The Odyssey and a new camera

O

ne of my creative passions is event photography. I have enjoyed the challenge of event photography for more than 20 years, but hadn’t learned many useful techniques until about seven years ago when the company I work for asked me to photograph an event after the contracted freelance photographer got sick just a couple days before the event. That was an interesting night as I attempted to photograph about 200 people packed into a dark room lit primarily by a laser light show.

Since then I’ve had many opportunities to take pictures in less-than-desirable lighting conditions and have learned to relish the challenge—not that I always succeed. But I’m learning and enjoying it more and more.

So when our immensely talented friend, Stephanie, played the part of Circe, the Enchantress, in Warren County High School’s production of Homer’s Odyssey, I took my camera along to see what luminous roadblocks I could overcome. The play was great. Stephanie was awesome (as usual). And I got some nice pictures.

This one is of our friend, Stephanie. She’ll be famous one day.

But these were all taken with my old Canon 30D camera—the first digital camera I owned. And then, just a week later, I received my new camera: the Canon 7D. This new camera is a significant step up from the 30D and I can’t wait to give it a good workout. But so far I haven’t had the chance.

Not that I haven’t tried—I took the camera with me to the store two days ago and when I stepped out of the car to go back into the house I put it in the crook of my arm and it began snapping pictures on its own. I ended up with four pictures before I pulled the camera out of my bundle of packages. The picture below was one of them. Kind of cool! I can’t wait to see what this camera can do when it’s actually intentional.

Unintentional – but still kinda cool.

iPhone posting

Perhaps I would post more if I could post directly from my phone. I just downloaded the Blogger iPhone app, so I guess we'll see.

A pastor’s advice to pastors

O

ne of my favorite blogs is Reformation 21. I recommend it as one of your daily stopping points online.

As part of the blog author’s preparations for an upcoming conference, he is beginning a series on pastoral character—something the readers of my blog will recognize as an issue of supreme importance to me. Please take a look at Reformation 21 and follow it in the near future so you may benefit from this research. We all need to pursue the character of Christ. And, so much more, our church leader need to pursue this holiness.

As a personal aside, my pastor is one of the good ones—one of the shining stars. I praise God every day for what He has done in my pastor’s life to make him the man of God he is today.

[The pastor]

must have the heart of a preacher; that is, he must stand in awe of the God in whose Name he preaches, and with love seek the welfare of the souls to whom he preaches. He must know himself to be entirely undone in himself and have a lively impression of his own inability, so that he will not trust too much in having studied properly. He ought to pray much beforehand, not so much to get through the sermon, but for a sanctified heart, for a continual sense of the presence of God, for suitable expressions, and for a blessing upon his preaching to the conversion, comfort, and edification of souls. His concern ought not to be whether the congregation will be pleased with him and will praise the sermon, but his motive must rather be a love for the welfare of the congregation.

Wilhelmus à Brakel, The Christian's Reasonable Service, 2:138

Music and the Barbs

A

few months ago I posted A tribute to a great lady – Joan Barb. This dear lady had such an incredible impact on the lives of all those who knew her. And I was honored to be involved in her funeral services, which was a celebration of Jesus Christ, the Savior who made Mrs. Barb the woman she was. It was an amazing and wonderful and tearful and joyous goodbye.

When my sister and I were in our early teens and were struggling to make sense of the world and of the things we found in scripture, Mrs. Barb was a continual inspiration. While adults were having foll blown meltdowns about electric instruments and percussion, Mrs. Barb talked seriously with us about what we saw in scripture as it applied to music. Eventually, she even asked my sister and me to present our music philosophy to her AWANA girls. She said that although she disagreed with the styles of music we liked, she thought our music philosophy was scriptural and well-thought out. She was probably one of the people who impacted my musical philosophy/theology the most while I was growing up.

A few weeks after the funeral, her daughter Michelle contacted me about singing at the brunch her church’s singles group was going to have in February. One thing led to another and the date is now upon us. This coming Saturday (February 18, 2012) my church’s worship team Aver Union will be presenting a few songs. After we are done, the worship leader from another local church in Stafford, Va., will be presenting a message from the bible. Brian Burke is a long-time friend and was one of the first people I ever played in a band with. We used to meet at his house, where he had an astounding collection of recording equipment and instruments. We’d jam together and have deep theological discussions. And we’d talk about how great it would be to play for real some day.

I’m looking forward to the reunion. And I’m grateful to the members of Aver Union who were willing to set aside a Saturday on relatively short notice to play at my friend’s event. It’s great being a Christian, praising the Awesome God, and having friends who do the same.

