Fatherhood: Resting on Christ in a Tempest

This morning I had a rare weekend event…I woke up and everyone else was still asleep! This meant I got an unscheduled 0615 photo trip!

Waterford, Virginia is a nice place to catch some photos. Ten minutes from my door I get a gateway to a historic photographic location. Founded in 1733, and a national historic landmark, it goes back a bit in our history! Many of the buildings, plot lines and walkways let you walk the steps of our forefathers!

On the north side of town there is a bridge over Catoctin Creek. This old creek can get a lot of water pouring in as it drives north into the Potomac River. You can see the steep erosion in the banks telling of the high water’s power in a tempest. This contrasts deeply with the slow curve where grasses grow. On a morning like today it is all just peaceful.

As I dove into editing I began to think about the contrast of raging water power and the peaceful sunrise I witnessed today. While water supports life, in the Bible it also symbolized death. People of all times should fear raging waters engulfing them! Yet it is in water from the small river Jordan we are shown the very first step to become members of Christ’s body on earth. This spiritual death foreshadows the need for us to die with Christ on our own connected crosses to earn our way to heaven.

In rough times, like the night our Lord was ready to be sacrificed at Passover, we see the apostle whom he loved resting his head on Christ’s chest. Here we witness Christ tell all of the gathered a traitor is in their midst! Yet in the midst of such a tempest of emotion one man still rested on our Lord! It is great foreshadowing! He was the only apostle who stood patiently at the foot of the cross the next day with our Blessed Mother. It was this apostle, standing in for the whole church, who received the gift of adoption and duty to care for Mary.

This is symbolic of our own mission as fathers as well. Father’s should teach by example, correct deficiencies the best they can, sacrifice themselves for their charges, and must constantly push themselves to be more Christlike despite our fallen natures by resting in the Lord!

Today’s world is beat up. Its greatest deficit right now is the lack of men willing to be fathers, spiritual or head of a family. Just look in the news to find examples. In my own case, I look in the mirror and review my own missteps. Quite a few saints remind us we must pray and visit adoration 30 minutes a day in normal times. When we are in trouble, we must spend double the time in prayer and adoration!

In a world as crazy as ours, us Fathers must rest in the Lord with all our might. Just read the Bible, Listen to the Saints, go to adoration, say your prayers and then rest in silence with the Lord! Maybe if we can hear his heartbeat a little better, we too will hear the directions needed to rise up to the challenges of fatherhood in our lives.

-ehw

The First Cookie

    I bet you don't remember your first cookie...it must be a magical moment though.  Normally Momma does not let the kiddos get a cookie or serious sweet until they have their first birthday...but there is something to be said about being child number five!  Momma gives in to the magic of the moment a little more than with the first four!

   Oh he loved it!  What a joy to see!  Uncle Micheal thought he'd have these all to himself....not anymore!

Seventeen Years of Marriage

    Today my bride and I celebrate seventeen years of marriage.  The rings you see above display the weathering, scratches and soil of living as a couple.   These years included ten moves, five home purchases, four children (14, 11, 8, 3), one baby on the way (34 weeks thank you God), four miscarried babies in heaven, hundreds of friends across the country, illnesses galore (some very scary), tears of joy for children's achievements, arguments, resolutions, and deep religious growth granted by God's grace of faith to both of us inside the sacrament of marriage.   We each fear the premature loss of the other more than ever.  Just the thought takes our collective breath away.

    We now, through the years of experience, understand the deep commitment required to maintain this relationship.  We learned of the complex interaction between all the forms of love: agape (self gift), philia (friendship), ludus (playful), and eros (physical).   At this point of our marriage we can only say we are starting to to keep them all in proper perspective.  We find our marital joys multiply when we use these tools God built in us while building his kingdom here on earth.  This understanding is right on time.   Little kids normally only provide little problems.  Big kids have the big head hurting problems to deal with.  The next seventeen years should be more interesting then the last seventeen.  Therefore we have a lot more work to do on our relationship.

