I’ve been back from Haiti for a couple weeks now, and haven’t forgotten about posting an update about our trip… Life’s just been a bit busy since our return!
A couple weekends ago, I had a concert shoot for the Peoria Bach Festival. We used dSLRs for the project (more on that later), and I was able to rent the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS for it… And since I had this super-nice lens for the weekend, we made the most of it and finished shooting senior portraits of my little brother. It’s hard to believe that he’s graduating this year!
So, here are a few photos from the portraits we made for his graduation:
About the time this post will be published, I’ll be on a plane landing in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, as part of a fifteen-man mission team.
Here’s part of a prayer letter I sent out a couple weeks ago:
In January 2010, a massive earthquake plunged the Republic of Haiti into chaos, killing up to 316,000 people and making another 1.6 million homeless. By October, a cholera epidemic had also broken out.
While not all of Haiti was physically damaged by the earthquakes, it doesn’t mean everyone wasn’t affected. Perhaps we think the economy is bad here. In Haiti, 80% of the population lived under the poverty line…And that was before the earthquake. Of its 9.8 million people, an estimated 7 million have to make ends meet on under $2 a day.
At a glance, the situation in Haiti may seem dark. However, there is much hope!
While in Florida last year helping on a documentary, I met a group of men who have a hunger for learning what it means to be a man of God and living it. During my time there, they were discussing the possibility of taking a mission trip to Haiti.
When Ryan Carter emailed me in January of this year to tell me that the mission trip was a go, and asked me if I wanted to come, I knew what the answer would be. In my heart, God gave a resounding “Yes!” Not too long after I committed to go, Dad and Tyler were able to get on the team as well.
Among the various groups working in Haiti to help the people physically and spiritually, a ministry called Heart of the Bride runs an orphanage and boys school in the northwest region of the nation. They train young men in academics, Bible study, and community service. These young men are receptive to the Word, and hungry for discipleship and examples of godly lives for them to follow.
Our fifteen-man team will be flying to Mare Rouge, Haiti, on May 28. We’ll be there for about a week, doing light construction and teaching the boys there. In addition, I’ll be documenting our time through photos and video, and possibly doing some video work for Heart of the Bride. Our discipleship focus for the young men will be the theme of “Becoming a Man of God.” We’re extremely excited about what God will do while we’re there, not only in the lives of the boys we’ll be ministering to, but also in our own lives.
This mission will take us out of our comfort zones. It’ll be a time of stretching and growing for all of us as we reach out to help those in need.
Will you please keep our team in your prayers for this? We understand that unless God is in charge and at work, what we can do with our feeble hands isn’t worth much. Please pray for our safety, that hearts will be receptive to God, and that He will do amazing things.
I’ll report back later!
I’ve been shooting some senior portraits of Tyler over the past couple weeks… Practicing for the most part, but making some serious photographs as well. Almost a week ago Tyler and I headed out to a section of our property that’s being prepared to be future pasture, so I could practice shooting a wide portrait with his cello. Here’s what we came away with:
It was the first time I’d ever tried anything like this formally, especially with flash (off-camera, at that), so after shooting this I posted it on Flickr in a group devoted to off-camera flash, asking for critique. The response was incredible—sixteen different people chimed in with extremely helpful advice and criticisms. I learned so much!
Last night we went out and reshot the portrait. Here’s the photograph we made:
Despite having to set the camera on a 2-second timer, push the shutter button, then aim the flash (all while stepping on a tripod leg to keep the tripod from being pulled over by the stretched-to-the-maximum flash sync cord), and having to use my spit to keep Tyler’s hair from blowing around in the wind, it was a lot of fun. I feel like I learned a ton, which is the best thing of all.
There’s one thing I don’t remember, for sure: the first time I met her. From what I’ve heard, that first meeting was probably only a few hours after I was born.
That was over twenty-one years ago. Grandmama talked about how whenever she would tell one of her friends that she was about to become a grandmother, they would say that it was going to be so much fun.
But the first time she saw me after I was born, I was sleeping. After that, I woke up, ate, and went back to sleep. I didn’t make a good first impression as far as the whole fun-and-exciting being a grandmother thing goes.
Then I started growing, becoming more aware of the environments around me. My Dad, Mom, and I lived in the Atlanta area for the first months of my life, so I was close to where Grandmama lived. She used to talk and laugh about watching me after I learned to walk and run.
