Dru Lattin and Lisl Graber were a brave young couple that decided to let me shoot their wedding… by myself! Dru is a good friend who was with me at both IGo and SMBI. My flight was canceled and I got to the wedding about 15-20 minutes before it started. They pulled someone else–Josh–aside who had an XTi and asked him to shoot the portraits beforehand. Josh (and Brittney, who used his camera) also shot throughout the wedding then, which was a relief to me: to have someone else shooting in case I missed stuff. I had borrowed Sommers’ flash bracket and Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L. An unfortunate thing was that I didn’t understand the interplay between AV mode and flash. I used AV some of the time to get full use of that wonderful 2.8 and thus set my shutter speed to dismal speeds, messing up a number of pictures. I now understand how AV mode works with flash and I sort of understand the logic behind making AV work that way, but not totally, and I’m still bitter. Anyway, enough story and photographic technicalities, and let me show you the pics. (All pictures were taken by me, except where noted otherwise.)
I need lots and lots of critique from photographer and non-photographer alike.
This picture was taken by Josh, but I take half credit for it because of the extensive post-processing I did on it. The background was quite busy and detracting.
One of the delightful things of tour was to meet a number of online acquaintances in person for the first time! I had the privilege of meeting fellow techie Josh Champagne. (His church’s blog mentioned us too.) At our program at OSU, it was cool to meet the “eccentric… very eccentric”* Matt Smucker. I had the delight of meeting and eating lunch with the famouser** Dorcas Smucker, along with her husband Paul and lovely daughter Jenny. I also met Emily briefly, though she sat with friends to eat.
Here’s a fun little math story problem that challenged my math skills–something that happens far too little these days. I got it from a friend’s Xanga. The answer is below the fold. But try to figure out the answer (without looking!) and post the step by step solution as a comment.
A man can paint a house in 5 days. He and his brother can paint the same house in just 3 days. How long would it take his brother to paint the house by himself?
We had a really stellar tour! Thanks for praying! I’ll post some pics later. In the meantime, here are most of our songs videoed at our last program. Thanks to Shannon Martin for running the cameras for us and for Nate Faus and Delmar Penner for your cameras! Thanks also to Delmar for the hours spent rendering and converting!
Sun. April 6 10:00 A.M. - New Hope Mennonite Church, Marysville, WA
Sun. April 6 7:00 P.M. - Country Christian Center, Pasco, WA
Mon. April 7 7:30 P.M. - Kootenai Valley Mennonite Church, Bonners Ferry, ID
Tues. April 8 7:30 P.M. - White Pine Mennonite Church, Trout Creek, MT
Thurs April 10 7:30 P.M. - Sheridan Mennonite Church, Sheridan, OR
Fri. April 11 7:00 P.M. - Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR
Sat. April 12 7:00 P.M. - Lebanon High School, Lebanon, OR
Sun. April 13 10:00 A.M. - Brownsville Mennonite Church, Brownsville, OR
Sun. April 13 6:30 P.M. - Winston Mennonite Church, Winston, OR
Mon. April 14 P.M. - Program at Sacramento Christian School for Russian and
homeschooling children and families
Tues. Apr. 15 A.M. - Street ministry in Sacramento
Tues. April 15 7:00 P.M. - Dunkard Brethren Church, Modesto, CA
Thurs. April 17 7:00 P.M. - Southern California Bible Fellowship, Frazer Park, CA
Fri. April 18 10:00 P.M. - Singing and Preaching (by Ray Comfort’s assistant) in Santa Monica
Sun. April 20 5:00 P.M. - India Assembly Church, Norwalk (LA), CA
Wed. Apr. 23 7:00 P.M. - Martindale Mennonite Reception Center, Ephrata, PA
Thurs. Apr. 24 - Recording at Altar of Praise Studio, Leola, PA
Throughout my previous two terms at SMBI, I took every opportunity of different weather and lighting to shoot the field right beside the school. Here is the resulting collection:
Friday the 28th of March I graduated from Sharon Mennonite Bible Institute with a major of Bible & Theology. To graduate from SMBI, one needs to write a minimum 8-10,000 word thesis. My thesis compares conservative Mennonites of the 21st century to 1st century Jews. Here’s my thesis statement: “Conservative Mennonites of the 21st century are very close in many ways to the Jews of the 1st century, and we have a wonderful opportunity to learn from their strengths and weaknesses because so much of the New Testament is directed to them.”
All of us DSLR shooters at SMBI decided to go shoot pictures the other Saturday at some picturesque PA location. Four (Hans, DJ, Lee, and Trina) of us wanted to go to Bedford about 1/2 hour away and two (Benji, Darren) wanted to go to Gettysburg about 1.5 hr away. Because of the votes, we decided to go to Bedford. That Saturday dawned cloudy and rainy. The four didn’t want to go if it was raining but the two did. So they left for Gettysburg. About an hour later, it stopped raining, so us four left for Bedford. Here are my results, most HDR:
Bedford Town Hall
Lawyer’s Row
Bedford City Hall
Church: rail, steps, and door
Church
Church
Trina and DJ shooting
Fairytale house
Old rustic barn
For Sale
Gorgeous, rustic old barn
Garage door of the ancients
That doggie in the window
Bright red barn falling down
Red tool shed
Cabin under renovation
Trina and Lee shooting
Half a barn
Morgarl Tavern
Angry silos
View from the lookout
Foreboding trees
Foreboding sky
On the way back, we stopped at the lookout. As we headed back to school from the lookout, it started snowing and blowing heavily. We took a little detour in DJ’s 4×4 down a power line path. As we were going along, we came to what looked like a puddle about a foot deep. DJ backed up and got some speed and plowed into a mudhole filled with water about three feet deep! He got stuck right in the middle of it with the water half way up the door and seeping in under the doors in little waves. He stuck it in 4WD high and got nowhere. He stuck it in 4WD low and starting inching forward. He rocked back and forth, with tons of water flying out either side. He finally managed to extricate himself much to our relief. After all, we were stuck in the midst of a muddy mini-pond with no cell phone reception, with the engine likely to flood, with it snowing so hard we couldn’t see very far, and with it freezing cold. After we got out, DJ’s feet were shaking so badly he was having trouble with the gas pedal.
This blog and its contents (photos, videos, text) is copyrighted by Hans Mast. If you want to reproduce any of it beyond fair use excerpts, please drop me a line (hansmast at hansmast dot com) and I will probably cheerfully give you permission to use it.
