Scott Fillmer » alabama

Auburn Tigers Football vs Alabama Crimson Tide 2011 :: Photos

Scott Fillmer — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 02:43:08 +0000

Well it was not that great of a game today but it was still great to be at the game at least. Another regular season has come and gone, can’t believe it. I decided today I would leave the camera at home and just go enjoy the game, but of course I didn’t leave home without my phone. I have always loved trying to do some actual photography with my cell phone over the years. It creates more of a challenge but also forces you to get creative.

All the shots in this post came from my iPhone, my favorite being the shot above when the sun was just about to go behind the west stands of the stadium. The clouds made it perfect, especially with the lights on and “Champions 2010″ reflecting off the windows. It was another unforgettable season (not for the same reasons as last year), now it’s time to wait and see where Auburn ends up going for a bowl game.

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Photos of the 4th of July Fireworks in Auburn

Scott Fillmer — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 14:19:04 +0000

Yes, I know I’m a little late with the fireworks pics but oh well. The fireworks in Auburn were good as always, the only thing that just kills me every year is they don’t go high enough in the sky to get up over the power lines, and I have tried different locations every year. You can see from the grande finale shot above that Alabama Power just had to be front and center, otherwise, I love the shot. Each year they do this outdoor festival thing, which is more akin to thousands of people sitting around in the park waiting for the fireworks, but it is a great opportunity to shoot. It’s always a good show but hours of waiting and fighting the traffic afterwards for 10 minutes of fireworks has me thinking we might try a new show next year. Boston Pops would be cool.

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Don’t Worry the Revival is Canceled on Church Signs of the Week

Scott Fillmer — Fri, 20 May 2011 23:26:56 +0000

It’s Friday, and since we didn’t go anywhere exciting today other than to drive over to Columbus, my Friday Feet pic is rather boring, but there were some “great” church signs along the way as usual.

I have a pretty additive habit-hobby of church sign reading, sometimes it’s just like train wreck TV, you just can’t turn away. It is, at least in the south, a method of communication for local churches, and for Christianity in general (a very very broad range version of general). Since we spend so much time contemplating, discussing, and meeting about communication in our staff meetings at my own church I have no doubt that many of the church signs I see and read are not accidental. Church signs represent as broad a range of Christianity as their are Christians, and it shows. I just wonder if they at least think about the greater message they are presenting to the drive-by sign reader. I’m sure not everyone reads every single church sign they drive by like I do, but still, what message are you trying to communicate to the casual non-church-goer reading your sign? I have nothing against any of these churches of course, I’m sure their all great churches… but the last 2-3 weeks I have driven by this one church they have had two different, negative signs, which drives me nuts, but I’m not on their communication team, so oh well.

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A Graveyard Tells a Unique Story in History :: Photos

Scott Fillmer — Fri, 20 May 2011 15:29:35 +0000

Don’t know how your week has been but my week has been so busy that today was the first day I actually had a chance to get these photos posted from my shoot last weekend.

I love doing a photowalk through local graveyards. Here in Alabama (and I guess everywhere) we have these small family graveyards dotted all around the area. Each one tells an incredible story, and the stories often span a historical period of hundreds of years. This may sound strange to some but they are almost always quiet, peaceful places where traffic is light and little has changed over the decades and time just seems to slow down when you walk through.

This graveyard is real close to my house and is typical of the local family graveyards around our area. There are almost as many infants, babies, and youth in this spot as there are adults. Most of the smallest graves are unmarked and very old at this point. The earliest birth year here was late 1600′s so this little tract has been in this one family, sitting just like this, for over 300 years. There are a lot of houses in our area that were built around the Civil War era, and this spot has a tiny little building/house/shack on it. I try to image who would have lived in this little building, which is smaller than the smallest room in my house.

Each one is different, each one tells a different story.