I really don’t remember much about my early relationship with her. My family moved to North Carolina (where my brother was born, Tyler—who managed to get into a bunch of the pictures here, since I’m behind the camera more than in front), then to Tennessee, then finally back to Georgia when I was four. That’s where my memories of Grandmama really begin.
We lived an apartment in Norcross, near Atlanta, about an hour or so from where she lived in Athens. Since we were so close, we went to visit somewhat often… And that hour drive always felt like half a day to my little mind.
Grandmama lived in one side of an apartment duplex, kind of on the outskirts of Athens. At the time, she worked for the University of Georgia as an office secretary or something… I’m not sure what exactly she did. I went to work with her once—probably not even a half day, looking back at it I’m guessing she just needed to take care of a few things. She tasked me with drawing on the whiteboard with dry-erase markers.
We grandkids—five of us altogether, between myself, Tyler, and three cousins—used to take turns spending the weekend with Grandmama. She didn’t have a grandchild every weekend, but from what I remember, I myself probably spent a weekend with her every four or five months.
Grandmama would come pick me up at my house on Friday afternoon, and then we’d make that looong drive to her house. Sometimes on the way, we’d stop at a grocery store and pick out TV dinners for supper. I never ever got those at home (and looking at the ingredients lists now, I know why), so it was a special treat. Sometimes we’d rent a movie to watch while we ate.
The nightly bubble bath was a tradition at Grandmama’s house. She’d fill up the tub with hot water and plenty of bubbles; it was so much fun! There were various water toys to play with, and of course, what’s a bubble bath without a bubble beard or go-tee?
At bedtime, she’d tuck me in, then read to me. Sometimes I’d pick out a book from a basket of children’s books she had for us. But always, she’d read a chapter from the Bible (usually one of the Psalms). We’d pray together, she’d turn out the light, and I’d fall asleep… As soon as I stopped thinking about the googly-eyed monster under the bed. I never did see it, but to this day I’m sure that’s where it lived.
I would usually be up in the morning before Grandmama was—that’s how young energy goes, after all. She always kept at least four or five kinds of cold cereal in her pantry, so I’d get out of bed, go in the kitchen, and arrange all the boxes on the table. That mission accomplished, it was back into my bedroom until she got up, where I’d quietly play with toys from the blue, plastic toy crate from the closet. Every once in a while she would surprise us with a new toy in it.
After breakfast, Grandmama would get her second cup of coffee (she always reheated her coffee in the microwave, even straight out of the coffeepot) and go get dressed, put her makeup on, and do her hair for the day. Tyler and I dubbed her hair “big hair,” because that’s exactly what it was, a big bunch of curls from the rollers she’d wear to bed every night.
I loved the Saturdays I spent with her. Sometimes we’d go to a park, sometimes there would be some special event going on nearby to go to. It was usually the park, though; there were a couple in particular that we loved to go to. One was Bishop Park, which I called “Monster Park,” because one time I was playing with some kids there and pretending I was a monster.
Our most favorite one was Memorial Park, a mostly wooded place with a large pond in the middle. Grandmama always saved old pieces of bread so that we could feed the ducks, turtles, and fish whenever we went. We’d walk around the pond on a trail, throwing bits of bread at a duck or two swimming along nearby, or dropping some down into the water from a bridge. She’d let me play on the playground, and sometimes we’d stroll through a small wildlife zoo that was there.
Sometimes we’d drive down to Hodgeson’s Pharmacy, near the university, to get an ice cream cone. That was a special treat! I remember how it smelled like ice cream cones, how forever long it seemed to wait in line for our turn to order. And I remember how fun it was to sit on the park bench in the store, eating ice cream, sitting next to my Grandmama.
Grandmama’s mother—my Great Granny—lived in a retirement community a couple miles from her own apartment, and Saturday evening was the time we’d go visit her. We’d go out for pizza, or get pizza from Papa John’s (Grandmama’s favorite), then sit and visit and watch the baseball game on TV. Grandmama didn’t like driving after dark, so before it was too late we’d go back to her home where we did the nightly routine.
