Mandy’s Senior Photos

If you’ve been following this blog, or were around when I started it, you may have noticed my swing from writing about and exploring things that are fundamentally interesting to logging my photography experiences.

I’ve wrestled with staying true to my original idea of exploring media, the arts and style and giving an acute account of why I appreciate some of the best things coming from those areas and growing as a creator myself.

Existing in the space between the ideal and my real life, photography has been the most consistent way for me to produce. That’s going to change soon. My aim is to swing back to the basics and start exploring the Fundamintal things again. Thank you for enduring the ride thus far.

Until we get back to the originally planned programming, please enjoy my good friend Mandy’s senior photos. She just graduated the University of Kansas by way of St. Louis, MO. She’s a great gal, good cook and even more fun to photograph!

But Wait, There’s More

I’m excited  for more learning. I’m ready for more triumphs and disasters and to “treat those two impostors just the same.”

For now, there’s more Wilcox Wedding photos–

Careening Toward Something (Wilcox Wedding)

Nine months out college and sixty percent toward realizing my fundraising goal to begin full-time ministry, something amazing happened. I fell in love with photography. I had already loved the art form for about a year now. But, in a cosmic explosion of stress and release, as I pressed the shutter button at a friends wedding, I actually came to love the process of figuring out where and in what form photography will fit into my life.

What I remember from that day are the awesome moments in which the bridesmaids were bursting at the seams with excitement about their friend’s nuptials that evening. I remember the colors and the bright smiles.

One of my cameras has a funny way about it. Each time I press the shutter button, it sounds as if there is a miniature operation inside the camera itself, opening and closing the shutter while pulling the film through to produce the exposed image. I think about it each time I make a picture, but at this wedding I was almost overwhelmed that my little operation was working to capture these moments.

I can’t help but think about how fortunate I was to be there that day. It’s my second time shooting a wedding and in this case particularly, I was incredibly humbled by the fact the couple trusted me enough to capture this day for them.

It was truly a euphoric experience. And as life unfolds before me, I’m excited to discover what place photography has in the mix of my ministry, personal and spiritual development. I don’t know what it will look like, but, whatever the case, I’m all in.

What I’ve Been Jamming To

Next Episode – Andy Mineo.

Andy Mineo is an excellent artist. Andy Mineo is also a Christian. What I appreciate most about his music is his ability to express doctrine and lifestyle with authenticity, leaving out nothing stylistically.

As I’ve stated in previous posts, I love hip-hop culture. I especially love the music, but my heart aches as it continues to nourish itself with excellent nothingness prepared by its most celebrated stars.

I look forward to exploring more the mechanisms of hip-hop and rap music and I think Mineo is a great example from which to launch a vision for the inherent potential of rap and hip-hop music’s redemption.

Andy Mineo’s next project ‘Heroes For Sale’ is releasing 4.16.13

Believers Bear Fruit

—Now that’s a call to action. 

God is For Us

Women of Wimbledon St.

Lately

Seasons Pass: A Little of My Story

Encountering the Lord the way I have over the past few years has encouraged a great deal of change in my life. I’ve been through a lot and I get refreshed just knowing the last seven years of my life will be no more than just seven years of my life.

I stumbled through my high school years moving back and forth from Kansas and Kentucky, going to a new school each year and encountering my fair share of mischief, loss and eventually found a life worth living for in Christ Jesus.

Through all of that one thing has always been with me: music. I have always loved hip-hop music and I always will. Some people take to it because of the music alone. Others appreciate it within in the context of the culture, fascinated by the fashion, the lingo and the art. For me, it’s all of the above. I think the power of the spoken word has incredible constructive potential through which culture can be enriched and ideas communicated.

I wrote my first rap in the third grade and grew up free-style rapping with my father. It was an exercise in bonding for us.  But, recently, music has taken a different meaning in my life; I now get the opportunity to share the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which I find more fulfilling than the message of how “nice” I am was.

I get a kick out of these two songs I did a few years ago. They mark the beginning of a maturation I didn’t fully understand at the time.  They help me see how much I’ve changed, but let me know I have indeed been transformed. 

Knowing where my life is heading now, I look forward to more opportunities to use music as a tool for advancing the kingdom of God.

Pastures

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

-Psalm 23:2