    My wife and I lamented the Supreme Court ruling yesterday.  It was wrong on a matter of states rights and morality.  More importantly it gave into the concept that everyone deserves happiness and love as they personally define it at this moment.  The concept of love people throw around in common speech today, has a diluted definition resulting from poor catechesis by churches and schools.  I also venture to say the concept comes from a lack of self reflection.  The constant bombardment of noise in our brains from so many media sources provides no silence in which God can be heard.  If our marriage followed such a fluid metric, we would be a separated wreck of humanity by now.  

    We will pray our country does not continue down this manmade path of tyranny.  This is of course the inevitable result in any country refusing to subordinate itself (and its rulers) to Natural Law principles.   This couple will continue to trust in God's compass, not our internally flawed guidance systems subject to radical narcism.  We will need it to navigate the scary world now before us.

    Thank you God for making my wife, and revealing yourself to us through the graces of his son Jesus Christ by  the power of the Holy Spirit.  I am grateful for the journey you gave us to travel together.  Amen.

-ehw

Buick at Peace

A lovely day to shoot in Northern Georgia..Day Two of His Light's Old Car City HDR Workshop.

Check out www.billfortney.com to see what it is all about...It is heaven sent for photos and the soul.

More later..in class now!

-ehw

Study in Light

I was testing out a new camera and I observed these lights in the dining room.  I wanted to see how the sensor would handle the bright filament.  Would it totally destroy the photo?

Well...it did not.  Instead I got a very nice study in light my naked eye could not see!  The study I enjoyed the most was the "bent" light coming from the glass around the filament.  I enjoyed the curves above and below the lights, and the built in vignette coming from my focus on the bight light at the heart of the photo.

So the moral of the story here is to remember that glass is a very helpful element in a photo, but sometimes you just have to take the shot and adjust based on the elements composing your photo.

-ehw

Hardship and toil...they saw it too...

This weekend my church celebrated the Holy Family.  It is my wife's favorite mass of the year.   It is a very personal theme for us, and gives us as a role model family to look up to.

This statue sits outside our church, and on the cold rainy we saw today it reminded me of their challenging life together.

Here we have a man and woman, given the mission of raising Christ.  They are displaced from home during the pregnancy, chased into exile by a homicidal king killing every male child from Bethlehem, go into Egypt a country alien to them with nothing but their clothes and talents, and finally they lose their child in the temple together.  They fought hunger, exposure, heat and other men to survive.  Any way you chalk it up, this family faced hardship, toil and challenges matched by the most unfortunate in this world past and present.

Through all these challenges, and the madness of trying to keep their family alive, they still found time to listen for the direction God sends each of us for these adventures.  The most prolific messages came from angels, but I often wonder how many were just whispers in the wind of the desert or the guidance of old proverbs.

Our pastor today at mass reminded us, the last words we hear attributed directly to Mary are at the wedding in Cana.  There she instructs the servants to do whatever her son directs them to do.  This in a manner was the culmination of the Holy Family's stewardship of the Son of God.  The love of Joseph and Mary ensured the people of the world have the word of God no longer confined to angels and prophets.  We actually have it now available to us in the first person.  The words of Christ in the bible direct our hearts and actions on the way to communion with the Father because of their faith.  It is the Holy Family's eternal gift to our past, present and future.

So this year, I challenge myself and anyone else out there to 1) Read the words of Christ and 2) Meditate on those words.  Just then maybe out hearts will hear the whispers of wisdom directing you through life's challenges in the fashion Jesus directs.

Who knows...we just may find ourselves following the footsteps of the Holy Family!

-ehw

P.S.  The inspiration to write this came from the image of the stature I saw at church, and the many friends and family of mine of know of in crisis.  Please pray for them and all those you know of in need as well.

Sheep teach photojournalism!

