The Common Touch

There was a change that took place in me when I went to college. I became a bit of a snob. I would go back home and behold the ways of the people that I grew up among and I would marvel at just how much better than them I had become.

Of course, I was really the same person. I had been exposed to some things they most likely hadn't experienced, but in the grand scheme, I was still the same person. So why, I ask, did I consider myself better than them? Well, the answer isn't that complicated.

We can all fall victim to this temptation--to elevate ourselves above those around us for one reason or another. Anything we have, anything we know, anything we are that differentiates us from someone else can be twisted by pride to make us think ourselves better than them. Social status or money can do it. Knowledge can also corrupt attitudes as powerfully as money. Give someone a book on systematic theology and you may have created a monster. Study philosophy for a year or two and you just might well find yourself in a state of arrogance from which you can't recover. All of these things must be tempered with humility. Looking at our greatest accomplishments, we will always find ourselves in the shadow of someone even greater who has accomplished more and has done better. And the greatest of men in the light of his highest accomplishments still stands in the shadow of a God who is not impressed.

Perspective. We need perspective. John Bradford, the great English reformer and martyr, was known to have said, "There, but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford." So what is it that really separates us from this person to whom we consider ourselves superior? We usually think it is something we have done--something we have accomplished. Well, if it indeed was us that has accomplished this thing, we might well indeed be superior to this person in that exact way. But don't be fooled. You did nothing on your own.

So I strive to maintain the common touch. I tell myself that we are, under God, all the same. I have limited success in this struggle because I still battle a voice which tells me I'm better than some people. I'd rather be listening to another voice. That voice told me: "As I have loved you, so you must love one another."

The Ebenezer

Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer,  saying, "Thus far has the LORD helped us." (I Samuel 7:12)

One of my boys and I spent a lot of time today attempting to place a new stone atop our Ebenezer. It is the largest  stone yet in the construction, I'm guessing approaching 1,000 pounds. Here's the rest of the story:

There was a time when things weren't as good for my family as they are now. I had worked for the same company for over 6 years when they sold to a competitor, putting me out of work. For the next few years, I found myself underemployed in a major way. I worked as a carpenter. I worked as an assistant director of a non-profit, faith-based ministry. I worked again as a carpenter. We were never unfed. We never were without a roof over our head. However, it wasn't easy to persevere. We were subjected to the humility of going to the food pantry at our church. We were often unable to pay bills when they were due. This often puts you in the unenviable position of having to apologize and ask for the forbearance of your creditors. It was a dark time, often lonely, as our friends were unaware of what we were really going through. The ones that were aware were often unable to respond in meaningful ways. This was usually because they had been protected from such times in their own lives and they secretly assumed that it was something I had done, or more likely something I wasn't doing, that had caused our circumstances.

After traveling this unlit corridor for too many years, I eventually rounded a corner and saw light creeping from under a door. I can now look back on these years, remembering the times as bittersweet--unpleasant, yet not without benefit.

Trials and tribulations teach us what we cannot learn otherwise. There are at least two major lessons I learned in the Dark Times. One is the importance of contentment. Being satisfied where we are and with what we have is an underrated, under-practiced discipline. Not having a choice in your circumstances distills the general notion of contentment into real contentment. You are either content or your are unhappy all the time. The second lesson I learned was true thankfulness. Being thankful for the small things isn't hard either when those small things aren't so small. Giving thanks in all things, including those difficult efforts at being thankful for the hard times, is another thing that Christians talk about yet don't often fully understand.

During this time, I prayed that when we exited that dark hallway, we would be mindful of our friends in like circumstances and would offer whatever assistance we could, without judgment or criticism. I've not been able to do this on the level I'd hoped, but we continue to do what we can for our friends in their own dark times. I also feel it is an obligation that I primarily owe to our friends and family. This is the network of support that God created for such times. If you aren't there to meet these needs in those closest to you, who will?

After our exit, I built an Ebenezer behind our house. What is an Ebenezer, you ask? In this case, it is a pile of large stones I gathered from my property and organized in a conspicuous place. When you look out the back door, there it is--you can't miss it.  It is to serve as a reminder to myself primarily, and to my family also, that God's faithful hand has brought us to where we are. I wanted to remember His faithfulness and I wanted the opportunity to point to that monument and tell others of His goodness. I don't do it as often as I should, but that speaks poorly of my faithfulness, not His.

Give thanks, my friends, because God is good, all the time.