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Chewacla State Park Waterfall in Springtime :: Photos

Scott Fillmer — Wed, 11 May 2011 15:20:45 +0000

This past weekend I took a quick trip over to Chewacla State Park just outside Auburn. Springtime is just about gone since this week has reached into the high 90′s and everything now looks bleached out and crisp (no rain tends to do that too). I have been trying to test out some new photo gear for sharpness and contrast etc, so why not choose scenes that are impossible to capture correctly. High sun with fast water (bleach white) on black rocks doesn’t make for easy metering, but it was still nice to get out and shoot something different. The waterfall is at the very end of the park, and is a nice short but hefty hike. The dam from Lake Chewacla feeds into this small-ish waterfall which sends a good bit of water downstream. There is always something different to shoot out at Chewacla, this day it was the waterfall. The EXIF data can be found over on my Flickr site if interested.

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Indian Pink Perennial or Red and Yellow Wildflower :: Photos

Scott Fillmer — Tue, 10 May 2011 13:06:04 +0000

The Photo of the Day today is a very small red and yellow wildflower found in the southeast, usually in the spring to early summer in the shade, called an Indian Pink or Maryland pinkroot, and woodland pinkroot. Better known by its Latin sir name Spigelia marilandica this little guy was blooming over at Chewacla State Park all over the place once we took a look around. Shot with a D7000 and a Nikkor 35mm 1.8 (EXIF details can be found over here) if you are like me and so inclined to read that sort of stuff. I have some shots of the waterfalls but haven’t gotten around to post-processing on those yet. This has already been a crazy busy week and it’s only going to increase as the week goes on unfortunately. It’s not really unfortunate, it’s just the way the week is this week.

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Alabama Tornado Storm Damage from Dadeville Today :: Photos

Scott Fillmer — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 23:18:18 +0000

Almost impossible to describe what we saw today as we took a small group of people from Cornerstone into Dadeville, AL. We didn’t know what to expect when we got there and most of the area was closed off, but the houses the police directed us to were way beyond needing trees cleaned up or anything like that, they just needed help finding their personal belongings so they could leave the area. It wasn’t partial damage where we were, it was complete destruction. The homeowners were more than gracious for having just lost everything and then having total strangers walking around their property. I tried to document what we saw as best I could while respecting the owners of the property. I spoke with each owner before taking any shots of course and they were more than accommodating to our group. To see the entire gallery from today visit Alabama Storm Damage April 2011.

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Testing the Dagger Axis 10.5 Kayak at Chewacla

Scott Fillmer — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 13:00:31 +0000

Last night we went out to Chewacla State Park for a very quick trial run to test out the Dagger Axis 10.5 Kayak. This boat is much smaller than our previous kayaks but is very stable, easy to maneuver, and tracks quite well. We got to Chewacla too late to give it a real good testing but it was nice to get out on the water for a short time and to see the sunset together. It was a beautiful “fall” sunset, full of mosquitoes and 95*F weather, but as you can see from the photos it was well worth the trouble.

There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of review information about the Dagger Axis around the blogosphere but from a first impression it certainly gives a lot of bang for the buck and is one of the only kayaks that can seem to adequately cover both white water and recreational or touring flat water. From past experience you really can’t get a good feel for how a kayak handles until you have sat in one all day and paddled for hours (or miles), much like riding a street bike for the better part of 40-50 miles at a time. Hopefully the weather will cool off soon and we can do a little paddling during the day without having heat stroke. For now, here are a few pics from the launch (I’m the one with no hair), and one from the lake.

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The Dog Days of Summer, Version 2010

Scott Fillmer — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 13:12:50 +0000

The only thing that seems to like the fact that the heat index has been over 100* (much of the time over 110*) this summer is our dog, and the Lantana. I couldn’t think of a better shot for “dog days of summer” than Ebby sitting on her heated bed. The dog days of summer are certainly here in south Alabama, the grass is all brown from lack of rain, the pond is all dried up, and you can’t go outside without getting swarmed by deer flies. Some people like this time of year (I am guessing those who live in Montana, or Wisconsin, or Colorado, where the temps are in the mid-60′s right now), but down here, all I can think about is being able to walk without feeling like I am going to die, and being able to sit outside with a fire going in my fire pit.

I know those days are coming, because football season is the only thing being talked about down here now. Only about 2 1/2 more weeks before Auburn kicks off the 2010-2011 football season, but at the moment, I am just thrilled the first game is at night. With the temps at night still in the 70′s and 80′s, they should kick off this game at midnigh, but at least Auburn now runs some of the games like Talladega (they use to run that late season race during the day, and it was miserable too).

