The folks at the Strathmore Wheatland Chamber of Commerce (SWCC) liked the parade shots I did for them earlier in the year enough that they asked me to return to shoot their annual Chamber awards. It was the same arrangement as before. I didn’t ask for any $$$, but told them if they felt the work had value, please make a donation to the local food bank, which they did.


The lighting was awful. Freakin’ awful. I wound up shooting at ISO 8000, which meant noise. It also meant that my normally deadly accurate autofocus on my Canon EOS R5 was struggling hard to decide what to lock onto. I’m still working on the images, but I think I walked away with enough shots.
There were two high points of the evening for me. The first is that I ate ahead of time and stayed out of the buffet. All-you-can-eat buffets are my personal Kryptonite for weight gain so I’m better off abstaining. That was a win. The other win for the evening was seeing Denise, the owner of Lil Hoots, get the small biz award. Every small town has a person it cannot function without and Denise fills that role in Strathmore.
Annual free used bike giveaway for kids? At her store. Annual kid’s farmer’s market? At her store. The awesome Night Market? She helped organize it. Are you a struggling young mom who needs free clothing or formula for your infant? Lil Hoots probably has that for you. If something cool is happening around town it’s pretty much a given Denise is there somewhere working hard and motivating others to do the same. She deserves every bit of recognition she gets.

Images either from my Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra phone or my Canon EOS R5.