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.