Dinner time was calling these sheep, all only a few weeks old, to come with their mothers to dinner on a Virginia farm.  The sheep were pretty well mannered about everything....although some did find a way to get more than others!

After dinner my children held several of the lambs, helped get their water ready and did a few other tasks for their aunt and uncle who raise them.  When we were done, the babies were left in the heated barn to protect them from a strong cold front that hit that night.  The little lambs needed the extra protection, just because we don't want to lose any of them!  Just minutes after we left I missed an opportunity I'd wanted to capture for years on the farm, the birth of a lamb.  The last pregnant mother gave birth to two more lambs.

I have to say that is one of the hardest sets of challenges facing photographers wanting to capture a realtime photojournalism story:  We have to be there, the conditions need to be "right" and we have to be prepared for those two conditions to collide before us.  This gets even harder if you want to make that moment art.

I think that is why, even though I love all types of photography, trying to capture the beauty of life in its own moment is my favorite type of photography bar none.  I love the challenge and the reward that comes from these adventures, and I say quite a few prayers of thanks when I see the moment captured in my frame.

-ehw

Time Travel at Home

This weekend I worked overnight Saturday to Sunday, and found myself forced out of the opportunity to capture the wonderful fall light.  I grew frustrated as I traveled from site to site, or took my nap since so many lovely photos were not being turned into digits.

This evening just before dinner I grabbed the P&S when these chairs started providing a silhouette and warm colors. I thought the chairs looked like something from a nice trip I once took to a historic residence.  It made me feel like I'd gone back in time.

I shot several frames, removing distractors...and messing up Mom's organization for the kiddo's home school classroom.  I got a nod of approval from my wife...and I kept working.

After a little experimentation in Perfect Effects 7 I got this result.  I hope you like it. (My wife did, so the disruption to her classroom was acceptable..whew)

The moral of the story, is that a camera can serve as a time machine in the hands of a crafty practitioner.  Even if you do not have the opportunity to travel the world, like so many of the fantastic travelers I've read recently, you can travel world wide in your own home with a little bit of forethought.

-ehw

EXTRA EXTRA!

EXTRA EXTRA! As of today I am in business!  Everything is in with City Hall and approved.   I can now take orders and provide photography services to you!

It is an exciting day.  I have a long way to go before I can quit my day job, but now I can grow in new ways!

So if you are looking for someone with passion who wants to tell your story...I'm available and ready to serve you!

-ehw

Building Blocks

[slideshow] My next mission is to grow as a photographer using Picture Perfect Practice by Roberto Valenzuela.  (You can get your copy through Amazon here Picture Perfect Practice)

While at Skip's Summer School a few months back (wow time flies) I spent a whole day with Roberto introducing to his technique for photographic growth.  To make it simple to understand put this picture in your mind...take a classical guitarist and put a camera in his hands.  Now you have Roberto.

Perfection in music requires a combination of precision movement of your muscles, a metronome of a mind, technical competence with music theory, and enough comfort in your capabilities to let your soul's unique sound emerge through the music.  This process to make a top level classical guitarist takes years, and the same can be said of photographers.  Luckily for most of us, the age of digital photography made the growth process faster since we can advance and study our frames not only faster, but in far greater detail than during the age of film.

By the time I entered Roberto's class I was running on fumes.  A 12 hour car ride, 13-14 hour workshops two days prior...and then Roberto hits me with a tidal wave of his own making.  Luckily he has a book out and I will revisit his lesson through it.  If I am lucky in two years I'll have a mastery of this photography thing...

Until then I offer a few photos I took with his lessons in mind.  Unfortunately I have only two in here I attempted to pose, the rest were all opportunity shots during the wedding (basically street photography!).  I am now looking at them know how far I have to go to be great, and it seems a long long distance from here!

Fortunately I can begin my journey with but a single frame and single lesson at a time from Roberto (and some other notables along the way)!

(I already did rectangles...now I'm working circles...) -ehw