The other day, I shared a link to my personal Facebook page where a friend/client is using some of my photos for an online modeling competition called “Ms. Starts and Stripes“. Turns out I have three friends and two clients who have entered the competition. Jessica McGee, Cambry Thurmon, and Charlotte Rockett are all in the competition to be “Ms. Stars and Stripes”. The winner gets $25,000 a magazine spread in STAR Magazine and will act as a spokesperson for a year traveling to events like like the PBR and others
Jessica McGee
Cambry Thurmon
To win, competitors submit photos and a bio where they solicit votes from friends through social media. Each competitor gets one free vote each day and can buy extra votes to raise money for a charity. In this case, the charity is American Royal, a Kansas City based nonprofit that hosts rodeo and equine events as well as does a lot of Ag education outreach.
This is not my first involvement with this type of contest. Last year, I did some photos for Santanna Mitchell who competed in the “Ms. Health and Fitness” competition. It had the same format but was based around fitness and supported a first responders charity.
However, there have been some questions raised about whether these competitions and charities are on the up and up. Some of the information online appears vague and the competition asks for credit card information which kind of raises some red flags for many. If my photos are going to be involved with something and if I’m going to ask my friends to help vote or support something, I wanted to make absolutely sure that it is in fact legit. So, I did some digging.
First, I looked all over the websites for clues as to who is connected with the organization. I found two contacts other than the organization itself to verify what was online. First I contacted American Royal. They were aware of the competition but their PR person had only been with them for a couple of months and wasn’t fully up to speed yet on the exact ins and outs of the competition or fundraising efforts but told me a company called Colossal is involved with the competition. They are in effect the “operator” of these types of competitions. Colossal is a for-profit online marketing company. They take a percentage of the funds raised, but I believe around 70-75% of the funds raised go to the chosen charity.
After going through the Colossal website and social pages, I had more questions than answers because everything was recently posted. But I found that they were connected with a non-profit organization called DTCare. I left a voicemail with them asking for information.
I then reached out to Natalie Kovarik via e-mail. Natalie is listed as the host of the competition. Natalie is an influencer in the ranching/agriculture world with a large Instagram following. However, I didn’t immediately see any connection between here and the competition. I didn’t hear back from Natalie directly, but just a short time after e-mailing her, I received an e-mail directly from the MS Stars and Stripes organization.
Natalie had obviously forwarded my e-mail to them because they knew that I had contacted both Natalie and the American Royal. I still had a few questions in my mind, but the e-mail confirmed that a lot of what was going on was in fact legitimate. I responded to their e-mail and I did have a few more serious questions that I was looking for answers to.
I guess my due diligence had set off a fire within the organization because the next day, not only did I hear from the Ms. Stars and Stripes organization, but I’m pretty sure I received phone calls from virtually everyone involved in any level of the organization. The first phone calls that I got were from DTCare.
DTCare is a US-based charity also doing some cool charity work overseas in Poland, Ukraine, and other regions. I’m not an accountant so I don’t exactly understand this part, but I believe for some tax purposes, the funds raised pass through another nonprofit partner called DTCare. I don’t think DTCare is using any of the funds but DTcare is then passing the funds on to the American Royal or whatever the chosen charity is for the competition. While on the phone I got to speak directly to one of DTCare’s accountants and another Administrative staffer who filled me in on so much of what DTCare is doing and specifically how they work with Colossal.
Next, I received a phone call from a guy from Ms. Stars and Strips competition. He went over all of the concerns I’d raised about the organization, the Ms. Health and Fitness competition, and several other similar competitions/fundraisers that they work with. They have now been running these types of events for the past 8 years.
Before the day was over I got a call from the founder of DTCare. We had a great conversation about how the organization works and other things they are involved with.
I can say that I’ve never had so many people act so quickly and so fully address concerns with any organization. After all of this, to the best of my knowledge, Yes, this is a legit competition. It is a legit charity. If you are so inclined, go vote for one of these girls and help a charity. I don’t remember exactly how far or how much money has been raised through them, but I do know that last year, Santanna Mitchell made it pretty far in the competition last year.