The playlist embedded here contains five of the seven songs we will be presenting. The only one on this playlist actually recorded by our team is "All of Your Words." The others are there for your enjoyment and edification.

Portraiture - my passion!

I

t’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything. I have become far too busy lately. But even in my busy-ness, which is all work related, I managed to enjoy photography.

I was asked to take portraits of the people in my group at work who were interested in updating their profile pictures on our internal social networking site, D Street. I, of course, immediately accepted this offer and we set up a day to take some “executive portraits.”

Our firm’s branding calls for a somewhat casual look set in natural light and taken in one of our offices. So I took all of these pictures in a small conference room on the 9th floor of our Rosslyn office, just across the Potomac River from the Kennedy Center and downtown Washington, DC. Unfortunately, you can’t see much of the tourist landmarks in these pictures, but you can see the people—which is the point of portraiture anyway.

Sophia is Ethiopian and has wonderful stories to tell. She’s kind and caring and amazingly competent. I am proud to be one of her associates.

Kate is our newest editor. She is vivacious, entertaining, and an extremely good editor.

Rob is a fantastic proposal manager who is a total and complete pleasure to work with. I am blessed to be part of his team.

I don’t work very closely with Jenni, but she is one of the people I would never have met if it were not for my photography. This passion of mine has brought me in contact with more awesome people than you can imagine.

Tyrone is one of our graphic artists, so I sit very close to him. I am a graphic designer with a focus on page layout and Tyrone is a graphic designer with a focus on illustration. Tyrone is a wonderful person who exudes gentleness, kindness, and a love for life and humanity.

The beautiful Kristen is our chief of staff. She is so competent in every way that it boggles the mind. A true pleasure to work with ... always!

Sasha is a recent addition to our team. She is incredibly intelligent—speaking five languages and still acting like a normal person. We are all in awe of her intellect, and yet she is delightfully unassuming.

James is the lead graphic artist on our team. He’s very talented and is also a very good manager. He seems to have an innate understanding of people’s motives and motivations.

Suzanne is another person I don’t get to work with very often. But she is special among this group. After all the other portraits had been taken, she came back and asked me to give it another go. I used my favorite lens, even though it is a difficult lens to use. I’m glad she came back because my first attempts didn’t even come close to this one.

This collage is just a few of the almost 100 portraits I took that day. It was a blast!

Aver Union

G

od loves us so much! God brought us to Front Royal, Virginia, and directed us to a church that is unique among churches in a way that cannot be expressed. But we are so grateful to God to have brought us together with such wonderful and dedicated Christian people—people who love God with all their hearts and love each other.

Last November, our worship teams recorded a few of the original songs written by members of the three worship teams at our church. The embedded playlist contains most of the songs we recorded just a few months ago. I am in two of the three teams, so I am singing background vocals or playing bass guitar on quite a few of these songs. Also our pastor sings background vocals on quite a few of the songs. He’s not only a great pastor and a good friend, he’s also quite a good singer.

I hope you enjoy this music. Let me know what you think.

I guess I should explain what "Aver Union" means. Perhaps the best way is to let the album cover explain it. Click on the picture to see a larger version. Here it is:

Blog Header - January 6, 2012

I took this picture the week of Christmas about two years ago in one of my firm’s downtown Washington, DC, offices. It just looked quite festive in the lobby.

Natural or exhibitionist?

T

Tim Challies, one of my favorite bloggers, posted an interesting article about breastfeeding in public. I have not had to deal directly with this issue, but found the discussion quite interesting.

I was not breast-fed and we adopted our son, so my wife did not breastfeed him either. So we have not had to even consider the whether-or-not-to-breastfeed-in-public topic, although my libertarian bent would probably put me in the leave-the-decision-in-the-hands-of-the-mother camp.

Read the article. See what you think.

Silent Night - Sleep in heavenly peace

Luke 2:1-14

¹In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. ²This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. ³And all went to be registered, each to his own town. ⁴And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, ⁵to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. ⁶And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. ⁷And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

⁸And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. ⁹And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear. ¹⁰And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy that will be for all the people. ¹¹For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. ¹²And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” ¹³And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,

¹⁴“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”

Blog Header - December 23, 2011

I took this impromptu photo of our group’s chief of staff at the Christmas party the week before last. Usually everyone looks goofy wearing antlers and weird Christmas ties and sweaters, but I thought Kristin actually looked pretty good in this picture.

Merry Christmas to all.