George Ferguson: Colin captured Havre, Hi-Line sports like few ever have

Often times, people say: “You don’t know what you got until it’s gone”. It happens to all of us from time to time.

In the case of my friend, and now former Havre Daily News photographer Colin Thompson — I knew what I had the entire time he worked here.

I knew from literally the first shoot he did for me once he arrived here from Minot, North Dakota, that, we got very lucky with Colin. His sports photos were outstanding right off the bat, even sports he hadn’t shot before.

Colin came to the HDN six years ago, and jumped right in, shooting fall sports that year, and from there, we never looked back.

For me, as a sports editor, Colin turned out to be a dream come true. Whether it was football and basketball, curling, swimming, rodeo, motorcycles, golf and everything in between, Colin nailed it. And I told him so. Of course, artists are always their own worst critic, and Colin was hard on his own work but, from where I sat, he was one of the best sports photographers I’ve ever seen, and his awards speak to that.

It wasn’t just Colin’s skill, and his eye, though, it was his work ethic that set him apart.

The Havre Daily News may be a smaller paper, but we cover a lot, and those of you who follow sports know just how much we pack into our paper every single week. Add to that my desire as a sports editor to make sure we get photos of every single local sporting event that we cover live, and, it makes the job of our photographer very demanding.

And yet, Colin did it all. He could shoot three or four games in a night, two football games on the weekend, he could shoot state wrestling all by himself, or the entire District 9C Tournament all on his own, and no matter how much he worked, no matter how grueling the job was, he produced some of the best sports images this newspaper has ever seen. Colin simply delivered time and time again, and even when he branched out to general news, portraits and more, the results were always the same — high quality work.

Again, I knew how lucky I was to find Colin, and our community knew it too.

For six years, Colin captured the best of what sports were about in our area, and it was fitting that his last shoot was the Havre High girls historic run to another state championship. Like the girls did this season, Colin went out with a bang,

Now though, Colin is off to retirement and looking for knew things to pursue. Normally, when someone that has the longevity Colin did here at the HDN, I ask them to write a goodbye column, but that isn’t his way. While Colin immersed himself into our community, and was such an important and integral part of the HDN, it’s just not his style to talk about himself, let alone write about it.

So I’m doing it for him.

I know, while I’m sure he’ll enjoy retirement, Colin will miss Havre, he’ll miss the Hi-Line, and he’ll especially miss capturing the amazing sports we have to offer around here. On the flip side of that, I know all of you will miss him and his amazing images, too.

Me, though, I’ll miss Colin most of all. He’s been a one-of-a-kind photographer, a great co-worker, and above all, a good friend.

I appreciate everything he did for our newspaper over the last six years, and I can only hope, in our search for our next photographer that we can find someone even half as talented as Colin is. If we do that, we’ll be just fine, because that’s how truly great Colin has been.

So thank you Colin Thompson. Thank you for everything you did for me, for the Havre Daily and for our community. On behalf of our newspaper, Havre, and the Hi-Line, we’ll all miss you.