Holly Jolly Christmas

From my Salt Lake City road trip 2015. My first time to see the Temple Square Christmas lights!

Road Trip

My car this morning in Salt Lake City after a foot of snow. Meanwhile it's 70° in Buffalo today. What was I thinking?

Buffalo Stake Presidency

Here's a photo I made of our stake presidency this weekend.

This was a quick, unplanned shoot for three very busy men. But I had all my photo gear set up, and grabbed them after they reorganized the Young Single Adult branch presidency on Sunday afternoon.

Here's where having a portable studio really makes sense. Setup was in the hallway outside the chapel, which was a little cramped, but it worked. I ran out to the car to get a black piece of fabric in my trunk at all times for serious portraits, which I threw over my backdrop frame. Lighting is from two flashes and an umbrella.

I laid a folded chair on the ground and teetered on it so I could be eye-to-eye with President Pace, he's 6' 7", which is an inch and a half above me.

Alien Landing

I've just spent an intense week in DC — by Friday I was really ready to get back home to some familiar surroundings. Only problem was the pilot of my plane flew to the wrong airport.

As we were coming in for landing I looked out the window. Where was the Hudson River and the meandering Mohawk? Where was the New York State Capitol? Where were the rolling farms among the foothills of the Catskill and Adirondack mountains on the horizon ... why was everything flat?

Oh yeah, I moved to Buffalo.

I've lived in Buffalo only about 2-1/2 months now, and this was my first plane ride to my new home, so looking out the window caught me by surprise. I forgot it would look so different out there. I'll get used to it, right?

Homestead

Fields of corn the morning of the Mud Run at the VanDerwerken farm, Esperance, New York, fall 2014.

Kickball Truth

Had a great first night last night at Cub Scouts. Ate s’mores, met some great Scouts and Cub leaders, and most importantly, introduced the boys to “seminary rules” kickball afterwards in the gym.

I’ve got some sewing to do.

Lunar Eclipse

Every lunar eclipse for me lately has been ruined by clouds. I had much better luck tonight — the clouds rolled in one minute after peak. Above is maximum eclipse at 10:47 p.m.

Below is a shot before maximum eclipse.


Below is after maximum eclipse — a break in the clouds restored the view.

Buffalo

This was my ride last weekend. I’ve arrived at my new home of Buffalo, New York!

This westward migration has been several months in the making. My two youngest moved with Joanie to her hometown in Canada; I’ve come here to be closer to the border for the kids (2.5 hours) yet remain in the States to continue my federal career.


I came to Buffalo not knowing anybody, and people have been incredibly friendly and welcoming. So far I’ve been to Niagara Falls, ate famous wings at Anchor Bar, toured downtown, felt the wind and waves of Lake Erie, and heard about a ton of other things to see and do. I’ve never been to a town where people universally say how much they love living there.

Hello, Buffalo!

Mormon Tabernacle Choir

I got a press pass to photograph Mormon Tabernacle Choir Monday at Saratoga Performing Arts Center. It was a long day and a bunch of work, but the concert was incredible, moving me to tears at times. There were a couple of standing ovations from the audience. What an amazing, emotional performance. Put Motab on your bucket list: they're a must-see.

I'll be posting photos from various stages of the day on Flickr.

Saratoga Springs, NY Mayor Guest Conducts Motab

"It's no big deal." Motab conductor Mack Wilberg on conducting a 400-piece choir and orchestra as he trains Saratoga Springs, NY Mayor Joanne Yepsen to guest conduct. Yeah, right.

See the full set of photos of Mayor Yepsen's conducting lesson and final performance.

Super-Mad

Last week I went to a class on using animated GIF on your federal government social media site. I love the lo-fi aspect of moving GIF, which harks back to my earliest days on the web, yet people are still finding a use for them.

Here's one of my first moving banner ads, which featured on the original Grandon Fan Club website, before anybody knew what a weblog was. Why is it so small? Actually this used to take up a lot of real estate on a 640 x 480 pixel screen. Madeleine is 20 now.

Hyperspace

Me on the swings Friday at the park.

Merit

Malcolm's merit badge sash and my Scout shirt used to make a photo for the troop's Facebook page for an upcoming court of honor.

I sewed every patch here. This photo represents hours of my life.

Morning Fire

Too cloudy to view the lunar eclipse but we still had a good view.

Photo Directory

On and off for the past 16 years I’ve been taking portraits of church families and creating a printed photo directory. As I first proposed it to my church leaders long ago, it would help us learn each others’ names so there’d be no excuse to not know someone.

The photo directory has been a great success. I can’t help but feel it has boosted the friendliness of our congregation. When new families arrive we give them a copy — they are so excited to be able to integrate quickly and call people by name. New missionaries transferring in can’t believe it when we hand them this organized directory that lets them hit the ground running. We had a face book before Facebook.

Every time we put out a new version it’s exciting, like that one giddy day at the end of the school year when yearbooks come out. Today I handed out the 2015 edition, and it was so gratifying to watch people flip through and learn the new families. (Sorry, Sunday School teachers.) This week as the new directory went out, a new family moved in. It’s already out of date.