On Sundays, Grandmama took me to her church. I started playing violin when I was almost eight, so once I was able to play some songs from memory, she’d have me bring my violin along. I’d play one or two songs for the ladies in her Sunday School class. I can still vividly remember getting up and playing for them—usually a quiet, calm hymn, followed by a foot-stomping fiddle tune called “Bile Them Cabbages Down,” which Grandmama absolutely loved for me to play. I’m sure I wasn’t much help in getting the ladies into a worshipful attitude…
Grandmama loved beauty, especially the beauty of flowers. You could give her a bunch of random flowers, and she could arrange them into something the looked pretty. Inspired by her, I once made an arrangement myself…Which definitely didn’t come even close to what she could do. Perhaps it was because I used dandelions…
Her flower arrangements graced various parts of her church, bringing bright cheerfulness to various lobbies and hallways. She had a special touch with them, for sure. After retiring from her job at the University of Georgia, she worked part-time at a florist arranging silk flowers.
She had an eye for decorating, too. I still remember what her apartment looked like, and smelled like. After walking in through the entryway and front door, I’d be standing in her living room. On the left was a bookcase with metal-grate doors, the handles of which were rubber-banded together, partly to keep them closed, and partly to keep curious hands from opening and closing them—they were the noisiest bookcase doors I’ve ever heard. The top of the bookcase was always decorated for the season. During Christmas it’s where where her nativity set would sit.
Straight ahead was the kitchen, the place where many a wonderful Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner was shared by four generations of family (from Granny down to the cousins), where we laughed and talked over lasagna or ham or turkey—and the famous chocolate eclair.
To the right was the living room. There was a couch between its north-facing windows, a couple of recliners, lamp tables, and a cabinet with a TV on top. Opposite the couch was a fireplace. Grandmama loved having fires during the fall, and I loved it when she had them during our visits. I can still remember the rug on the floor, too, where Tyler and I would race toy cars along the lines while my Mama and Grandmama sat and talked.
In late 2001, my family moved to Illinois. That was hard for Grandmama—we were now about 13 hours away from her, which meant that visits came only two or three times a year.
She came to visit a year or two after we moved. We took her around to show her things, went to the zoo, and among other things, stopped at a huge pumpkin field so she could take a picture of it. That was the only time she came to visit; it was too far for her to drive, and besides this, she needed to be available to take care of Granny as she got older and could do less on her own.
To that end she moved to the retirement community where my Granny lived. She was glad to be out of her apartment duplex. That part of town was becoming more unsafe; her apartment had been broken into at least once.
Grandmama brought a freshness and life to Lanier Gardens. She was one of the younger people living there, I think, so her energy and friendliness quickly won her the love of everyone she met there. They appointed her to be their floor leader for several years, which she enjoyed as it gave her the opportunity to plan special events and help with decorating the floor.
I still loved visiting her there at her new apartment, though it wasn’t often, and the weekend visits had stopped after our move. Usually it was my Mom and brother and I visiting her. Sometimes we’d take a walk together, once in a while Tyler and I would play horseshoes while Grandmama and Mom watched and talked. And always the morning we’d leave, I’d run around her apartment writing and hiding notes for her to find after we were gone—in a coffee can, under a phone, behind a door—places where she’d find them later and be pleasantly surprised.
I’m not sure when, but sometime she began delivering Meals-on-Wheels once a week. Her assigned delivery place was an apartment building near downtown Athens, a housing project I think. I loved getting to go help her deliver the meals, and she, the ever-proud grandmother, absolutely loved getting to introduce her grandchildren to the people she served.
She wasn’t just serving them physically; along with the meals, she was delivering Christ’s love. Sometimes this was through a tract or note, always through her attitude. She cared about those people.
Grandmama was like that. She was outgoing—but didn’t think she was—and always concerned about other people. She loved Christ, and that’s what made the difference.
I know she had a lot of unanswered questions about life; mainly about why there was so much suffering. Looking back, I almost wonder if her questions were rhetorical. She went through a lot, so much more than I ever saw growing up, and much more than I’ll ever know about. But you’d never know that, because in spite of it she had the joy of the Lord in her life. She loved Him, and was committed to following Him.
She was a giver and a server, and an expert at those things. It was almost impossible for her to walk past an ungainly hodgepodge of flowers in a vase without stopping to transform them into something beautiful. She loved bringing beauty into other people’s lives, and involving her family in doing the same—evidenced by her taking us to deliver Meals-on-Wheels, or having my brother and I plant flowers in Granny’s little bitty patio yard.
My Grandmama was a beautiful person, and I love her dearly. She wasn’t perfect by any means. But Christ dwelt in her, and it was obvious. Many grandchildren love their grandparents…But most grandchildren don’t have the privilege of having a grandmother like Grandmama.
