A look back at 10 years of Spokesman-Review Christmas Cards
Each year, we like to celebrate the holiday season with a Christmas card for our readers that showcases the best of the Inland Northwest, from the Spokane Falls to the Ice Ribbon.
This year, photographers captured No-Li owners John and Cindy Bryant as Mr. and Mrs. Claus alongside elves and Spokesman-Review interns Cannon Barnett and Mathew Callaghan.
This tradition began in 2016, when then-new Editor Rob Curley asked newspaper photographers to come up with a Christmas card photo for Christmas Day’s Page 1, and the staff was up to the challenge. Longtime S-R columnist Shawn Vestal played Santa. Photographer Colin Mulvany and photo editor Liz Kishimoto took Curley on a downtown tour and found a scene of city lights along the Centennial Trail in Kendall Yards.
Starting a fire next to the trail is illegal, then-Spokane Fire Chief Brian Schaeffer confirmed, but the photographers kept the fire small and doused it once Mulvany got the shot. With props, a generator, a tree and other equipment, it was all hands on deck with Jesse Tinsley, Dan Pelle, Molly Quinn, Kimberly Lusk and Mary Beth Donelan. The greatest difficulty was keeping 8-year-old elf, Eliza Manz, warm. It was so cold that at the end of the photo shoot, the cup of milk had frozen.
Another year, photographers went so far as the top of the iconic Spokesman-Review tower.
The photo idea came from Tinsley, the newspaper’s drone pilot, after a new federal rule in 2017 allowed drone pilots to get licenses for commercial use.
Work rules required at least two climbers on the outside of the building, so while Travis Green and Geoff Morris suited up as Santa and an elf and climbed out of the Review tower, a DJI Mavic Pro quadcopter lifted off from an adjacent Spokesman-Review building, flew to the Review Tower and snapped a photo of the pair, attached with safety lines to their ladders, hanging off the 140-foot 1891 Review Tower with the city in the background.
To watch a behind-the-scenes video of this year’s Christmas card photo shoot by Brian Plonka, visit facebook.com/spokesmanreview.