Lunar Eclipse

Well I didn't get the best exposure or shot possible but I did get these 2 pretty decent shots of the Lunar Eclipse on 2/20/08. I almost didn't bother trying as I had been home from work most of the week and wasn't feeling well. Then the news reporter said, "there won't be another full Lunar Eclipse for 2 years". I still wasn't going to bother then my wife says, "I wonder if we can see it from our back yard?" She steps out the door into the freezing cold temperatures and says, "Oh cool, it's orange! Kids come look." So of course I had to get up and check it out. My 30d is disassembled and I was in a hurry so I grabbed the trusty 10d and snapped these 2 shots. Well, it was a little more involved than that. I had to get my tripod and my fast lens and a cable release. As I said earlier I have been battling the flu all week and I wasn't at my best mentally. I put on my F/2.8 lens but didn't bother to look at the aperture to it was at f/4. At f/4 I was getting a shutter speed of 16 seconds. Instead of adjusting the aperture first I went straight to the ISO. This worked, but I would have preferred to be shooting at a lower ISO than 1600. The other critical error I made was to not use the full focal length of the lens. I shot these at 159mm when I could have been shooting at 200mm. Oh well, I guess I shouldn't get the flu, at least I got these shots. I shot both of these images with a Canon 10d, Manual mode 1600 ISO, 2 seconds, at F/4. I was using a 70-200mm lens at 159mm and the camera was tripod mounted at 10:16 p.m.

Photoman

Explanation

The last post was written for GRN. I was asked to write an article for them and this was where I decided to write it. This is the rough draft and is not exactly what they ended up with but I am leaving it up anyway. When I find out it has been published I will post a article letting you know where you can veiw it.

Photoman.

P.S. I also wanted to explain that the photo with the post has nothing to do with the article I just wanted to post the photo as I like it. It is a self portrait of myself while in France.

GRN on the go.

I was introduced to GRN personaly about a year ago but never really thought much about it. That all changed about 6 months ago. To be exact it was July 4th 2007 that I became more interested in GRN. My church was having a 4th of July outing to watch the fireworks, which ended up getting shortened by rain. After the display I had a conversation with a GRN missionary (Philip Young), I was explaining to him how I felt called to missions work. He became interested in what I was saying and asked me if I would mind if he shared our conversation with the director of GRN U.S. It was this conversation that caused me to look more closely at GRN. This past November my family and I were able to visit the U.S. center in Temecula CA, to try and determine if this is the ministry that God may be calling us to for full time missions. My wife and I both feel that this is the ministry that God is calling us to, we just have a few details to work out. We are currently working on a these details and may soon be able to start raising our support. More recently I had an opportunity through the ministry where I am currently employeed to go on a missions trip to France and England. I am currently working for Legacy Ministries International in Xenia, Ohio. LMI is the parent corporation of Dayton Christian School. Dayton Christian School sends teams of students on Mission trips yearly during the month of January. When Philip Young found out that I was going to France and England, he immediatly asked if I would be willing to take some language recordings along with me from GRN. I had been told over and over to pack light and don't bring anything extra as I would be carrying everything with me most of the time during this trip. I debated Philip's request many times over before finally saying o.k. I explained to Philip that I would have limited space for extra items and he assured me that what I would be carrying would not take much space. Because I was already bringing a laptop he was able to limit me to a small portable hard drive and a few CD-R's. The day before we left Philip came over and quickly explained to me what I was carrying and how to use it. It turns out that on this small hardrive was the Gospel Message recorded in over 4000 languages. Each of the languages were coded and a guide to understanding the codes was also on the hardrive. Wherever I went if a Pastor or Missionary had use for any of the recordings I could share them by burning them a CD of the language or languages they had need of. It all sounded pretty simple, this should be a breeze. The first place we went in France was a Baptist Church in Paris, our team was to minister to the church through some minor remodeling projects and by participating in a church service the following Sunday. When I told the Pastor about the recordings he immediatly seemed interested. He said that he would get with me later in the week and see what I had. The days went quick and he had not mentioned the recordings again. Sunday came and it was our last day in Paris, I thought that he had forgotten and I was debating if I should bother him. He was very busy as 2 people who had attended the morning service had accepted Christ that morning and he was busy praying and talking with them. As soon as he was finished with the new converts he came up to me and handed me a flash drive and said he wanted to see what recordings I had. It turns out that one of the people who had accepted Christ that morning was from Africa and he wanted to see if their language was on the hard drive. I was not surprised that the exact language he was looking for was on the hard drive. God knew that this person was getting saved that day and that I would be bringing with me tools to help them in their Christian walk. I was able to give the Pastor several different recordings of different languages. There were however some languages that he wanted that were not on the hard drive. It was great experience to see God use this little portable hard drive. I was also able to give some of the recordings to the church members in London as well. They were planning a trip to Kosovo and I was able to give them some recordings in the Kosovo languages that they were looking for. I am glad that I didn't turn down Philip's offer to bring the hard drive because I was afraid of carrying one more item in my luggage. Navigating the hard drive proved to be cumbersome at times but with a little tweaking I think this could be a simple process that almot anyone could do with a few minutes of explanation. It was an honor to be able to carry this small package which proved to be so valuable.