The Kansas City Star’s INK magazine covered the party:

We were asked to come on the NBC morning show to talk about the party + the toy drive we setup @The Roasterie

A guest who attended the party, shot, edited, and posted a video blog of the night! It was so cool that Leah Stephens aka STELLABELLE did this!

Every year, we’re fortunate enough that we’ve had Zach Cobb donate his free time to take professional pictures for the party. This year, Zach and his business partner Simon, donated their time and services on behalf of their company, Westside Studio. Here are the official party pictures from this year’s party.

Some of our photos were even featured in the LA Guest of a Guest blog:

In planning this party, we (the steering committee) have found there’s a lot of people out there that sincerely want to do good in this world- they just don’t have the right opportunity to do it.  We, as a group of friends, have made it our mission to do good by planning this party and empower others to have an opportunity to not only do good, but carry the message about Operation Breakthrough.

In 2008 we raised $7,125.
In 2009 we raised $18,575.

This year our giving goal was $20,000…
…we raised over $26,000 in 2010 to donate to Operation Breakthrough.
We also donated over 300+ toys to the OB Christmas Family Program.

THANK YOU for helping us make our mark.

This is YOUR event Kansas Citians, that helps our great city.

THANK YOU to everyone who donated, attended, danced, clicked the “LIKE” button, RT’ed, volunteered and helped share our story.

In planning this event, we have learned so much more than just how to throw a party. These experiences and lessons learned, have truly made us all better people.  I get chills thinking about how a small house party has evolved into something much bigger. We are making a direct impact in the community, right here, in a city we’re all proud of, Kansas City.

This is how we are making a difference.  We’ve turned something ugly, into something truly …beautiful.

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This weekend I toured the new Kansas City soccer stadium being built for the Wizards (it’s still under construction till June 2011). I shot a quick ‘n short video blog to show you what the progress on the construction looks like. It’s impressive isn’t it!? I played soccer growing up (through high school), so I’ve always been a big fan. This stadium is GOING TO BE INCREDIBLE! (i’m excited for it, if you can’t tell). *update*, the Kansas City Wizards blog has linked to this.

A few facts about the stadium (more):
- 18,500 capacity
- Natural grass field
- Canopy roof
- 300 HDTVs

(click to enlarge the PANO image)

Here’s the video blog I cut to share with you what it’s like @the American Royal rodeo:

The bottom-line? Rodeos are FUN! For those with small-n-short attention spans (like me), the competition moves quickly from event to event. You never get too much of 1 thing. Of course, the bull riding at the end, is the most fun to watch. I’d for sure go again with friends and/or my family.

Tickets are cheap too, they start at $17 (which you can get online). This year’s rodeo is the biggest in American Royal history. It’s part of the Gold Tour season for the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA). Translation? …you’ll see the best riders, ropers and wrestlers in the world. If you’re familiar with the sport, the competitors include: Trevor Brazile, Fred Whitfield, Will Lowe, Shery Cervi, Stran Smith and many others.

Want to see photos? I posted my favorites and the full set and slideshow is posted to my flickr.

I snapped this photo during the Girl Talk concert here in Kansas City at the Crossroads KC (Grinder’s). The concert was incredibly fun. If you’ve never heard of Girl Talk, don’t let his name throw you off. He’s a fun mashup DJ from Pennsylvania. If you want to see how, check out this behind the scenes video of how he makes cut/edits his music. And make sure you download his latest album (it’s free).

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.

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!

“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).

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).

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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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.

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’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.

My audio blog of the event: