The above image is one my favorites that I have made. There are several reasons. First and foremost, that is how I composed it. This was not a full length shot of Chris (the Dad) and his daughter Lola which I then cropped. I purposely went in for that look because Lola at the time was fascinated with the little of sand and rocks she had on her hand. It just so happened that both of them started to take a step at the same time when I shot this frame. So his left foot and her right foot have a little bit of motion blur which I love.

Before I go further, please know that Chris is a firefighter here in Palm Coast. Right now there are wildfires in the area that are being fought day and night by guys like Chris. Please keep him and the other firefighters in your prayers.

Another reason I love this image is because to me, it represents what our relationship with God should be like. Notice that Lola isn’t concerned with her surroundings. She is confident in what she is doing because she is holding Chris’s hand. That’s what it should be like with us and the Lord. There are a bunch of different things going on in my life right now that I can’t talk about (but I will at some point) and my wife asked me about a situation and asked, “What is keeping us from doing that?” and I immediately answered, “Fear.”

But we shouldn’t have to be fearful. We should all be like Lola in that photo. Confident that our heavenly Father is watching over us and guiding us.

Joshua 1:9 says, “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”

If you have been keeping up with my blog, you know I am going to Togo, Africa in August with a missions team. There are 12 of us going. While I have raised a good portion of the money (and I have been blown away by the generosity people have shown), I am still looking to raise more. It’s the hardest part of doing this trip.

I wanted to think of a way to ask people to donate and do so in a way that it would be a benefit to them or to others in more way than one.

Part of why I am taking the trip to Africa is to help document the trip with photographs and video. What I would also like to do, is offer up my services for a family by doing a full portrait session for one.

Some of you are local and can take advantage of this opportunity yourself. Others however, live all around the country and may not be able connect with me to do so. However, you can provide that opportunity for a family in need. Here is what I am proposing:

A Drawing For A Family Portrait Shoot

For a $10 donation, your name will be entered in a drawing for me to do this family portrait session. If you can donate $15, your name will be entered twice. For a donation of $20, it will be entered three times.

For those of you that are local, you can enter for yourself or give the gift certificate to a family member or friend.

For those of you who are not local, your gift certificate will be given to a family (our church is aware of those families who could benefit from this) in need and provide them with something they may not have been able to take advantage of otherwise.

Below is a Paypal button. Enough of your information will be provided when you donate. Please indicate in the notation area the following:

Mission Trip Photo Shoot Drawing

This way I am certain of why you are issuing that donation. I appreciate any support you can give and please, if you have a Facebook account, Twitter account, or a blog, please pass this on.

Thanks!

Every once in awhile, you get a phone call, email or text message out of the blue that totally takes you by surprise. I was on the receiving end of one of those recently.

For those that know about me, they know I’m a big fan of photographer, Chase Jarvis. He’s an excellent photographer, but my respect for him goes far beyond his work. Despite being a very successful commercial photographer with a client base that includes Apple, Reebok, Volvo, Microsoft, and others, Chase is really open to the photographic community.

He’s posted helpful videos, challenges the community creatively, and has no problem sharing with the community at large how he runs his business and what goes on behind the scenes at his Seattle studio. It’s this kind of open conversation that I believe benefits everybody in the long run.

He also spearheaded CreativeLive, a resource that provides 1-3 workshops on a variety of creative outlets from some of the top people in their business. The best part is that if you watch live, it is 100% free. The downloads of the workshops are discounted if you purchase before they event is over. I have some money invested in workshops taught by Zack Arias and Jeremy Cowart that should have cost me far more than I paid.

A few days after Thanksgiving, I received an email from somebody on Chase’s staff asking me for my address. They were sending me an autographed copy of Chase’s newly released book, Seattle 100. I hadn’t inquired about it or asked about it at all. I’ve written several blog posts about Chase over at ChurchCreate.com so I suspect some of it came out of that in addition and I’m sure too that others benefited from Chase’s generosity in this regard as well.

It was just a very nice gesture on his part and I am already enjoying going through the book. Check it out. There is more info here about it. All proceeds Jarvis gets from this book will go to 4Culture.org

Nothing this weekend is worth discussing beyond Help Portrait. Go over to the other site to read about that!

Had a senior photo shoot this weekend. That’s Rachel. Rachel is no stranger. I have known her for 5 years as Sylvia and I are close friends with her parents, Sue & Dave. In fact, it was Sue was instrumental in getting us back into church by inviting us to the very church we had started to attend nearly 7 years earlier. Small world. Lots of fun on this shoot.

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The Giants blew it. I think they thought beating the Dallas Cowboys was foregone conclusion (as I am sure most people did). Instead Jon Kitna forgot he was Jon Kitna for one week and went 13-22 for 327 yards and 3 touchdowns en route to a 33-20 victory. That is an ugly stat for the Giants defense because it works out to an average of nearly 25 yards per completion. The backbreaking play was the Cowboys conversion of a 3rd and 22 in the third quarter. The Giants had just scored to make it 26-13 and in this series, the Giants defense seemed to have awakened. A holding penalty on the Boys had them in a tight spot. Kitna proceeded to hit Roy Williams with a 27 yard pass. They scored on the next play (a 24 yard score) making it 33-13. It was bad week for the Giants secondary and a very good week for the Cowboys offensive line who seemed to give Kitna all day to throw.

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Ok, so I picked up ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops’ over the weekend. I am not a big fan of first person shooters for the most part, but the Call of Duty series is one of my favorite. I’ve purchased and played every game in the series. Contrary to what you might think, given the title, COD: Black Ops is not an extension of the Modern Warfare games which I found somewhat disappointing. Instead, this game takes you back to the height of the Cold War and plays out as a series of flashbacks. Rather than go into an in depth review, I will just list the good and the bad:

The Good

a. Fast paced action as one would expect from these games
b. Despite my disappointment at it being a throwback game, the story line is excellent and the voice acting is very well done
c. Graphics are smooth and fluid. No stuttering at any point.
d. Lots of different in-mission things you must do – rappel, ride motorcycles, blow up tanks, take out launched missile, etc.

The Bad

a. Lousy AI. Your guys are supposed to be the best, but it’s not uncommon for an enemy to stroll right past your guys and get to you. I mean, it is really frustrating at times it is so bad. Hopefully, there will be a patch to do something about this because it is a major flaw.

b. Dated graphics. While the graphics are very smooth and play well, but overall, it doesn’t seem to be much of a step up from Call of Duty: World At War.

c. Fire is almost always aimed directly at you. And you better make sure you are in complete cover. Your team can basically be standing up waving their arms and you’re down behind a wall in a fetal position and still take most of the fire. You better not have a toe sticking out from behind a wall because they’ll get you.

d. Constant barrage of enemies. This wouldn’t be such a big deal if the AI was better, but this just makes it that much more frustrating to move through certain areas.

If you’re a big fan of online play, then you’ll probably want to buy this as I am sure as with other versions, the online play is great. However, if you’re mostly into single player, I would actually suggest just renting this and saving yourself the $60.

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I’ve talked about ditching cable so many times, but we never did. But now we are going to do so. Apple TV was an option, but $99 for streaming only (and the offerings are limited to Netflix, iTunes and whatever is in your iTunes library), a limitation of 720p for HD and no ability to connect to standard definition televisions makes it a no go. We’re going to try out the Roku box. It has so much more to offer in terms of content than Apple TV. Check it out. $10 per month for Netflix and $10 per month for Hulu plus will save us about $60-$70 a month and we won’t miss any of the shows we watch.

That’s Tom & Meghan.

Last week, I told you about Jared & Eryn. They’re a “six degrees” couple that I connected with on Twitter via Chris who I connected with via John. Those stories are to come.

Tom and I hit it off pretty fast. We’re both heavy into sarcasm. We enjoy the same music and many of the same movies. Though Tom worries me with his affinity for musicals which I cannot stand. Tom is a software engineer and web developer. If you write code, be sure to check out Church Code, which Tom edits.

His lovely wife Meghan is currently a nanny and a budding photographer (Hooray!) and is great at playing along when everybody is giving Tom grief on Twitter.

I met the two of them back in May and spent quite a decent amount of time with them. We all hung out one night having dinner and drinking some coffee and then the next morning, we did a photo shoot and had a blast (that’s one of the images above). Unfortunately, we didn’t get to spend as much time with them as we would have liked when we up there for Catalyst thanks in part to the crappy Internet speeds we had to deal with at the arena. Oh well. We’ll see them again, I’m sure.

It’s been great getting to know them and I’m happy to call them friends. Here’s a better…well maybe not better because the image above is awesome but a more conventional image of them.