If I can help anyone build their personal brand or help a charity with my photos, I’d love to work with you.
Thank you parents for choosing us and trusting us to shoot your baseball players photos. We had a lot of fun with them. While there are similarities between photos, It was my goal to create some cool, creative photos for each team and each player. Hopefully we succeeded in that goal.
You can view all of the photos in our Photo Galleries page, but I pulled a few of my favorites. I hope you like them.
If you have any questions about photos, orders, or would like to find out how to work with us in the future, give us a holler, we’d love to help you.
After last nights cool front here in Arkansas, its finally fall. It feels amazing outside this morning. There are lots of fall posts on social media and people gearing up for fall photo sessions as well as fall hunting seasons that are getting underway. In celebration, I felt like I needed to post a fall photo or two to social media. As I was going through fall photos to share, I’ve got plenty of fall landscape photos but they say one of the keys to improving your landscape photography is placing people in your images. Although I didn’t know her long, this lady is one of my people. Her name is Ann Clark.
Who was Ann Clark?
In the fall of 2015, I got to meet Ann when I was asked to film a deer hunt with “some old lady” in Arkansas. I’m pretty sure those were the exact words Bill first used to describe her in the first phone call. His old high school basketball coach Arden Chapman had set the hunt up and the story of how that all happened is pretty involved on its own but Bills first words were pretty honest after all since she was 90 something at the time. I honestly didn’t know who she was at the time either. I had to google her. Sorry Mrs Ann.
I soon learned that Ann was one of the pioneers of the outdoor industry. She was one of the first of what we would now call a “pro staff” member of an outdoor company. She is a founding member of the Archery Hall of Fame. Her display cases are one of the first things you see when you walk into the museum at the Bass Pro Shop in Springfield MO. Long before names like Michael Waddell, Jim Shockey, or Eva Shockey or for that matter any of the other big names in the modern outdoor hunting industry were even born, Ann Clark was paving the way. Her contemporaries were mostly men like Fred Bear, Ben Pearson or Earl and Ann Hoyt.
Ann said she got started in archery when she and her former husband started a sporting goods store in Cincinnati, OH called Clark’s Archery and Sports Center. They didn’t have all of the archery options that we have to day so her husband tried to make a long bow fit her by cutting a section off of both ends to make it shorter and shorten the draw length. She said it was like shooting a broom stick. It’s a wonder she kept shooting but she did. And she got good too.
Its a Mental Game
Ann Clark became a competitive archery shooter as well as a bow hunter. She told me she had seen in various publications that Ann Webber Hoyt from Hoyt Archery was the person to beat. She was good and was winning all of the matches. At her first big match she found out she was going to be standing on the shooting line next to Ann Hoyt. Ann Hoyt was very intimidating, but in the middle of that match Ann Clark realized that she wasn’t competing against Ann Hoyt she was competing against herself. She said “Archery is a mental game and I couldn’t allow myself to be distracted by how Ann Hoyt or anyone else was shooting, I had to focus on my own target. The scores of Ann Hoyt or other competitors didn’t matter. It was only my personal score that mattered.”
“Archery is a mental game and I couldn’t allow myself to be distracted by how Ann Hoyt or anyone else was shooting, I had to focus on my own target.”
Ann Clark
Mic drop, que the music. Let me re-state that so the world can hear it again. It doesn’t matter what anyone else is doing. You focus on you and being the best person that you can be. You can’t change other people you can only change you. You can’t worry about how many likes, shares, or comments someone else gets. You have to focus on you. It doesn’t matter how much money someone else makes. You have to focus on you. I wish today’s world could get that. You can’t even worry about who else has the vaccine that’s all over the news today. All you have to worry about is you and being the best person you can be.
I can’t remember for sure if she said she’d beaten Ann Hoyt in that first match but Ann Clark scored the highest score she’d ever achieved that day. The two Anns became the closest of friends after that day. I believe they actually lived together for a while in their later years before Ann Hoyt Passed away.
