Scattered Thoughts . . .

T he other night, Sheila and I attended a Christmas concert at Ellie's school and watched her perform at her first concert.  Last night, we headed out again for a Christmas concert at Lukey and Kenzie's school.  This time Lukey was performing.  This school has a nice "performing arts" building albeit a bit small.  It is an exceptionally small school so perhaps this room is large enough for expected crowd size but it sure seemed quite small to me especially considering the size of the sound gear (big sound for big spaces).  The first thing I noticed when we stepped into this building is all the Yamaha sound gear, a few pianos and nice lighting.  I found this to be quite impressive since I prefer Yamaha sound gear myself and the photographer in me is always happy to see good, effective and dramatic lighting! On this night, we found out that Lukey was singing two or three songs.  Lukey, on more than one occasion, had told us that he has been playing ...

A  couple of nights ago, we attended Ellie's first Christmas concert and it was a nice night.   After the concert, we walked in a Parade of Light...  the kids made lanterns and we walked through town behind a SD Ireland concrete truck covered in Christmas lights  (quite erroneously and far too commonly referred to as a 'cee-ment truck'...  the civil engineer side of me must point out that ' concrete  truck' is the correct term) .  Ellie had surgery on her foot recently and was in a boot so, consequently, we lagged behind significantly in this parade through the streets.  Fortunately, a police car stayed behind us the whole way to keep traffic from hitting us. After a night of music, Sheila and I stopped at The Whip at The Green Mountain Inn in Stowe for dinner.  We made it there just before closing.  Actually, they were cleaning up and closing before we even left the restaurant.  Dinner was delicious though!  We reall...

I already shared a video with many clips of this entertaining show in a previous blog entry but now I have some still photos to share.  Kelly Prescott and Doc Walker performed a short concert for us after the train pulled into the station. Once the train came to a stop, one of the boxcars opened into a stage. This Canadian Pacific Holiday Train travels from the east coast to the west coast doing shows at stops along the way. They raise money and collect non-perishable foods for the food shelf program which I feel is a very worthy cause. I'm really happy with the quality of these photos because the conditions were tough for shooting... it was very dark... it was cold... it was crowded and people were constantly bumping into each other... and, this is the first time I've tried shooting "concert photography" but I managed to pull it all together and get some great images!  And, I managed to get some great video too... you can view the video on  this blog entry. ...

We had a great Thanksgiving weekend and today is the first time I've had a chance to share some photos and video. The first thing I want to share is a video that I shot while we watched a Christmas concert on the colorfully and brightly decorated Canadian Pacific Holiday Train. Our holiday weekend began with entertaining friends at our house on Thanksgiving Day... I'll write more on that and share some photos another time.  Then, on Friday morning, we headed to the rugged Adirondack Mountains to spend the rest of our long holiday weekend in beautiful Saratoga Springs. I haven't been to Saratoga in a few decades so it was nice to get back there and spend some time! Our primary purpose of visiting Saratoga Springs was to see Canadian Pacific's Holiday Train as it pulled into the station. If you've never had an opportunity to see this brightly lit and colorful train, you should! Once the train pulled into Saratoga's surprisingly nice train station... ami...