Almost 10 years ago I purchased my first firearm. It was a rather poor quality Bryco Model 48 .380 handgun. I purchased it for 2 reasons, 1) Because I have the right to, and 2) I wanted to have personal protection. I am not a gun nut, but I do firmly believe we have the right to own and bear arms, and I also believe that a well armed law-abiding public will encourage a more peaceful populous.
Owning firearms & being a father means care must be observed to protect my family, the days of having a loaded weapon in my night stand are long over. I now have a digital safe that I keep my gun in, away from my children. My wife knows the combination and how to safely use the firearms, and will protect our family if we had an intruder in our home.
I had wanted for many years to purchase a smaller, compact firearm that would be safe & small enough for concealed carrying. I did look around town and did some research on what to purchase, I landed on a Smith & Wesson Bodyguard .380 sub-compact.
To safely carry & operate a firearm, you need to use it and be very comfortable with it. In the last week to learn the weapon, I took some great opportunities to shoot at the range and at friends land. My wife even got in on the action at the our local indoor gun club. I have put 500 rounds through the little handgun, it has performed beyond my expectation.
In honor of 500 rounds, here it is:
Shot with: Nikon D7000 / 50mm / f/1.8 / ISO 250 / Shutter 1/80's / Flash Used, bounce right.
If you followed my blog back when I had a shred of discipline, you know that I had dreams of a daily photo blog, which if did somewhat well for a few months. Heading in to 2012, I will just be level honest. No promises! I do want to do more photography and also posts about the tech.arts world. So, keep an eye out for more updates, and may you kick off your 2012 blessed!
Nikon D7000 // Tamron 18-270 VZD @ 100mm // f/6 // 1/60's shutter // ISO 500
While in Dallas, WFX was nice enough to arrange a tour of Watermark Community Church. They have just completed a new building project. I took my camera with me, mostly for images of their non-traditional ceiling cloud layout using a mix of MDF, OSB, Plywood, and Sound Absorbers. The room sounded outstanding. Acoustic Dimensions did an outstanding job and the LA Acoustics speakers sound fabulous.
This post is just some free-hand panoramas I shot while there, they turned out well so I decided to share. I have several other facility pictures, drop me a note if your interested. These were all shot using my Tamron 18-270 PZD Lens at 18mm on a Nikon D7000. The stitching was done by Hugin software, a great & powerful cross-platform panorama picture creating tool. You can click on each for a larger version, but even the larger versions are only 1920 pixels wide, otherwise they are 30MB each as JPG’s. Shoot me a message if you want the largest versions.
#1 – Standing in the last row, center house. 5 shots.
#2 – Standing against the edge of the stage looking into the house. Center. 5 shots.
#3 – 3-shot panorama of the outdoor patio / baptism area.
My feet are sore and my brain a little fried. Just finished the expo portion of the 2011 Worship & Facilitates Expo. This was my second year attending, it was nice to gain perspective on the event as an alumni so to speak.
This post is going to be my top 10, in my humble opinion. Obviously I attend to find tools and resources applicable to my job in my church. You will notice almost no IMAG products, because, we don’t use or need IMAG. These are items or companies that stuck in my brain mostly because they solve an issue I have, or I just loved it.
#1 – DPA – d:fine // more info // Headworn Microphone
So you love the sound of the favorite 4066 or 4088 DPA capsule but the two-ear design, well, is awkward? You love your Countryman E6, but it keeps floating away from your pastors face? This new mic from DPA makes me very happy. Our lead pastor consistently struggles with a mic that won’t stay in place. I have fiddled, molded, re molded his mic so many times. It is a constant worry I live with – it’s is sad that a mic could be so distracting and challenging. As you may imagine, I was overcome with joy when I tried this new DPA mic on. I held right to my ear, without pressure, and would NOT move. I looked silly as I bopped my head to and fro trying to get it to budge. Simple, Clean, and Easy. Also nice is how modular it is. The ear mount, boom, and cable are all separable, so a piece gets broke, or you want to switch to a beige instead of black boom, no problem. Great work to the design team on this one, they nailed it. These are looking to start shipping soon. Price in the $650 range would be my best guess, but I really am not sure.