As I mentioned before, She became a pro staffer for Ben Pearson Archery. Ben Pearson Archery was one of the first companies to market themselves with pro staff members. It was especially unique to have a woman like Ann Clark doing the job, but she did it well.
Ann’s daughter Debbie was also an accomplished archer
Images courtesy Ben Pearson family archives
She toured sports shows as she called them and did archery exhibitions in schools and other events all over the country. Here she demonstrates how she used to shoot a balloon from an assistant’s mouth. Can you imagine? She said she stopped doing this when a student popped a popcorn bag right before she shot. No one was ever hurt in her performances but she said she didn’t need that kind of excitement anymore.
Ann Clark demonstrating how her assistant would hold a balloon for her to shoot. No seriously!!
She had spunk like few others that I have known. I got to film her last two hunts with her before she passed away. She had moved to a crossbow instead of her traditional archery equipment. But she could still hunt.
Hunt at Longbow
For the first of the two hunts we would be hunting at the historic Long Bow Resort in Prim, Arkansas. It would be a fitting hunt since this property was originally her friend Ben Person’s farm and is now owned and operated by his son Ben Person Jr. Its a beautiful property with some of the coolest cabins and waterfalls and especially that fall, it was some of the best fall color I’ve ever seen.
We met Ann and her daughter Debbie at the Little Rock airport. A representative from the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission was there to personally present Mrs Ann with her hunting license. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never had that happen to me. For a lot of people, if a representative from the Game and Fish commission is there, someone has some questions to answer. Mrs Ann though was plumb royalty and it was proof that we were hunting with the Queen bee of archery.
After a short stop at Mikes Place in Conway, for dinner, we made our way on up to Prim, Arkansas where we arrived at longbow resort and were met by Ben Pearson Jr. Lots of old stories were told among these old friends as we toured the property and got situated in our cabins.
Rainy weather settled in the next morning and for most of our hunt. Ann and Debbie were staying in their own cabin and well before daylight we went to pick her up for our morning hunt. When we pulled up, Mrs Ann was already standing outside in the rain when we arrived waiting on us. She was ready. After quite a long sit that morning, we hadn’t seen much but squirrels, Mrs Ann mentioned that she needed to take a break and visit the little girls room. Bill and I trying to be gentleman and me thinking of my own 90 year old grandmother, I said I would run and get the UTV and get her back to the cabin and end the hunt for the morning. She looked at Bill and I and said, no honey, if you’ll just help me get our of this blind, I’ll walk into the woods behind the blind.
Yes Ma’am. And she did. A few minutes later, she came back to the blind and we hunted in the rain for a couple more hours. I know a lot of women these days who would not have done that. Heck, I was ready to end the hunt myself after several ours in the cold rain and not seeing much. Mrs. Ann was not average.
Bill and I cooked dinner for everyone the next night and somehow during conversation, the subject of dancing came up. In my past, I had learned to west cost swing dance. Upon hearing this, the next thing I know Debbie has pulled out her phone a turned on some music. She wanted to learn. I don’t claim to be the best dancer in the world but I showed Debbi a little and then Mrs Ann was not going to let her daughter out do her so I got to twirl Mrs Ann around the floor a few rounds. I swear I’m not making this stuff up. If you know them I’m telling you these ladies are a lot of fun to be around and it’s obvious that with Debbie, the acorn did not fall far from the tree.
Although we hunted hard, we did not get a chance to take a deer with her. However, Bill Petrus has a camp at Davis island in Louisiana which is know for some great white tail deer action. Mrs. Ann and debbie would be visiting family in Louisiana for Thanksgiving so we invited them to make another hunt with us in Louisiana at that time.
Louisiana Hunt at Davis Island
Now Bills show is called T.P. Outdoors Adventures. If you’ve never hunted an island on the mighty Mississippi river, just getting there can be a much bigger adventure than most people ever experience. Fluctuating river levels mean sometimes you can boat all the way in to the camp. Other times, you have to boat across a small section of the river to a sandbar and UTV the rest of the way. During the summer at low water, you can actually drive all the way. Some people even choose to fly in via helicopter or small airplane on a grass strip. It doesn’t matter if you have the nicest equipment, there are always equipment breakdowns in getting there. (although hopefully not with aircraft)
This trip would be boating part way and UTVing across the sandbar and a mile or two on back to the camp. However, it was cold and the wind was howling. The water level was to high to drive in, but almost to low to boat in. Still Mrs Ann and Mrs Debbie loaded up into a boat and were ready for the adventure.
