experience. I had fun doing it (side note: its hard to imagine how models gripe about posing for photos, maybe I’m missing something!?!).

You can check out the full article online here. And if you pickup a copy of the Kansas City Star today, look in the top left and you’ll see my photo on the front page Watch the vblog here.

I recently shot a video blog of Jazzoo and I wanted to share it as well quick thoughts about this vblog. For the past few years I’ve attended Jazzoo- a fundraiser to help the local Kansas City Zoo and it’s programs. It’s a great creative black-tie formal event held every year.

When I vblog or event cast- I’m usually able to balance capturing good footage of the event while still having a fun attending it as well. But, I’ll admit- it wasn’t easy to do this at first and took a while to master this (it’s easy to get caught up in just shooting footage).

That said, I wanted to preface this video blog with the disclaimer that I wasn’t able to get all the footage I wanted. Not even close. In fact, I got so little- I was only able to scrape together bits and pieces. In my mind, this is WAY below average execution for me. Enjoy it for what it’s worth, but I thought I’d at least tell you first. I’m still posting it since I strongly believe in supporting our great Zoo here in Kansas City (disclaimer: they are a client of the firm I work for).

This past weekend I snapped a couple photos while down at the “Taste of the Crossroads” event here in Kansas City. I’m a huge fan of The Crossroads area since many of the businesses are KC originals/local establishments. More importantly, they serve some of the best food KC has to offer. I posted more pics to flickr, check out the slideshow of photos here.

AMC invited local bloggers to come preview their new theater in Downtown Kansas City. AMC Mainstreet, the theater, orginally opened in 1921, but now has been renovated and upgraded (to say the least). They gave me access to the new theater and I willingly decided to shoot a vBlog to give everyone a ‘preview’ before it’s open to the public. Check out my video blog for a complete tour of the place, it’s not your typical movie theater. I also snapped a few photos with my camera which you can view on my flickr account.

Here is the quick bottom-line about the new theater in my opinion:

• Truthfully the food (that you order in the movie theater) isn’t amazing. It’s like bar food — not gourmet.
• In my opinion, the audio setup, screen-size and seating comfort justifies the higher price you pay to watch a movie.
• The seats all have speakers in them that rumble when action scenes appear in the movie. Cheesy as that may sound, when I watched a movie there it was freakin’ cool to watch actions scenes with your seat shaking.
• You can order beer and they bring it to you = cool
• You’re able to reserve specific seats online or by phone so you don’t have to show up extra early to get a good spot.

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