#2 – Elite Core – PM-16 // more info // Personal Monitor Mixers
I bumped into Jeff Pavelec from Stark Raving Solutions on the floor and asked the ‘see anything amazing’ type of question. He asked if I had seen this Elite Core PM-16. I engaged the puzzled look and said “What?” I had never heard of Elite Core, but made an assumption that it was another silly expensive product trying to play in the land of Roland’s M-48 & My Mix personal mixers. I told Jeff, I want a 16 channel product priced between HearBack (yech) and Avioms. He stood up and led me to their booth. It is that product. FINALLY! It addresses some ever present concerns with Aviom A) The plastic body that tends to crack when it tips over, and B) The headphone amplifier that just lacks the presence and power many musicians would prefer. The casing is steel with dial guards to help even more. The knobs are smooth and have a nice resistance level to them. It offers the simplest method I have seen for personal mixing. 16 volume knobs, 16 pan knobs, an on-board ambience mic, basic 3 band EQ, a single nob compressor/limiter, and a master volume. Simple. You do lose the mix-saving ability, but at a better price and easier use, I think the trade of is worth it. This is a NEW company, but they have a solid, US made, product. The input option is one – a 16 channel analog input 1RU device. It outputs to a POE network switch then drops to the mixers from there. No limit to the number of mixers, but like Aviom, if you daisy chain, you need to add a power supply to the 2nd unit. These will probably find their way into our Youth venue very soon. I did not see enough of a reason to ditch our existing Aviom system, but, unless the saving option is a ‘must have’, I cannot see every buying another Aviom rig.
#3 – German Light Products – Impression Spot One // more info // Led Moving Head
I love LED’s, and it has been awesome to see the advances of LED technology grow so fast. This fixture impressed me in several ways. Main great feature – truly high output LED moving head spot with real moving head options. This unit serves up a mean 400 watt LED light source that competes with the light output of over 1k discharge fixtures. It does a daylight white that is even and clean, edge to edge. No shadowing or color rainbows at the edge. It handles the hard orange-yellow spectrum beautifully. 2 full featured gobo wheels plus an effect wheel. You can layer the gobos and effects, and toss in any color that this pristine RGB chip can mix. 20,000 hour light-source expected life, quite and cool chassis, and low power draw for great output. This will land in the $10k range, making it comparable with like-output full featured units from other groups. They said the RGB ship is manufactured by a projector company, which may help explain the excellent color mixing engine in this baby.
#4 – Littlite – LW-12-LED // more info // Utility Light
I love utility. What is more utility than a light? We own many of Littlite’s LED gooseneck lights around FBC, with a 3 postion switch of OFF, RED, WHITE+RED. No dimming options to speak of. I know this sounds petty, but I want a dimming version! Now they make one. It took a little modifying of the base to get the new custom-made dimmer to fit, but they got it done. It starts at off, fades in the 3 RED LEDs, and once those are full up, it adds the white LED’s until you have the perfect brightness. The new base also has a standard detachable DC barrel, so no permanent pig tail.
#5 – Ashly Audio – PEMA // more info // DSP + Amplifier
So far the products in my Top 10 have been ones I would practically use. This is one that does not fit my needs, but it would fit many smaller churches, funeral homes, chapel, and other small-venue needs perfectly. This 2 Rack-Unit 25 pound class D amplifier is far more than it appears. It packs up to 8 250 watt outputs with a full on-board DSP. Not a wimpy baby DSP, a full feature Protea DSP. Automixing, Tele-Paging Ducking, 70v options, Delays, Compression, 8 on-board mic preamps, auto feedback surpression and more. In 2RU. 25 pounds. Network Enabled. They even have the Decora-Style wall plate with presets to run the DSP. All of this, not kidding, less than $3000. Small church this could run mains, monitor mixes, foyer, nursery, a recording output, and something else.
Thats it for tonight, I have other thoughts to share, but will attack that enroute back to Topeka tomorrow. The next post will talk about great products from Teradek, ETC, RSC, DB Technologies, Danley Sound Labs, and Nexo.