Now remember we are trying to get 6 people including a 90 year old lady plus a dog across the Mississippi river via boat in a blowing late November cold front. After some trouble getting the boat all the way to the sand bar, Mrs Ann still had not had enough adventure so she and Bill set off doing donuts on the massive dunes of the Mississippi river sandbar in the UTV like kids on spring break. We then got everyone loaded up and headed to the camp for the hunt.
Davis island gets its name because in the 1800’s this was part of Jefferson Davis’s family plantation. Currently the island is not owned by one individual but is divided into a small handful of hunting clubs and some private individuals. It’s known for some incredible whitetail hunting due to its habitat created by the Mississippi flood plain. But even with the best habitat and genetics, If deer aren’t allowed to reach maturity you’ll never have a quality deer heard. Davis Island has all of the above due to very strict harvest policies designed to allow deer to reach maturity.
For this hunt in particular, we would be hunting on some private land. The land owner was willing to allow us to take a deer for Mrs Ann that didn’t quite make the normal criteria in the adjacent clubs given the circumstances of the hunt. He had one exception. We could not shoot one deer that he estimated to be 4 1/2 years old. He had been watching this deer and wanted to see what he was as a 5 1/2 year old which was the typical criteria.
The night before our hunt, Bill Petrus and I left to go setup a blind for the next mornings hunt. When we got to the area, we walked through the woods with just a dim light and we could hear the most awful crashing and clanging racket in the direction we were headed. Not 50 yards in front of us, there were two bucks going at it. It was the fight of the century and they could care less that we were even there. Other deer moved about watching the action and we watched for a minute before they finaly moved away. We were sure the next morning would be good.
A little after daylight we noticed a deer coming our direction. It was a good deer. Mrs Ann looked at Bill eager for him to hand her her crossbow, but Mrs Ann wasn’t aware of the deer on our no shoot list. He had to make sure this wasn’t the deer. We watched him come all the way in and stand there for what seemed like forever presenting the perfect shot for Mrs Ann to take. She was looking at us and the deer wondering just how big the deer have to get to shoot down here and knowing she could easily take the shot but Bill never handed her the bow. He was all but positive this was the deer on our don’t shoot list.
Bill took pictures of the deer and tried his best to send it to the land owner for verification or approval to shoot. However cell service is very spotty on the remote island. The txt messages wouldn’t go through. Knowing how many deer there were on the island and yet being unsure about this specific deer, Bill couldn’t give the green light to shoot. He never handed Mrs Ann her bow.
It was truly crushing for everyone to not get to shoot this deer. Bill had given his word to the landowner so we had abide by his rules. It was a judgment call that had to be made and you have to respect that but everyone wanted Mrs Ann to be able to take this deer. Knowing the number of deer on the island, surely there would be other deer. They never came. We’d missed our opportunity to take a deer for this trip.
I’m sure she was frustrated and disappointed as were we, but she was a sportsman and understood that we had rules we had to follow even if we didn’t like them and wanted to bend them a little. We didn’t. Instead we planned to do another hunt the following year.
Future Plans
At the beginning of December of that year, I’d been working in Texas and on my way home I got a call from my dad saying that I’d received a package. He hadn’t opened it but had placed it inside. When I got home several hours later, I opened it and it was from Mrs Ann and Debbie. They had sent me ice cream. I’m so glad I made it home before it thawed. I had no clue you could even ship ice cream like this. We’d spoken on the phone and she wanted me to attend the next Hall Of Fame induction dinner with her. A series of events happened and I was not able to attend the dinner at the Hall of Fame Induction that year. I ended up working because honestly, I couldn’t afford to make the trip. I needed the money from work. I hoped and made plans to make the dinner the next year and spoke to her and Debbie frequently on the phone and through e-mail and social media in the mean time.