Great discussion over at Church IT over whether or not jailbreaking (for those not familiar with the term, to “jail break” an iPhone is to essentially unlock it so that many applications that Apple has not approved can still be used on the phone) is illegal and/or unethical. Also discusses software piracy in ministry. There is also a discussion about the practice of “fair use” when it comes to using copyrighted material. Good stuff.

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Just to show how far the United States has come in success at the Winter Olympics we can go back 22 years to the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. The United States had a total of 6 medals. Throughout the 70′s, 80′s and early 90′s the Soviet Union and Germany would dominate medal counts. This year, the United States won the most medals with 37. Canada has vastly improved as well. In 1988 (with the games held in Calgary), the Canadians failed to win a single gold medal. This year, they led all countries with 14 gold medals.

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Does Johnny Damon think anybody took him seriously when he said, “After four years, I’m finally a Tiger.”?

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When I first started watching ’24′ on DVD (I watched the first three seasons on DVD as I didn’t watch prior to that), I would stay up sometimes until 2:00am in the morning on a weekday in order to see what was happening next. It’s sad to say that I am watching this season, and I am watching with less and less interest each week. I just don’t think there is anything the writers can do anymore that can keep us on the edge of our seats.

Also, could there be any more of a lame sub-plot than the one with the woman that plays Dana and Freddie Prinze Jr.? These two characters hold important positions at CTU, yet they’re able to dispose of dead bodies and take off for a few hours and they’re pretty much forgotten, despite the fact that terrorists are looking to blow up some nukes in NYC.

I don’t think ’24′ is going to be really great again until the final season. That’s when they can let it all hang out because it won’t be coming back.

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Tom and the gang are talking about Harry Potter books and movies over here. I couldn’t take part in that conversation because I haven’t read any of the books, nor have I seen any of the movies. Never saw ‘The Simpsons’ either. I know more people that never saw the movie ’29th Street’ and that’s a bigger crime, so there.

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I don’t get too political here on this blog, but Senator Jim Bunning has been under all kinds of harsh attacks because he is holding up a spending bill in the United States Senate. Bunning has stated he is not opposed to extending unemployment benefits for people, but this bill has a price tag of $10 billion and all he is requesting is that it be paid for. As it stands right now, it would be money already added to an absurdly high deficit. Bunning said the money could easily be taken from stimulus funds that have not been spent. Why is this such a big deal?

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It’s Bike Week here in this area. After getting back into photography seriously over 2 years ago, it’s rather pathetic that I haven’t been out covering this event as the many photo opportunities are off the chart. So this year, I will be out there.

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You ever get the feeling that some social media “stars” so to speak could do or say anything and they would immediately be met with a roar of approval from some people? “Hey! Guess what? How about I poop in my pants before going into this meeting with the staff?” It would take about 6 seconds before somebody replied, “Oh man that is so cool! Do it!”

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Speaking of social media, know what’s lame especially with regard to Twitter? Re-tweeting compliments directed at you. If somebody tweets at you, “Hey I just met @soandso and he’s really cool!” don’t re-tweet that junk. What’s worse is that somebody will re-tweet it, but they won’t reply back. It’s like you’re happy to tell the world how great somebody else thinks you are, but you don’t have time to actually reply back to that person.

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So here’s a question: What’s the one book you’ve been wanting to read, but haven’t had a chance to read yet? And one movie you want to definitely see in theaters. Go.

Don’t worry. This isn’t a “whoa is me” type post. In fact, I would hope that people who feel the same way sometimes get something positive out of it. That being said, this is unfortunately how I feel sometimes when it comes to even thinking about the possibility of become a full time photographer.

Recently I have been laying the groundwork for turning my photography business into a legitimate part-time business which will make the transition to doing it full time that much easier, if and when that ever happens. So I’ve been getting the necessary forms and doing the necessary research, asking people all sorts of questions and soon I’ll register the business with the city and so forth. It’s exciting and terribly boring at the same time. I want to shoot photographs not fill out tax forms. But it’s necessary.

Since I’ve started using Twitter as my main source of making connections with other people, I’ve been introduced to so many amazing photographers. A short list includes Zack Arias, Stephen Hunton, Joshua White, Adam & Imthiaz Houseman, Chase Jarvis and David duChemin. I’ve learned so much from all of the photographers on this short list (and there are others) and a lot of what they have done has been very inspirational.

