Philly Church

This photo comes from another one of my summer adventures. Last summer I had the pleasure of serving in Philadelphia through my church's student ministry program. Every night we would group up and talk about the day in this giant sanctuary with a dome of stained glass on the ceiling. My youth pastor at the time for whatever reason decided to shine a few lights onto it illuminating the space in which we were talking. Afterward, as some people started to get ready for bed while others like myself continued to stay and talk. I decided to photograph the ceiling. I ended up laying on the floor taking the photo directly under the dome. I didn't have the flash on to show the lighting of the spotlights. It resulted in a great exposure of the stained glass with the symbol of the holy trinity in the middle.

Easter Symbolism From The Big Easy

About a month ago I had a wonderful trip with the Bowling Green State University Men's Chorus where we toured all the way down to New Orleans. Amidst the food, sight seeing, and other fun I took some time with two other members and visited one of the famous above ground crypt cemeteries. This particular one came the St. Louis Cemetery #2. As I explored the cemetery I found that like snowflakes, no two crypts were the same. I found one and fell in love with the subject. the crypt with sinking into the ground, crumbling and broken. It even looked like it had been broken from the inside (little creepy) but I took several photos and noticed the cross on the broken piece leaning up beside it. I immediately thought of the easter story and even sent it to my pastor to share with my church back home in Cincinnati. I appropriately captioned the photo with Matthew 28: 2 Matthew 28: 2 "And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it."

Warm Thoughts: Fun With Sunsets

As I sit here typing this I can't help but feel that summer is long overdue. Being from Ohio, I'm more than used to some wild weather, but none as annoying as the prolonged winter we have seemed to have this year! It is now April and the first day I've experienced the warm sun was yesterday. Anyway I figured my post should be a little more warm to accommodate. This photo was taken down at Lake Gaston in North Carolina. My family goes there every summer to have a week of fun, tubing, wake boarding, swimming, and everything in between. This past summer was the first time having my DSLR down there and I knew I couldn't pass up a good sunset with my new camera. I waited for a good sunset and dashed toward this spot about ten minutes away from the house. I took my little cousin Danny with me to play with another one of my cameras. It was a blast and one of the first times I started messing with the shutter speed. Some of the photos came out a little noisy, but a lucky few came out with some good exposure of the colors. I was fortunate with this shot due to the boat creating a shadow moving along the horizon. Either way, this is another favorite of mine, on this not entirely warm day.

Introductions: From Coolpix to DSLR

This is my first official photography blog. As a Visual Communication Technology major, I have to choose a specialty and as this blog suggests that specialization will be photography. I have been interested in taking photos ever since I was little and saw my dad and three brothers own and take their own photos. I will never forget my overabundant excitement when I was twelve and opened up my first digital camera on Christmas. I immediately started taking photos and needed a lot of AA batteries. This was before the chargeable batteries in digital cameras really took off. I kept taking photos, videos, and was a kid in a candy store. About a year later I was a new member in the theater department at my school. It was a president's day all day rehearsal, and being a very young crew member I didn't have a lot to do backstage. One day my director asked me if I wanted to take photos with his DSLR camera, I took over a thousand photos that day alone. He later told me that many of them were good photos and this only fed my addiction even more. From then on I knew I wanted a DSLR. After that two digital cameras and a waterproof camera later, I bought my DSLR this past summer after graduating high school. It was a Nikon D3200 and I am still learning and love playing with my great toy. Now that I am in college, taking real photography classes, and trying to get my face out in the corporate world for my career, I decided to start this blog. Hopefully anyone who looks will be as entertained by the photo as I was taking it. These posts will be periodical, about one or two a week depending, and will include a backstory of the photo I post. Even having my DSLR less than a year I already have many images that have some interesting backstories.

For Example:  This first picture is from the very famous Times Square in New York City. During the summer of 2014 I went on a mission trip to Philadelphia with my youth group back home in Cincinnati. We had a free day in NYC as a treat at the end of the trip, and the last thing we saw was times square at night. It was quite a treat to say the least, and I was particularly happy to shoot some photos of all of those city lights. Only having my camera for a few weeks at this point I didn't know everything I was doing. I was experimenting with auto, auto no flash, and switching around with the manual controls and hoping it was in focus. Although not everything in the photo isn't in perfect focus, I am very happy with the various colors that came out. One day I hope to go back to the city with a more advanced lens than my default 18-55, and maybe a tripod. Until then, this is a favorite of mine.