The bible says in Proverbs 16:9 “The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.” Even though we’d made plans God had different plans. You and I are not entitled to tomorrow. Mrs Ann passed away due to a heart attack before the next years hunt or the Hall of Fame Dinner. Not making that dinner with her or getting her a deer was one of my bigger regrets in life.
Mrs Ann’s words about shooting and focusing on your own target ring true on so many levels. Each and everyone of us will have to stand before God and answer for our actions one day. Being raised in church won’t save you, having Godly parents won’t save you. Having others pray for you won’t help you either. Being a good person won’t save you because we all have failed at some point. One sin requires punishment. But Jesus Christ made a way that each and every one of us can follow him and place our full faith in him and just like when Mrs Ann was greeted at the airport terminal by the game and fish commission, Jesus Stands waiting on us to accept him as he vouches for us before Holy God saying She’s with me. He’s one of mine. Come with me. It helps to know people but you have to focus on your own target. If you have any questions about this, feel free to contact me.
Every fall since our hunts in 2015, I’ve thought of Mrs Ann and Debbie and the fun we had on these hunts. I still try to stay in touch with Debbie and think of them often. But until we meet again, Mrs Ann, “I’ll see you at the Hall of Fame.”
Spring means one thing for seniors. School is almost over.
Over the next couple of weeks, we will be wrapping up the last of our senior photo sessions for this year. If you have not gotten on the schedule and need a couple more last minute shots contact me and let’s get together sooner rather than later. If I can help you with your photo order I’m happy to help you anytime.
Below are just a few shoots from this year’s senior sessions.
Taylor GreerColt JonesBrice Jerry Julia GoodwinJason Flournoy
Glynn and Mindy Kiper are North East Louisiana farmers with a passion for shooting sports. Like a lot of hobbies tend to do, their love of shooting the various disciplines of sporting clays grew into a business. They first built skeet and trap fields on a section of their farm near Mangham, Louisiana but were soon introduced to the sport of Helice shooting.
Helice shooting is an off shoot of live pigeon shoots that were popular for a time across Europe. Helice or ZZ birds as some call it, is some what similar to trap although 5 different target throwers with random presentations replace one trap machine. Helice targets are also not made of Clay used in traditional sporting clays targets. Instead they are made of orange plastic propellers with a center white cap. When a target is called for, the targets are already spinning and a single random target is released. If the shooter hits the target, the white center cap must be knocked free and fall within a ring or fence marked on the ground.
From the random nature of the targets to the materials used, All of these factors create a target that flys more like a live bird than any other form of competitive shooting. Where as a Trap tournament may require hundreds of targets to declare a winner, Helice tournaments are typically decided with just 30 targets.
Project details
Current Video Work
Cottonland Gun Club now features four Helice rings of their own as well as Skeet, Trap, and soon a traditional Sporting Clays range. They’ve grown and continues to be one of the nations leading Helice tournament locations. The spring 2021 Helice Open tournament sanctioned by the US Helice Association was held at Cottonland Gun Club. Below is our most recent video produced for Cottonland Gun Club which features this event.
Early Video Production
Starting in 2014, Riverbank Products was asked to film a short video highlighting a Helice tournament held at Kiper farms. The video was, at the time, one of the few Helice videos that could be found online. There were only aproximately four Helice rings found in the US. Since then, the sport of Helice has grown as has the Cottonland Gun club.
Website Management
In 2020, Cottonland Gun Club’s website had become very dated and was due for a refresh. Mindy Kiper contacted us and we began developing a new web presence for their business. The new website incorporates their branding and provides better information, about the Shooting Range and upcoming events. Riverbank Products was also able to take current photos from their events. This makes sure guests actually know what to expect when planning to visit for their next tournament.
Event Photos
Riverbank Products also takes great action shots and event photos. Below are a few of the images caputured from the 2021 Spring Helice Open Tournament.
Do you need help promoting your business? From Photography and Video creation to print and web content, Riverbank Products can help you better market your business and reach your customers.