The Destruction of Our Planet

Most of you are familiar with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It concerns entropy, or general decay. It has been paraphrased in the statement, “Things run down.” It can also be stated in egghead terms, using words and concepts that I cannot begin to understand, yet the concept touches all of our live in a myriad of ways. Entropy is what prevents perpetual motion. Entropy prevents complete efficiency in the usage of all forms of energy. In other words, any process which converts matter to energy—even at the most efficient levels—experiences some energy loss. Entropy cannot be stopped, cannot be controlled, and cannot be affected beyond a certain point.

Yet we humans think we are invincible, beyond the reach of this basic law of physics. We think the planet can be saved by limiting carbon emissions, a notion which I think is flawed at its core (sorry, Al Gore).  We think that world peace is possible, yet we ignore the fact that the entirety of human history has not experienced a time when this was even momentarily true. How naïve. How arrogant.

Saving a snaildarter here or recycling a Coke can there will not slow down the eventual destruction of our planet. Our planet was created with its eventual destruction in mind. In the words of John MacArthur, “If you think we’re damaging our planet, wait until you see what God does to it.” Our planet will be destroyed, and it will most likely be before the polar icecaps melt or before the hole in the ozone level is mended or before Al Gore gets his next Nobel Prize.

Our sinfulness is responsible for the earth’s destruction. Frankly, I look forward to Earth’s obliteration for no other reason than it will prove the ultimate vindication of God, the Creator. I can almost hear God saying, “I brought you into this universe, Earth, and I can take you out of it!” 

So I leave you with this: given the eventual demise of this big blue marble, our energies would seem better spent making peace with our Creator instead of making love to Mother Nature. Whose side would you rather be on anyway:  Al Gore or Almighty God?

The Wedding Shoot: Part II

 Since writing "The Wedding Shoot", other events have unfolded.

(DISCLAIMER/COP-OUT:  From the beginning, I felt I was overextending my skills to shoot this wedding. This was, after all, a full-sized, real wedding. But my friend, the groom, asked me if I would be the official photographer, and I assumed he was taking into account the risks and my constraints, so I agreed to do the wedding.)

After my friend returned from his honeymoon, I gave him a couple of CDs containing the images instead of printing proofs, as this was the preferred proofing medium. Within a day or two, my friend, acting as the middle man between wife and photographer, came to me with a complaint. He noted that there was one photo missing: one of just the bride and groom. The moment he mentioned it, I immediately knew that no such photo existed. I didn't remember taking one, nor seeing it as I proofed the exposures. In the crazy chaos that existed in the post-ceremony formal shoot, I had overlooked that one exposure, a fairly critical one, yet overlooked none the less. I had bride/groom posing with every other person or group of persons in the wedding party in every possible configuration, but none of just him and her.

At that point, I told him there was really only two choices, unless time travel suddenly became a reality. One, deal with the absence of the photo, or two, let me "find" the "missing" photo (i.e., exercise my master Photoshop skills). He chose the latter.

I told him that any subterfuge concerning the "found" image would be his; I would trust him to take the image and use it in the best way possible. The "found" image actually turned out OK, but I remained guarded about her reception of it.

I haven't heard yet what she thought, but I'm thinking all will be OK. I prefer the truth be know, but it's out of my hands right now.

The Love of Low-Down

A life-long love of low frequencies has brought me much enjoyment in a variety of ways. I've always had a penchant for the bass guitar. This fondness has stayed with me for the better part of the last 33 years, believe it or not. Just think of it: I've loved the bass guitar longer than most of you have been alive.

Within my life, the 5-string bass has been developed/invented and grown in popularity. In the earlier part of my life, the 5-string would have been impractical. There was little or no sound equipment that could render its tones well, as the tonal range of the time was somewhat narrower. The open B on the 5-string vibrates at 30.87 hz, whereas the open E, 4th string on this and most other bass guitars, vibrates at 41.20 hz. The frequency response of older stereo/hi-fi systems would have most likely rendered anything as low as 30.87 as distortion, or at least the stereo equipment I used would have. Audiophiles of the time may have had better experiences.

The human ear can distinguish sounds generally in the 20hz-20khz range, so the 5-string is well within that range, but does tend toward the lower limits. Sounds below 20hz are called infrasound.

