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Seeing as how it’s 2:30am it would probably be a good idea to be in bed, but seeing as how it is so hot in our house still, that is pretty much a useless effort. So instead I’m sitting here watching The Decemberists on Austin City Limits. I recorded it about a month ago on Tivo and have it saved permanently. I would love to see them in concert someday. I guess there are at least three good things to come out of Portland, Powell’s Bookstore, The Decemberists, and Little People, Big World. That’s about the most kind words you’ll ever here from a Washingtonian about the state of Oregon. Until they at least ditch the 55mph speed limit, their staying on the sneeds list.
Though in the “retro” trend category, I’ve heard rumblings of a return to the nationwide 55mph speed limit to promote fuel savings. While this is a pretty stupid concept (sorry, I tend to be a little more blunt at this time of night) it did kind of suck to pay $65 dollars today to fill my gas tank. If I was smart, I’d invest in these guys right now. I find it hard to imagine that congress, no matter who is in control, can avoid taking some kind of steps to counteract the insane skyrocketing gas prices. The American (and by extension the world) economy is predicated on cheap fuel. If this is no longer the reality, I’m less worried/interested in any coming recession as I am in the restructuring of society that will take place as a result of transportation no longer being cheap. Anyone know at what point train travel becomes more practical than flight? I remember when I purchased my first HP laptop I drove from Yakima to my house and back again just to pick it up. I don’t even drive over the hill to San Jose anymore now.
(update: I’m now watching last weeks Arcade Fire performance on Austin City Limits. . . Tivo is great)
Anyway, I took the afternoon off of work today and went down to Vintage for a special condensed new members class. It was an exciting opportunity to go through the fundamentals of what Vintage stands for as a church and to be able to put pen to paper and actually commit to standing by those values. We still haven’t had the official commissioning yet but we all signed covenants today dedicating ourselves to the mission of the church. Between this and the photo show opening tomorrow it’s a pretty exciting time at Vintage for me right now!
Well, it’s finally started to cool down now so I think I’ll take a whack at getting some rest before tomorrow. This is going to be a busy week!
Well, we made it through the first check in of summer here at Mount Hermon pretty much without a hitch. I’m hoping things go really well this summer now that I’ve got one summer under my belt.
We did have a bit of an eventful last week though because of a large fire that was burning just about five miles from the camp. I’ve already blogged about that and the photos are still up over on Flickr.
The last little bit of this update is in some ways the most exciting. Tomorrow I’m going down to Vintage to put up photos for a show we are having for the next 6 weeks in the coffeehouse. I’m excited about that since it will be the first ever public show of my photos in large numbers. I had two photos in a show back at Christmas but this one is going to be just Matt and I. We both have about 20 shots to put up.
So this was a little bit of a disjointed and scatterbrained update but Coffee Cat closes soon and, frankly, I’m having a little bit of trouble concentrating right now. Well, on that note, later!
I’ve been playing around with taking short video clips at Vintage the last couple weeks and this is the latest iteration. I was talking with one of the graphics guys here at Mount Hermon this week and he mentioned the term “long portrait” when talking about short video clips like this. That is a good way to think about these. Matt and I have both taken quite a few pictures of the “HOPE” sign but this one has sound and flickering candles. It’s just one more way we can help document what a service is like. Maybe we can start having a virtual service in Second Life for people who want a virtual experience? 
Anyway, much as I’d like to keep playing around with this video editing sucks and my little point and shoot is not really a long term solution. Since I don’t have much use for a video camera at this point beyond 30 second clips here on flickr, it doesn’t make much sense for me to pick up yet another expensive hobby. Seriously, why can’t I get into paper mache?. So we shall see where this will go.
As I’ve mentioned in the past, most of the photos I take during the service at Vintage are off limits, but since there aren’t any faces in some of the ones I took today I put them up on my Flickr too. This is a pretty good sample of what I do most weeks at Vintage. It’s a lot of moving around trying to find new and interesting perspectives each week. The lighting is always an adventure as in the morning it is often very harsh and bright light coming in through the stained glass windows while in the evening it almost feels like a cave some times. Usually I end up with a good batch of shots though, so I can’t really complain. Sometime I’ll write a post about my thoughts on taking pictures during a service and where I draw the line between when to shoot and when to just sit back and participate. Not right now though, cause it’s 1am and I’m tired.
I haven’t been blogging much about my photo taking work at Vintage Faith and I’d like to change that. Obviously much of what I shoot during the services is private and won’t see much light of day. The work I do on the shows after the evening services however are a far different matter. So from time to time you may see photos of church life turn up, but I hope to start posting my favorite shot from the week here.
I’ve added some old photos to flickr that I didn’t have there before so you can look back on some of the work I’ve done since last fall. The first one I’ll post here though is from this Sunday’s show. Bradley Hathaway is a spoken word poet and song writer with an amazing band out of Arkansas. The lighting situation was really frustrating this week because they put all of the lights on the sides of the stage so most of the band was silhouetted the whole time. But any photographer of worth won’t let a little problem like the lack of light stop them from doing their job! Thus while I don’t have any great shots of Bradley’s face, I do like this profile I got.
