Every year, our church has what they call a Concert of Praise. It’s an evening service held with all of the Hill Country Bible Churches in the association. This year, there were so many churches (due to church planting!) that the concert had to be split between “East side – West side” with two concerts occurring simultaneously. It was pretty amazing. Over 5,000 decisions for Christ were made in the last few months as a result of the Backyard Bible clubs, GO Trips, and various other ministry efforts. What a joyous occasion to celebrate!

I do feel like I completely missed it, though. I mean, I was there and all… but I had two DSLRs (with different lenses, so I didn’t have to switch lenses in the dark) between me and the “action” and I was continually looking for good angles and “the next shot.” This was my first time shooting dark stage shots without the calming prescence of my brother and I was praying that I’d get an acceptable number of photos for the Worship Team. I’d done the sermon shots on August 3rd… but the house lights were up for those.

Not a good pic at all (bad point of view) but here’s Dave. He was “working,” too, see?

James was there. He sat in the audience and reports from the parents I had him sitting with were very good. We have a very well behaved 3 year old, apparently. Go James! Woo!

Here are some of my favorites from Sunday night:

That one with the balloons waaaaay up high, in the upper left hand corner is my favorite. I just love the foreshadowing!

I shot with my brother’s Canon 400D and my Canon 300D. I had the XTi set to save in RAW mode and the 300D to save in jpg mode (because I have lost my other 2Gig memory card) and I have to say… … … …I was blown away with the jpgs that came off of the 300D. I was so blown away with them that I didn’t even bother opening them in CS3. The thing that amazes me is that you probably can’t tell which ones were the unprocessed jpgs off of the 300D or the processed ones off the 400D unless you knew which lenses I had on which camera. Heh.

This was my first time ever taking pictures in an actual church service and it wouldn’t have been successful without Jerry. He provided the lens I used most and a ton of good shots with his 5D and additional vantage point. I am going to miss him anytime I have to take pictures during a service again.

My brother joined me for picture-taking at the Good Friday service tonight.  Here’s a few pictures of the crosses.  We had all three of our cameras out, from the 5D Jerry just bought to the old 300D I’m currently using (but desperately need to upgrade).  I had the two rebels and Jer had the 5D.

They were all over.  The crosses filled the Deep End.

They were even outside and in the gym.

So that new lens? Yeah? It’s tons of fun. Here’s a self portrait where I got lucky with the focus.

Introducing the EF 50mm f/1.8 II!  I am super happy to have this lens.  It was a birthday present from my parents and I’m anxious to get better at using it.  I’m thrilled to have such a large aperture to play with!

Here are some shots we snapped this afternoon with it.  The popcorn was our afternoon snack.  James wanted a picture of his cup, and with Lowell’s sippie cup picture I was trying to get the bug stickers in focus.

This one below is my favorite picture of the evening. I think I should go back in and work on getting a better exposure of the middle of it but overall, this is a beautiful painting/calligraphy work and I wouldn’t mind having it hanging in my home.

Yes, these were taken at our church. This used to be the upstairs lobby but when the church built an addition (it’s huge) off the backside of the sanctuary, this space became the art gallery since the lobby was basically moved to the other end of the building. I guess technically, there are 3 different lobbies. This was a great way to spend a Friday night without the kids! I had so much fun running around and climbing over things and ducking to get good pictures.

I will be setting up a casual portrait session with the artists on a Sunday morning before the exhibit is taken down. For now, I just have a group shot. The artists:

The reflection in the mirror on this one totally caught my eye.

Here are some pictures of the jazz trio that was playing. I’m gonna tell Tom (the one on sax) that he needs a website so I can link to him. He can be reached via email at justforyoujazz at yahoo.com if you’re in need of some music. Their music added the perfect touch to the evening at the Art Exhibit.

These were fun shots to get. They were set up in the darkest, hardest to reach corner where the walls were painted this mossy green (ick for bounce flash) and the perfect angle was occupied by the support beam for the staircase… I tried the tripod but the exposure times were too long to be sharp, I tried bouncing the flash off the ceiling by just standing there but the reflection in the window behind them was quite evil and the musicians were still severely underexposed. Eventually what worked is boosting the flash up to +3 and standing on the top of a barstool with the flash bounced off the ceiling and the sliver of tan wall. I may have looked silly but the pictures are acceptable!

I’ll update soon with pictures of the art and event.

Yum, these cakes by The Cake Plate were delicious. I got to try all three!

Pictures link to larger size cuz I know you just gotta get more of these cakes.

Look at this last one. Dontcha just want to pick that wayward chocolate shaving off the top? I mean, no one will notice the missing chocolate, right? Surely it’s hanging there just for me to pick off… Just look at the way it’s leaning, stretching towards me, begging to be put out of its misery.

Photographers [b] sure to visit thebschoolblog.com for helpful videos on everything from naming your business to phone etiquite.

Having come from the world of music (I was trained as a professional clarinetist years ago) I totally abuse the word “gig.” I suppose in this line of work, I should adapt and substitute “shoot” for “gig” but “shoot” doesn’t sound very appealing to me. I’ll stick to gig. Y’all know what it means anyhow, right?

I have my second unpaid gig tomorrow night and I’m pretty nervous about it. My first unpaid gig did not go as well as I had hoped, as far as the quality of the pictures went. I shot that in .jpg so I had much less data in each picture (data = saftey net in editing) than if I’d shot RAW and I somehow totally fracked my shutter speed when I set the full manual mode so half the pictures have this lovely orange motion blur. Not great. I could blame most of it on the venue. Very high, black ceiling. Using a flash diffuser, I was a total newbie.

Tomorrow night’s shoot is at the same venue (my church) but a totally different place in the church. If I remember correctly, it has a very high ceiling, but at least it’s white. I’ll be shooting where there are lots of pin lights down low so hopefully that will allow some of the shots to be taken sans flash. I also now have 5 GB worth of memory cards so I’ll be able to shoot in RAW and take tons of pictures. I think 500 pictures will be a nice amount for this event. If I nail exposure and white balance, I may go into jpeg mode which will boost the number of pictures I can take… but that’s only if I’m feeling confident. I’ll also be packing up my tripod. Definitely taking the tripod. Maybe the monopod? Haven’t decided on that one yet.

Here are some pics from the first unpaid gig. They’re not all that great, so don’t get your hopes up.

That cake was totally delicious. I need to get the caterer’s name so I can give you guys his link. The food was amazing and I was glad to get a dinner out of it! (I guess that’s good payment, eh?)