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.

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.

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).

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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In 2008, myself and a committee of friends planned from the ground up, the 4th Annual Ugly Christmas Sweater Party which raised over $7,000 to a local organization here in Kansas City. One of the key takeaways from that experience was finding there’s a lot of people out there that sincerely want to do good in this world, they just don’t haven’t had the right opportunity to do it.

Enter, Twestival. In short, this event utilizes social media (Twitter) to empower an existing community to do good. It’s mission is to provide access to safe, clean drinking water to developing nations by drilling wells. The non-profit organization charity: water was clever enough to strike the attention of the Twitter community — there are over 100+ cities organizing individual events with all of them being 100% volunteer driven.

I decided, I wanted to give back — not just by attending the Kansas City gathering, but raising awareness by putting together a video blog. While I did not organize the event, I figured the least I could do was help promote it in any way that I could. What better than with a video blog!?! Note: I tried to get a little creative with this one and had a lot of fun shooting this. Let me know what you think! And more importantly, see you at Twestival! Details are at http://kansascity.twestival.com or http://www.charitywater.org/twestival.

I recently got my camera back from the shop — and today I decided to take a photowalking trip. What is photowalking you may wonder?

Wiki says; “…it’s the act of walking with a camera for the main purpose of taking pictures of things that the photographer may find interesting.”

Since I was feeling fairly patriotic after watching the inauguration concert “We Are One”, I figured why not head over Kansas City’s own super-awesome-easily-under-appreciated-by-local-residents National Monument, the Liberty Memorial. I ‘jocked some tunes on my iPod and had a blast snapping some pics. I was even lucky enough to get a pretty good sunset! You can view all the pictures I took on my flickr account here.

I was asked to come check out the new grocery story that’s opening up here in downtown Kansas City. I know, I know — typically a grocery store wouldn’t be that big of a deal …except, here in KC, we have no grocery store downtown so this is HUGE news. Everyone is curious on what it will offer and all the logistics around it.

I’ll say, I was pretty impressed overall. Lots of attention to detail was put into designing this store. I’d heard the rumors and talk about all the money being put into this project and it really is impressive when you see it, especially for a grocery store. I myself live downtown — and I’m STOKED that this will be opening in January. Can’t wait!

Watch my video blog of the store setup.

Here’s some photos of the store.

This past Friday, American Idol rolled into Kansas City to hold round one auditions for Season 8. Of course, I grabbed my camera and video blogged the craziness. It was great — I really met a lot of cool people in the couple hours I walked around. One thing I found surprising, the majority of people were practically fighting to sing for the camera …and they were actually all pretty good! Check out my audio blog on Utterz and my video blog below. P.s. You’ll be crackin’ up when you meet “Mr. Banana Man”, a memorable character for sure. Enjoy!

My audio blog of the event:

A look at my experience at Jazzoo 2008, the Kansas City Zoo’s largest fund raiser.