Fall is coming, probably 2 days in mid January, but the sun and the calendar says cooler weather is coming, but I think Ebby likes it just the way it is right now. I still feel like she looks, and I am ready for something more like –> Samford Hall and Auburn University in the Snow.

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Why is the Church Supporting Victoryland Casino in Shorter, AL?

Scott Fillmer — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 20:12:39 +0000

This is not intended to be a another pious rail against gambling from one more judgmental Christian that seemingly has lost touch with the reality of the world, I just simply want to ask the question, “why is the church body sanctioning, supporting, and ultimately using (in some form or another) money given to God, by means of tithe or gifts, given through a servant of a willful heart (2 Corinthians 9:7), to further the cause(s) of Victoryland Casino in Shorter Alabama? An even better question might be, why if your church does not support Victoryland, does it still continue to use Bingo (or other vainly disguised) “fund raising” techniques like yard sales and the such, but I will save that for another day.

Yesterday the Alabama Supreme Court overruled a Macon County circuit judge’s ruling that blocked Governor Riley’s attempt to raid Victoryland Casino in Shorter, AL (see the full court ruling Order of Protectiong Thrown Out July, 30 2010 and news articles here). Alabama has traditionally fought gambling of all kinds, and is still one of the last hold out states in the lottery business, but when I read the al.com report’s comments, it just screamed out to me, why are churches supporting Victoryland? It isn’t like Victoryland is reciprocating and supporting the local church (yes, they did give a whopping 1% to “charity” of some sort). A quick read of the comments by believeinlord in al.com’s press release shows what is probably one church of many, that takes [chartered?] church bus trips to Victoryland Casino.

This of course brings an enormous host of questions to mind when this person makes the casual comment “I’ve def won my fair share. We go together twice a month with my church group.” Of course “their fair share” we know statistically means they have spent a whole lot more money than they actually understand (or justify it by calling it the price of having a good time). The conversation goes on in another article talking about how “bingo has provided money [albeit 1%, yes only ONE PERCENT] to my church when we desperately needed a new van to take our elderly parishioners to their dr visits?”

So, apparently, at least in one case, this church (in Birmingham, AL) is, at minimum, neglecting it’s members, and in “desperate need” of transportation for their elders. Yet twice a month they trek down to Shorter with their church group? Huh? Seriously? It is hard to write this post without sounding judgmental but if this group was a “small group” size of say, 20 people, taking 24 trips a year, spending (loosing) who knows how much, is this not enough to completely pay for such a van?

How much is this multiplied across the church body? Hard to tell. Most (out of embarrassment or in hopes of keeping their vice quiet), do not directly publicize their casino trips to the general public, but all you have to do is spend a little bit of time in today’s church to know that charter bus trips to Biloxi and Tunica are the norm with many churches. Even if no church funds are used, is this the association you want people to make with your church? Today, maybe so, but I don’t find anywhere in scripture where it is the church’s job to support the local community via established casinos. I wonder if Jud Wilhite’s, Central Church in Henderson, NV sends their small groups to the Bellagio for game night on Tuesday’s?

If you think I am trying to say here that Victoryland, all casinos, and all gambling should end at once, you are missing the point. My wife and I enjoyed living in Las Vegas for a while, so this doesn’t come from some country hick who never left the back woods of south Alabama. Still, it is one thing to take a private trip with friends or family to a place that has or allows gambling, it is totally different for the church body to sanction such an event.

Don’t scream hypocrite yet, after all, the disciples even casted lots to confirm Matthias as the eleventh disciples in Acts 1:26. Then again, that wasn’t actually gambling, the fate of that cast was already decided by God, it wasn’t an outcome decided by chance. The point here isn’t whether individuals should or should not gamble. The point I am attempting to make is that supporting Victoryland is NOT what the church body was called to do, is it?

Are we so bored with the business of being God’s church that this is the best thing we can find to do with our time and money, as a church? In the world today, we the church have so much invested in our retirement packages, our homes, cars, electronics, can we now only give to God out of our leftovers? Are we once again living in paneled houses, while God’s house remains a ruin (Haggai 1:4)?