I was the first and the last of her grandchildren to be with her. At the beginning of spring in 2010, I had been working with some friends near Charleston, South Carolina. God moved in my heart, telling me it was time to go home…And instead of taking the direct route, I decided to go through Athens to spend a day or two with my Grandmama.
It was the first time I had ever visited her completely by myself like that. I got there on a Monday afternoon, spent the evening with her and Granny. I can’t exactly remember what we did most of the next day—we talked and perhaps went walking at Memorial Park—but I do remember that she lined up for me to play music during the chapel service that afternoon, and I’m glad for that.
In the evening Grandmama and I went out to get hot dogs and frosted oranges from The Varsity. For the uninitiated, The Varsity is a fast food restaurant with three locations total, and famous for how greasy it is. It was fun to eat there every once in a (long) while, though! We took the food back to her apartment and ate with Granny.
The next morning, I said my goodbye to her and left. It was always hard leaving her after a visit. That feeling of missing her would be there even before I’d give her the final hug before going out the door. We were close, she loved us, and we loved her.
And so, I left. She hadn’t even bothered in getting ready for the day; it was early, and she still had her robe on and rollers in her hair. I wouldn’t have ever guessed that that would be the last time I’d say goodbye to her here on earth, the last time I’d hug and kiss her.
Two-and-a-half weeks after my visit, on May 8, 2010, she got to go meet her Savior. She got to have all her questions about life answered; she got to rejoice in the presence of her Creator. “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.”
No more arthritis. No more wondering about the rich-versus-poor conundrum. No more questions about suffering. No more! She’s with the One Who knows all now; her imperfect human vision has been opened into perfect spiritual sight now.
And because of Christ, I can look forward to that as well.
My Grandmama was a beautiful woman. I wanted to be able to introduce my future wife and children to her someday; this little memoir will have to suffice when that time comes. I want future generations to be able to take a glimpse into her life. I want to remember her, always.
I love her so much, and I can say “love” in the present tense because I know that she is more alive now than she ever was when she lived in this sin-cursed world.
I remember Grandmama.
Technicolor recently released a picture style for Canon dSLRs:
“The Technicolor CineStyle™ is a Picture Style (profile) for Canon EOS DSLR cameras that optimizes the dynamic range in the image by leveraging the capabilities of the Canon imaging chipset. Cinematographers and their post-production partners will have greater flexibility in color grading and finishing their projects.”
Since I’m a believer in shooting flat, I jumped at this and installed the picture style on my 60D. The results? It’s the best flat picture style I’ve seen, ever. It gives a wider dynamic range compared to even the most neutral style I can create using Canon’s.
Check out Technicolor’s CineStyle page.
Here’s a quick comparison (click on a photo to view it larger):
Canon Standard
Canon Neutral
Technicolor CineStyle
And, here’s the CineStyle image, color corrected:
As you can see, the extremely flat image coming from CineStyle can be heavily graded — the example above approximately matches the image from Canon’s standard style, but with quite a bit more detail captured in the image.
Hat tip to Dominic DiMaria for finding this!
It’s been over a year since I cut my last demo reel, and since I was tired of it being outdated, I cut a new one. Here it is:
It features clips from the feature documentary I worked on last year, Rite of Passage. All footage was shot on dSLRs (7D and 60D, with the very first shot from a D5000).
Last weekend we visited with some good friends of ours who live in southern Illinois, very close to Shawnee National Forest. They took us hiking along Burden Creek to see the beautiful waterfalls and rock formations there.
These are my two favorite photos from the hike:
This was sooo cool. A group of people spontaneously began singing, and hundreds of us joined in singing patriotic songs and hymns. The video below is of us singing the National Anthem:
Okay, maybe more than a few. Try… 4,000.
Around 4,000 of us homeschoolers flocked to the Illinois state capitol yesterday to voice our disapproval of the proposed SB 136, which would negatively regulate our freedoms. I almost let a project deadline get in the way of my attending, but I’m so glad my Mom convinced me to go. It was a huge reminder to me that there are things in life worth standing up for, worth fighting to protect. Compared to most things, the “me” in my life is actually very small and not worth holding on to tightly.
If my children (and their children) are to enjoy freedom, it starts with me.
My brother and I have been building a snow tunnel underneath a massive drift in our pasture. It has two entrances (both about 10 feet long), and a room with a column in the middle for support.
We’re hoping to be able to see how long we can get the tunnel….We might be able to go another 50 feet in the drift, provided that the roof doesn’t collapse.
Here’s a video tour:
