Greg Smith continues Halloween Portrait tradition

On Friday night, nearly 300 people crossed the threshold of Feigel Photo to have their free Halloween picture taken by Phillips County resident photographer Greg Smith. Over the past five years, Smith has taken thousands of Halloween portraits and printed them off, gratis, for those who pose.

"It seems that we get about 30 new children in here each year to have their pictures taken," Smith said as he started to set up for the day's shoot.

Smith comes to photography easily as he is the grandson of Elmer Feigel, Phillips County's resident photographer for four decades starting in the 1950's and on through the 1980's. Smith said that Grandpa Feigel introduced him to photography at the age of six when the two would shoot photos in black and white and then develop them in Feigel's darkroom.

"I don't miss the darkroom," Smith joked, referring to how photography has changed over the past 20 years.

In the five years Smith has been snapping Halloween portraits, he said Brayden Rhoads – son of KMMR's Travis Rhoads – still holds the honor of sporting the best costume he has seen.

"He was dressed as Gene Simmons (bassist for rock group Kiss)" said Smith. "He was dressed as him in 2011."

Smith has archived all the Halloween pictures he has taken over the past half-decade and as he rifles through the files he can show how people – adults and children alike – have changed in the time span.

After the night of Halloween portraits, Smith spends the next handful of hours printing the pictures and placing them on several of the tables that occupy the Crossroads Coffee House in Malta waiting to be retrieved by their rightful owners.

Though photography runs through Smith's veins, he admits that he took next to no pictures through the 1990's, he didn't take many pictures and when he did they were generally snapped with throwaway, disposable cameras. It was because of his first love, Rock and Roll music, that he got back into photography.

"I got to (Rock) festivals all around the country," Smith said. "When I first started going to these festivals and taking pictures I also started upgrading my cameras and I progressively got better."

The main festival that Smith shoots is the Rockin' The Rivers Festival which he also helps book talent for and promotes. Held over three and half days in August, Rockin' The Rivers is the biggest rock festival held in the Northwest, housed in Three Forks, and this years had such Rock legends as Lita Ford, Winger and Jefferson Starship grace the stage.

"I shoot for myself, but I have also had a lot of my pictures featured in other places," Smith said.

But when he isn't snapping rock bands, Smith can be seen, behind the lens, at nearly all Phillips County events chronicling the history of the area and when he isn't shooting those events he hires on to photograph weddings, senior portraits, family events as well as doing photo restorations and slide shows.

Smith and Julia Johnson run both Feigel Photo and the Crossroads Coffee house kitty-corner from Albertsons, but the Halloween portraits started about a year before they moved to the new (ish) location.

"Someone posted the Halloween portrait on a web forum I read and I thought it was a neat idea," he said. "Now, five years later, we are still doing it and still enjoying it."