One of my key purposes of the photo directory is to help everyone learn the childrens’ names, listed left to right in the photos. We all end up helping raising and teaching each others’ kids, so we have a cheat sheet that lets us call them all by name. It helps the kids know we care about them. When I was teaching the 12- and 13-year-old boys I’d give them all copies and quiz them on family names. These boys took turns serving as bishop’s messenger each week, so they needed to actually know the families. The whole class had to score 80% to earn chocolate.

The photos (and photographer) have gotten more sophisticated with time. I started with a 0.3 megapixel Apple QuickTake camera. These days I’m setting up a photo studio in our gym several times a year with a tripod-mounted DSLR, strobes on stands with an umbrella and a 12’ backdrop. It’s a lot to haul week after week, and it takes time to set up and break down. But at some point I realized most families don’t take as many portraits together as they should; if we’re gathering everybody anyway, let’s make it look good and give it to those who want a copy. The finished book looks amazing in the end.

Family History

In the last few days I've realized having all these photos on my hard drive is an important family and church history archive I need to share. Families have moved in and out. Kids on laps in 1999 are now college students. Families have grown from one person, to two, to six … or the other way around. (Things get pretty poignant when you have to Photoshop yourself out of your own family picture.) Many beloved friends have passed on. Change happens in all families and it’s part of the deal.

See the archive of 455 photos, A-Z.

Except for the earliest images shot at 640 x 480, photos are downsampled to 1000 pixels on the long edge. If you want a higher resolution version of something for your family, let me know, I should have the originals.

Stuff Claire Says 2

"Dad, you look like Han Solo ... except your pants are pulled up too high."

— Claire

Benny's Walk

Carter's second stop-motion Lego animated movie. Blue spaceman Benny takes a walk, finds some parts and builds a getaway car.

A couple times I heard Carter click the camera shutter twice and I eventually asked if he realized he firing off two shots — yes, he was slowing down the action or pausing in spots knowing that we'd be translating frames into 10 fps motion. What a little genius. Watch for the word "End" at the appropriate spot.

All Lego parts here are from the 1970s, true to the Benny the Spaceman character in the Lego Movie. Most of my space helmets cracked the same as Benny's, and 35 years later the torso printing is distressed the same way.

Annoying

Actual quote from Claire yesterday:

"I'm not a troublemaker, I'm just annoying."

It's refreshing to see someone who clearly understands where she fits into the family, beyond just being the youngest. Claire is The Instigator.

Last month's photo session is a good illustration — to get one sincere photo of her for our family Christmas card I had to take 100 pictures like this.

Claire's beta name before she was born was Pippa; she's living up to it.

Contented Christmas

This photo was from a couple days after Christmas. We were watching a movie together on the sofa ... meanwhile Carter was giving his new Lego X-Wing some love. He was super cute.

MLK Day

I've been helping paint walls this Day of Service. Blue, to be exact.

My hands weren't painty enough to make this work, but I'll save the idea to use "working hands" some other year for an MLK Day social media graphic.

Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite

Last night I was introducing my kids to 2001: A Space Odyssey: “Hey, we saw this on Phineas and Ferb today!” Now they’re the only 8- and 10-year-old who get the references.

They had some pretty deep thoughts and questions about the film's theme of mankind's ongoing evolution, and especially interpreting the weird last 10 minutes. They're pretty smart. It reminds me of something my friend Felicia once told me: Kids are people, too, just shorter.

High-fives to Jupiter and beyond the infinite!

Reading the New Testament in One Day

On Labor Day 2014 I read the New Testament all the way through. I started at 7:45 a.m. and finished at 11:45 p.m. Subtracting an hour for a shower and meals it took me 15 hours.

Why did I do this? I’m not any sort of genius scriptorian, it was just something to try. In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints we are taught to read our scriptures daily in a meaningful, purposeful way to find answers for our lives. This kind of extreme challenge doesn’t really count for that. But, the fast pace provides insights and overview you don’t necessarily catch on the slow boat. Sprinting across the entire NT in one day gives an unusual 30,000-foot view.

I figured this would be easier than my previous daily reads: twice before I’ve read The Book of Mormon cover-to-cover in a day (also on Labor Days); the Book of Mormon is 531 pages, while the New Testament is only 404 pages. Easier, right? Wrong. The difference: The Book of Mormon was translated into American English in 1830, while the King James Version was translated into the British English of 1611 — not necessarily the way we speak (or spell) today. Despite the shorter length, I found the NT much more challenging to get through quickly.

While I was zooming through I took 6 pages of notes, recording highlights for later study, along with overall themes I grasped and wanted to remember from the experience.

Here are some of those themes — I'm writing this down for myself, but if you want to read that's fine, too.

Christ is without peer or criticism

Jesus Christ was the one perfect being who ever lived on the earth, and the New Testament authors document a powerful witness. He was more than an enlightened teacher, more than just a prophet. He had power and authority to command the elements around him. He had ultimate wisdom. He knew how to handle his detractors. He had a divine mission. He was and is without equal.