At the same time its also disheartening in a way. Why? Because all of them are younger than me. Granted, I’m about the same age as Jarvis, Arias and duChemin (we’re all in our late 30′s), but I’m hitting the big 4-0 this year and even though we’re close in age, those guys are light years ahead of where I’m at with the photographic skills as are the younger ones on the list. I had to give up all of my photography gear back in 1998 and it wasn’t until 10 years later that I had enough money to purchase a digital SLR. I’m not bitter about it at all. God was merely saying, “I’ve got more important things for you to do right now.” But still. It seems like a daunting task to get to the level they are all at and there are those times when I think that I’m just wasting time and would be better off just enjoying photography as a hobby and go on doing what I do.

So what makes me shake off those feelings of doubt and continue to plug away?

1. God’s grace – When I sold my equipment back in 1998, I figured the dream I had of being a pro was over. When I got a Nikon D50 in back in the summer of 2008, I had no allusions about doing it full time. I was just happy to have a real camera back in my hands. A simple request from my worship Pastor to take a photo of his family to send out on a Christmas card led to my first paid job. That was a year ago. I just celebrated getting a signed contract and deposit on my first corporate gig. These things didn’t happen by accident.

2. My wife’s support – She knows how I feel about this and she’s been supportive in so many ways from praising my work and criticizing my work to assisting me on shoots and pushing me to be more aggressive in getting this going. She’s been so good to me. Far better than I have been to her.

3. I just love doing it – I love being able to visualize something through the viewfinder and then see that visualization come to fruition. Many times, when you photography people, they don’t have an understanding of why I am doing something in particular until you see their reaction when they see the final image. When their eyes widen or they have this broad smile because they had this impression it was going to look one way and it wound up looking unlike anything they had imagined.

What about you? Are you doing what you love to do for a living? Still chasing it? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

I’ve been looking back through a bunch of the images I’ve made this year and several have stood out. The ones I have chosen may not necessarily be the “best” ones that I’ve made, but they are certainly my own personal favorites.

1. Father & Daughter

This was part of a family shoot. I had actually been further back and was doing full length shots of both of them. However at one point, the little girl was fascinated by something in her hand but she made sure to hold on to Dad’s hand. I got in closer and got this image.

2. Michael and his guitar

After doing some reading and studying on lighting, I stopped using Nikon’s CLS most of the time and started shooting in full manual. This was a shot that I thought about doing for some time. Getting my son to cooperate was a challenge. I started with an umbrella but the light was too soft. The backlight really was just to create a rim of light around him, but in this case it peeked over his shoulder. It’s black in the background, but I took the shot in the middle of the day in the living room.

3. Sunrise

This was done just a few days ago. On the way to take pictures elsewhere I instead had the opportunity to view this awesome sunrise.

We all have plans. We make plans and many times those plans change. Often, plans change not because we make the choice, but because something happens that forces us to change. Somebody might plan to buy a new television and suddenly the car needs repair. Somebody else plans on taking a vacation to Bermuda only to have to cancel because of an oncoming hurricane. Sometimes plans change because of a particular circumstance.

This Sunday, awakened early and was out of the house by 6:30. For some time now I’ve been wanting to photograph a stretch of road that has trees on both sides forming what is almost like a tunnel of sorts. It looks kind of like a larger version of ‘Poets Walk’ in New York’s Central Park. I wanted to be up early to take advantage of the morning light and also because it had cooled down around this area and sometimes in the morning there is light fog created by the mixture of cool and humid air. That was my plan.

As I drove along this one main road en route to my destination, I got glimpse of what the sky looked like on the edge of the ocean. It was a glimpse for about a second and then it was obscured again. Sunrises in Florida are hit and miss at best with regard to what they look like. Sometimes it is plain and it looks like any other sunrise. But sometimes there are enough clouds and other elements in the air that give off vivid and dynamic colors. This was one of those times. My plans changed. The image above is one of the images I captured that morning.

I remember when I was leaving, Chris Tomlin’s ‘I Will Rise’ came on the radio and I pulled over on A1A and just listened to that song and enjoyed the view that much longer. I was swept up in that moment and I was happy that my plans were changed. God has plans for us. He says so in Jeremiah 29:11a:

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord

God has plans for you. Many times those plans intersect with our own. But you can rest assured that when they do, He’s merely telling us, “I have something better for you.”