baby dottie

Tina’s follow-up portraits from here, these now have Dottie on the outside of mommy.
Nothing else needs saying..

silver trees

Sarah and I were driving around town this morning and found that the mix of light fog, rain and around freezing temps created a cool look on some of the trees around our place. After Breakfast I drove out to a large park only to find that it was more of an isolated event. After I got over my disappointment I did find one tree that resembled what we found earlier. I guess it shows you that if you see something good, grab it, it might not be there when it is convenient.

sisters coffee

So after Urbana 09, my sister-in-law came home with us (she too attended) and spent the week with us. It was a nice week of movies, relaxing and coffee shops. Here is a string of images from one such adventure in lazy recovery.

This is also another example of the importance of light. There is a large bank of windows behind me bathing her in great soft light. Our closeness to the window makes the light fall off (or get darker) as you look farther behind her. I am beginning to love this light but still struggling to see its beauty before I photograph it. But as a tag to the importance of light, I don’t want to let that overshadow the greater importance of timing and subject. Here the timing tells the story and the subject makes it fun, without this it is just light. A great subject and perfect timing can overshadow bad light, just look at most people’s family photo albums.

picnic point…but no picnicking

Steve S. and I went for a little photo walk the other day out in the snow to Picnic Point here in Madison. Obviously there were no picnickers out in the cold. Like my last post about light, it made all the difference when the sun was hitting my subject(s) and just really made the images pop. In fact, the images I took when the sun was hiding behind a cloud didn’t make it into this batch, they just didn’t look as good.

importance of light

So here is a great example of the importance of light. I took these two images back to back, separated by only 10 seconds; the only difference is the light. It was a cloud filled day, meaning that there were constantly great big beautiful clouds drifting through the sky. Any guesses which photo was taken when a cloud passed in front of the sun?

One of the first things I learned as a nature photographer was that if the sun is not hitting your subject directly because of clouds, DO NOT INCLUDE THE SKY in your photo. The sky is too bright compared to the shaded landscape, so the sky goes all white. Now if there are clouds in the sky they are actually acting light a huge soft box (or lamp shade) that makes shadows pleasing to the camera and makes colors POP, so take advantage of those days…but just don’t include the bright sky!! There you go, the secrets I had to learn over a couple years in one lesson! Oh, the other end of this is to start off with good light, and the easiest way to do that is to get your lazy butt out of bed and catch the morning light…oh I wish I wasn’t so lazy.

Urbana 09 scenes

Even though my Job at Urbana was not photo related I still took my camera with me…did you expect any less? The long walk from my hotel room to the back of the dome provided several opportunities to see students (and some staff) milling around during registration, at the book store, missions booths (Global Conexions) and other random intervals.

back from Urbana 09

I am still recovering from Urbana and its many hours of intensity. God did amazing things and called many to the mission field.
See video from each day here:
http://www.urbana09.org/program.webcast.cfm
Or here if it doesn’t work:
http://www.vimeo.com/urbana09/videos/sort:date
My role at Urbana included running all the videos, transitions and worship backgrounds. “The mortar that holds the bricks in the wall,” as one coworker put it. Since we wanted to utilize a large (18 x 32 feet) screen as the backdrop to all stage activity, we were very intentional about what made it to this background. That was basically my job for the months leading up to and during Urbana; to make that screen work. That is Greg behind me, he ran all the Worship Lyrics.
This is what it looks like out in the “house.” The main screen there in the middle is the Background screen; all the others are “i-mag” (Image Magnification) screens that show cameras and lyrics for people farther from the stage.
Here is back stage, you can see all the computers for graphics in the foreground that include (left to right) the 2 PowerPoint computers, (one for announcements/speaker presentation and the other for lyrics) and then my 2 video computers that lay videos underneath the PowerPoint computers. Also there is a large Spy TV to show us what it looked like out in the house and you can see the back of the "Background Screen." (click to see bigger)
Here is what some of it looked like with the light on.
More later


More of my images here.