Did we ever walk alone. This has been a unforgettable October. Through the times of joy and celebrations and in the times of remembrance for loved ones who have passed away – God has been faithful to never let us walk alone. This month has been packed full of God working in myself, my family, our community, and our Church. This post will be an October in review, this is part one.
Ron Daniel
If you attend FBC in Topeka, you should by now know the song “Never Once” from Matt Redman. We introduced it on October 8th, these were the first services following the passing of one of our long time volunteers, Ron Daniel. Ron’s death was unexpected, but his death on earth was a celebration in Heaven. We are left on earth short one amazing servant, humble guy. Ron’s wanted people to know about this God we love, working many weekends every month serving in our Mountain kids program as a Tech.Arts volunteer to ensure those kids knew about the God that loved them. This still left his wife, Susan, and family missing Ron’s presence here on earth.
Never once did we ever walk alone
Never once did you leave us on our own
You are faithful, God, You are faithful.
Scars and struggles on the way but with joy our hearts can say
Never once did we ever walk alone, carried by Your constant grace
Held within Your perfect peace, Never once, No, we never walk alone
This image was one I shot last year on my Nikon D40. He was hanging out at the Tech booth just having a conversation when I snapped this one. Our Tech.Arts team will be forever made better because of his involvement with us.
Grow
Our Worship & Tech.Arts teams gather several times per year to fellowship, look at the vision for the future, and to learn together. This Grow on October 9th was great. We had a majority of our teams there. Erik & Sarah Oldberg spent time downloading their recent experience attending the Hillsong worship conference in Sydney, Australia.
Fall Harvest Moon
I had the opportunity to run sound for our Youth on October 12th, as I was leaving the building this amazing moon jumped out at me. The weather was beautiful with a fair wind that was moving the clouds quickly between myself and the moon. It made for an evening of changing moon landscapes.
Spoken
In Topeka, Fellowship Bible Church and Topeka Bible Church have a great partnership with Trash Mountain Project. Trash Mountain is uniquely equipped to serve communities around trash dumps throughout the world. This event was a fund raising banquet for the group. Our Tech.Arts team worked hard Sunday afternoon to transform our stage for this event.
Pumpkin Patch
My sons daycare/preschool does a field trip about every other week. I was able to take a day off week ago Friday so my wife & I were able to join them. Our son David had a blast climbing the mounds of hay, “driving” his train car, and picking out a pumpkin.
I get up at 5am on Thursday with the intention on heading to work early so I can get some extra work done. I think this is a great plan. Off I head to work about 6:15 am. The church where I work is positioned at the edge of town where there are some nice rolling hills. The fog is still rolling around in the lower elevations and looks pretty amazing as the sun begins to rise. This all creates a beautiful landscape that is begging to be photographed.
I arrived at the parking lot arguing with my self, ultimately, my inner shutterbug wins. I depart for a site I have taken many pictures, the Kansas River boat access in Topeka just west of the Governors mansion.
Below is one of my favorite shots from that September 8th morning. Below that is a video montage I shot as well.
Kansas River at Topeka. || Nikon D7000 | F/16 | 1/160's | ISO 400 | 62mm ||
Video Montage
Just over one week ago I became the proud papa to our second child, a very adorable little girl we named Sarah Jane. Here is a look at our week in pictures! Click on them for larger versions. To save space, I have made them rather small. These were all shot on my Nikon D7000. Mostly high iso speeds since I was not using flash in most of them. What an amazing blessing she is to us!
12 hours after her water broke, my wife took some Castor Oil to help kick things off. Our Midwife put it in some pudding.
My wife, Laboring in the tub. This is the calm before the storm
During her laboring, our friend and birth photographer, Kristi, rubbed this magic lotion on to Jeanine's arms.
So, now we have a sweet baby girl. Here is her tiny hand in my wife's hand.
Here is our midwife, Eileen, holding Sarah shortly after she was weighed.
Our friends came over to the house later the day she was born. At this point Sarah was 11 hours old. She is soooo cute.
Sarah's very first bath. She is 7 days old here and shedding her womb-skin.
This is a close up of her pretty face. I used my Nikon 50mm with a Promaster +4 closeup filter
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