Mary's Hands

Mary's Hands is what I call this image. This is my second prize winning image of hands. I entered this into the Human Interest category at the Shoot the Hills photo competition last year and won 1st place. I was quite proud of myself. Let me fill in some of the details of how I came to find this photographic opportunity. We (Earl, Jeff, Rodger and myself) had been at it for about 23 hours. We only had 1 hour left before the shooting deadline. This particular image was one of the last images I took. I think it was shot just after 12:30 and the shooting deadline was 1:00. As we were heading back to base camp Earl spotted a rocking chair on the front porch of a farm house we were passing. We decided to turn around and ask if we could take a few photographs. The couple who lived in the house were sitting together on a porch swing as I pulled in the driveway and parked the van. Somewhat nervously, I approached the elderly couple and explained that I was in a photo competition and would like to take some photos of the rocking chairs. They were more than happy to allow me to take some photos. After snapping few shots I asked if they would mind sitting in the chairs and allow me to photograph them. The lady (Mary) quickly refused stating that she didn't look nice enough to be photographed. I reassured her that she looked just fine and that she would make a great addition to the photograph. Her husband interjected that he thought she should allow me to photograph her and soon I was happily snapping photos of the two of them sitting in their rocking chairs. I noticed that day that Mary was wearing a hat on her head and that her hair was very thin but I never thought much about it as I was too busy taking photos of them. It has been a year now since I took this photo and I recently went back to the 2008 Shoot the Hills competition. I knew that I would be close to Mary's home so I printed a copy of the winning photo to give to them. I wanted to thank them for allowing me to take these pictures and I thought this would be a nice way to say thanks. We (the same 4 of us) drove out to where they lived to drop off the photo. When I pulled in the drive I thought it looked pretty much like I remembered it. I quickly noticed however that the rocking chairs were missing. I pulled to the back and it looked as if no one was home. I got out of the van anyway and knocked on their door. After a quiet moment of silent waiting, the door opened. I was greeted by the smiling face of Mary's husband. I introduced myself and explained who I was and why I was there. I noticed a young man who looked to be in his early twenties was standing behind him. He introduced him to me as his grandson. After I explained that I had came by to give them a copy of the photo of Mary's hands, he became quiet. After a moment he looked at me and said, "Well you do know that Mary passed away in December!", I quickly apologized and he just as quickly told me it was o.k. He explained that Mary had had cancer and that she was better off, as in the end she was in quite a lot of pain. I felt so bad for this man but I didn't know what to say to him. I asked him if he would still like me to give him a copy of the photo and he said yes. He would like to have it on display in his home. I will be sending him a copy of the photo later this week, I want to write a letter to him expressing my sorrow for his loss and dedicating this photo to her memory. I am trying to figure out how to be sensitive to him and yet still have an opportunity to witness to him. I do not know if he is a believer or if Mary was. If you happen to be reading this, please pray for me as I write this letter. Pray that the Holy Spirit will work guide me as I write. Pray for Bill (Mary's Husband) as he deals with the loss of his wife of many years.

Photoman

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.

Photographers Choice

O.K. its been more than a week since my last post but who's counting anyway. Well, I guess I just said I have been but then I don't count. Or do I? It really only matters if any of my readers are counting the hours between my posts. Enough of that, lets get to the point of this post, the image above. This shot may not look it but it was a very difficult shot to get. I was using a 70mm-200mm lens with 3 extension tubes. I was about 8 inches off of the ground mounted on a tripod with the legs out flat. The front of the lens was only about 6 inches from the subject, so any little movement would cause the image to blur. I guess the hardest thing about this shot was that I didn't have a cable release with me so I was having to manually release the shutter. It wasn't overly windy but there was enough of a breeze that it took me quite a few exposures to get this shot. I was so pleased that this shot turned out that I chose to use it in the competition over the image from my last post. I think the other image would have shown better in the photographers choice category than this one. Well, I wanted to share this image next as I had mentioned it last post. I also briefly mentioned another image which I will share with you in an upcoming post. As I said last post, I will be going to France and England in a few days so my next post may be a post from my trip overseas. I make no promises as I am sure I will be very busy while I am there. I will be taking many photos and I will share some of them first chance I get. Well once again enjoy and feel free to leave comments.
Photoman

Country Home for rent.

I shot this image last spring during a photo competition. I didn't end up using the image for the competition but I had a hard time ruling it out. After seeing my competition I wish I had used it but as they say "hind sight is always 20/20". This brings up a question that I often wonder about, just who are "they"? Well that is a subject for another time, back to the image of discussion. I really had a hard time deciding whether or not to include this image. I really like the gray and brown colors of the post and vines contrasted against the blue sky. The hint of yellow and green from the flowers add some visual interest to the image. I wanted to enter this image into the photographers choice category but I chose an image that was technically a much harder shot than this one. Unfortunately the winning image had no technical merit to it at all, it just happened to be the prettiest. However, I did win 1st place in the human interest category, maybe I'll share that image in a future post. This is my first post and I hope to write a new post each week. I will be traveling to France and England in January for 3 weeks and I may not be able to post while I am gone. If I get the time I will definitely share some of my photos before I return home.

Well enjoy and feel free to comment on my images or my blog.

Photoman