The importance of multiple witnesses

The Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) comprise almost half the NT and are separate accounts of Christ’s life and ministry. Some episodes are captured four times; sometimes one book contains a story the other three don’t. Being able to corroborate main facts and also capture each author’s nuances from a life as important as Jesus Christ’s is invaluable. Only John mentions the miracle of water into wine. Matthew gives the most complete version of the Sermon on the Mount. The humble and glorious circumstances of the Nativity are only recorded by Luke. As a connected point, reading four accounts of Jesus’ life one after another gives insight — the voice changes from author to author. These are the writings of multiple witnesses, rather than a story concocted by one.

Here’s a fabulously helpful article we covered on our first day of New Testament class at church this week: Who Are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? A doctor, a fisherman, a tax collector, and another who was just a teenager when he heard the Savior speak, wrote some of the most famous books in existence.

How to form a new church

This was my biggest a-ha. After Christ’s ascension the apostles were left with the monumental task of managing and sustaining a growing church. I found familiar parallels between Paul’s epistles and the growing pains experienced by modern prophets and apostles restoring the latter-day version of Christ’s church in the 1830-40s. They had the same challenges trying to keep the doctrine pure across distant congregations without the aid of modern communications. The New Testament was their manual.

Same elements in the restored church of Jesus Christ

Latter-day Saints believe in the same organization that existed in the first church of Christ.

We believe in the same organization that existed in the Primitive Church, namely, apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists, and so forth.
— Articles of Faith 1:6

I was impressed by how many NT references there are to the original church — in organization and doctrine — that we practice today in the modern Church of Jesus Christ. Today there are also: a lay priesthood, 12 apostles, deacons, teachers, bishops, seventies, a high priesthood after the order of Melchizedek, temples, baptism for the dead, tithing, missionary work, preaching among the spirits in prison.

Hodge-podge of canon

When you read the NT as a whole you get this feeling there’s not an obvious master plan on what’s being included in the work. It’s not well organized, and often it feels like something is missing. There’s a lack of explanation or connection between books. Mixed with statements of doctrine you’ll find the sticky-notes of very human men now canonized. My favorite: ‘Hey, next time you drop by, would you bring my cloak and books?’

The responsibility of being Paul

So much of how Christian churches function today is based on one man’s epistles: Paul. We know at times he was physically isolated, but clearly, he was inspired.

Though, reading all of Paul’s epistles together you catch passing references that go unexplained. It feels almost like we don’t have them all. He’s not the only author of the shorter books, but he’s the main one. Did he have any idea his letters would be preserved as the foundation for so much of Christianity today? Would he approve of us relying so heavily on his potentially incomplete work?

A precedent set for having prophets and apostles today

Paul and other early apostles provided personalized counsel based on the current concerns in each congregation. (This still goes on today in Christ’s church.) The problem comes in interpreting which Bible teachings are core doctrine, versus situational advice based on the day.

This is where having modern apostles and prophets in Christ’s church today is key. I believe the Bible is true, but I don’t follow its every teaching:

• I don’t sacrifice animals
• I don’t engage in mortal battle with nonbelievers
• I enjoy a good ham every now and again

There are modern equivalents for sacrifice, being a missionary, and a code of health for a modern follower of Christ. We receive them from Christ’s apostles today.

Bravery

I was struck by the bravery required to be an disciple in Christ’s early church. We know what happened to Jesus; historical sources tell us the first apostles suffered similar fates, and the churches they managed fell into apostasy. It was not easy to be an early believer.

And to him they agreed: and when they had called the apostles, and beaten them, they commanded that they should not speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go.

And they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name.
— Acts 5:40-41

Though I live in what has traditionally been a largely Christian nation, it is taking more and more bravery to stand up for principles Christ taught today. Jesus himself demonstrated that his way was not always popular or politically correct. Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays.

Purpose in trials

For some reason this NT theme stuck out to me, I wonder why? I can clearly remember one summer day several years ago, riding around on my lawnmower in my big back yard, thinking my life had been pretty easy so far. Nothing really terrible had ever happened to me. Henry B. Eyring says you should never think these things. My turn was coming.

We all eventually have challenges and tribulation in this world. The early disciples recognized the purpose of trials in life, and faced theirs with good cheer. They realized refinement for heaven was the end result.

And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience;
— Romans 5:3

How to get inspiration and be led

There’s a lot of instruction in the NT about how the Holy Ghost can work in our lives, and how to get inspiration. Acts describes situations where the Spirit tells Peter and Paul where to go and what to do. It is heartening to believe that kind of confidence — to know what to do — is available to us today.

Emoticons

Here’s one last fun NT item to share. Check out the fun punctuation at the end of Hebrews 10:23 and 2 Peter 2:8. And you thought smileys were invented in the 2000s.

The end

In my fast course through the New Testament I came away with renewed gratitude for Jesus Christ, and all he accomplished for me, my family, and the world. I believe.

I also gained a new bond of kinship with his ancient apostles and disciples, both for sharing their stories as authors, and as the Lord's servants. Like them, we're all the Lord’s hands. They understood they were being taught by the Son of God. They knew they were being guided by the Spirit after Christ departed. It made them bold, confident and unflinching in their testimonies. After Christ's ascension they brought his teachings of hope to the world — in their day, and to ours.