Infrasound is a cool phenomenon. Sounds in the upper infrasound range most often cannot be heard, but can often  be felt. Since they are unheard, the sound waves that are felt are sometimes attributed to other things, very often to supernatural events, believe it or not. Infrasound can create feelings of unease, nervousness, fear or awe in the unsuspecting. Infrasound has been used in some film soundtracks to create such feelings intentionally. Infrasound can also have physiological effects, too, in some cases causing breathing difficulty or digestive problems. Then there is also the fabled "brown note", which is supposedly a frequency which creates a resonance that can cause a person to have an involuntary bowel movement. Recent research has more or less proven the "brown note" notion to be mythical, not factual.

Low frequencies can do a number on a fellow, though, even within the hearable spectrum. I was at a concert once, on the floor not too far from the stage. The bass player of this particular band would play a particular note on this one song over several measures. This note created a resonance in this venue that was transferred to my insides. The feeling, one of a very noticeable pressure on my guts, was super freaky weird. Yet I still didn't experience the feeling that my body was out of control. Thankfully.

A love of lower frequencies does not make me a universal appreciator, though. When some bozo pulls up next to me at a stoplight, and his subwoofers are pumping unwelcome sound waves out of his car and into mine, I am inspired to perform violent acts, not to appreciate his offering. In the old days, people my age would try to do this but would only succeed in creating an unbearably loud noise with their stereos, almost all of it grossly distorted. Technical advances in stereo design have both blessings and curses, I suppose.

For a while, I had in my possession a Rickenbacker 4003 bass guitar, a Mesa Boogie Buster 200 watt amp, and a Mesa Boogie Diesel 2-10 speaker cabinet. When a friend of mine would come over and we would be playing, I noticed that when I played an F (first fret on the E-string), even at normal volumes, it would create a resonance in the room that would cause things to shake and fall off of shelves. It was awesome.

To me, the best application of the bass in music is this: it must be heard and felt.

 

The Wedding Shoot

A couple of weeks ago tonight, I was hard at work photographing a friend's wedding. I mentioned this in an earlier post, and it has finally come and gone. I'm thankful. Here are my reflections:

1. It wasn't truly my first wedding. I shot another wedding about 18 years ago. It was also for someone I  worked with at the time, but was held at a dude ranch and had a very non-traditional format. Guests sat on hay bales and the altar was the porch of a dog-run cabin. I shot the entire wedding on 35mm film using my Nikon FM-2 and a cheap, aftermarket flash. All my efforts ended up as for naught, as the couple has been divorced now for quite a few years. Also, what the friend paid me to shoot the wedding I spent on processing and gave it back to him as a wedding gift. Net proceeds: less than zero. I kept none of the images from that wedding, and I now regret it.
2. This wedding was a shakedown cruise for my rig, as I had never used it in this high-demand capacity. I have two flashes, a Stroboframe flash bracket and a bagful of rechargable NiMH batteries. I thought I was set.
3. I learned that the biggest demand on a wedding shooter is flash power. Powering my flash with NiMH meant that I was always changing batteries. In some situations, I was overdriving my flash to compensate for longer shots, creating more demand on my NiMHs. At the reception, I found a convenient place to plug in my 15-minute charger and I visited it frequently.
4. Experience is indeed the best teacher for the wedding photographer. I'll be prepared to do a better job on my next wedding (assuming there is one) than I did on this one, and so on and so on...
5. Autofocus was my worst enemy. I am still learning the intricacies of autofocus on a high-tech digital SLR, so I made a few mistakes, thankfully none terribly serious. Most common: when taking a picture of two people standing together, make sure the focal point is not the background between them. Amongst my table shots, I took a couple of  pix with a perfectly focused background and two fuzzy people in the fore.
6. Be ready for a marathon. I arrived at the church at 4pm and left the reception at close to 11pm. For virtually the whole time, I was carrying my rig, which had become an awful burden by the evening's end.
   
7. Don't be afraid to be creative. Some of my favorite shots involved spur-of-the-moment ideas I had.
   
8. Don't be afraid to get in the way. My presence as the wedding photographer was fairly important, so I got over the notion that I would bother someone or get in someone's way. "Excuse me. Excuse me..."
9. Out of around 450 exposures, I culled out around 100, turning over around 350 to the couple. Out of that 350, there were a few that I didn't much like, but felt they were important and left them in.
   
10. My friend and his wife are very understanding about the challenges I experienced. Thankfully, I don't think their expectations are super high, otherwise they would have hired someone else. Hopefully, they will be happy with the results. I'll at least give them a good price to pay for the experience, which was good.