Christina McCall Photography | Athens Canton Kaufman and Tyler Texas Family, Children, and Senior Portraiture Photography

On Valentine’s Day I joined a number of friends and family members of Kevin Till to commemorate the beginning of a lasting legacy in his memory, the Kevin Till Memorial Rodeo Scholarship endowment at Trinity Valley Community College. Last fall I had the privilege of capturing Kevin and his family together just prior to his passing (posts are here, here, and here).

Here’s a few images from that afternoon …

If you would like to contribute to the Kevin Till Memorial Rodeo Scholarship fund, contact the TVCC Foundation at 903.670.2664.

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In honor of the little celebrated but federally recognized holiday today, I thought I’d preempt today’s original post to celebrate the presidents we normally think of on this date … Washington and Lincoln primarily as their birthdays are close (date-wise) to President’s Day itself.

… and in recognizing our past presidents, here’s a few images from one of the many places around our great nation recognizing former presidents I’ve had the fortune of visiting over the years …

The Lincoln Monument — west of Cheyenne, Wyoming on the old Lincoln Highway (modern day I-80). The monument is at the highest point on the transcontinental I-80.

A few weeks ago I announced the Giving is Awesome portraiture giveaway (details here) … and several nominations were received. Over the past couple of days, I along with a couple of elves agonized over which nominee to gift this custom portraiture session to … and this nomination was the one that kept tugging at us …

I recieved word from the chamber that you were offering a photo package to someone that could never afford such a blessing, so here is my nomination..

A wonderful young lady named Susan works at Classy Cuts (on south Hwy 19) is very deserving. On December 1st my wife needed her hair cut since she had just had her very first chemo treatment for breast cancer and was told she should have it cut short immediately in order to reduce the trauma of watching long her fall out. We had never step foot into Classy Cut before or ever met Susan before, but when it came time to pay she refused payment and offered her best wishes for my wife’s cancer cure.

During our time there we learned that she is 25 years old and has two precious children. It was also obvious that she had very little money and while I am sure she could see we had plenty of financial means to pay, she wanted to bless someone with cancer with the only gift she could give.

Please return the blessing to this very wonderful young lady. She certainly touched our hearts at a time needed most in our lives.

Thank you for your consideration,

Richard R

Congratulations Susan! And thank you Richard for helping us pay it forward this holiday season — we hope and pray your wife’s battle with breast cancer is successful as well.

… well, sorta.

Meet our self appointed session greeter/mascot and session crasher/living prop. It’s all him, not me, just ask last week’s session! Sneak peeks from the session to come in the new year … meanwhile this is a cropped/zoomed-in image as not to give anything else away other than the session crashing!

And this is my newest supervisor — she’s been a tough one too, not letting me out of her sight this last week. In fact, she’s sitting at my feet right now to guarantee I get back to work after three days off.

And … as promised, the winners of the last two Stocking Stuffer Giveaways …

December 23rd – A gift certificate for a premium 10×15 mounted print to use with your 2010 portrait session (full session or a Serendipity Session) — a $100 value … goes to … Kim!

December 24th — a complementary Serendipity Lite Session for Spring 2010 and a mounted 8×12 Artist’s Choice print ($160 value) … goes to … April!

Ladies, check your inboxes for an email with how to redeem/schedule your prize!

Thanks to those that entered — I know it was a busy week and many more would have entered if this had been a less chaotic/busy week, so I may do a similar giveaway at another point in the year for 2010.