Scott Fillmer » painting

The Valley of Vision :: Poem

Scott Fillmer — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 01:15:32 +0000

I took this photo above from a painting that one of the kids in Uganda painted at Bethany Village Orphanage, and it just reminded me of this poem written by the Puritans around the time of World War I (1918). I found this poem from a collection of files I put together several years ago. I just love how the poem, the painting, and it’s painter go together so well.

The Valley of Vision

Lord, High and Holy, Meek and Lowly,
You have brought me to the valley of vision,
where I live in the depths but see you in the heights;
hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold your glory.

Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up,
that to be low is to be high,
that the broken heart is the healed heart,
that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,
that the repenting soul is the victorious soul,
that to have nothing is to possess all,
that to bear the cross is to wear the crown,
that to give is to receive,
that the valley is the place of vision.

Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from deepest wells,
and the deeper the wells the brighter your stars shine;

Let me find your light in my darkness,
your life in my death,
your joy in my sorrow,
your grace in my sin,
your riches in my poverty,
your glory in my valley.

Amen

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Local Paintings and Artwork of Auburn via iPhone at Publix

Tumble — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 21:18:28 +0000

The photo of the day today is paintings by a local artist (although I have yet to figure out who) and was actually taken with my iPhone. I am finding more and more true photography opportunities with my iPhone camera than I every would have thought possible by a phone camera. This shot was taken of local artwork that hangs in the entrance to a new Publix store in town.

I actually love taking photos of other photos, or of other artwork (see a good example from the Atlanta airport in 50mm). The light fades slightly as it moves across the image, but it’s still not bad at all for a phone.

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Michelangelo Creation of Adam Condom Flyer at UGA?

Scott Fillmer — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:32:05 +0000

The Creation of Adam is a fresco painted on the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo some time around 1511 that depicts the story in Genesis of God breathing life into Adam. This painting in Vatican City is probably one of the most famous paintings in the world and was restored in the late 80′s early 90′s, and is now being used by the University of Georgia in the form of a flyer tacked up in the students dorms to educate and promote the use of condoms. All other issues aside, are we to think that university level students are unaware of a condom and its use?

Apparently UGA finished up Sexual Responsibility Week this past week (this is something we are now doing in higher education?) and this poster was created to promote… sexual health and created this STD(?) poster/flyer. It reads:

Condom Tip #5, Carefully open condom wrappers with your fingers – don’t use a sharp object.

I guess people will use anything now in the promotion of a product, but do we care any more, but this was an ad put out by the University of Georgia, not some marketing group. There will be no outrage for this because it is not making fun of the Koran, Islam, or the Muslim faith of any kind. If that were the case, people would be sued, fired, and apologies issued (although I do see that the University of Georgia has since apologized in some manner). There is just nothing that is out of bounds in the worldly view when ridiculing or making fun of the Christian faith, so this shouldn’t be much of a surprise to Believers.

The Catholic League is none to happy about it and apparently released this statement.

“I hasten to add that the University of Georgia would never choose a depiction of Muhammad to hawk condoms. Indeed, only a few years ago an inoffensive depiction of this Islamic figure in a Danish cartoon led to murder and churches being burned to the ground. One can only imagine what would have happened had he been portrayed pushing condoms to youth.”

Question is I guess, do we really care anyway? After all, I did find a similar likeness used by the Simpson’s, although they weren’t being portrayed promoting a form of birth control. We know this will never change until the new heaven and new earth are upon us? A quick scour of the left wing blogs give quite a flippant view, but I haven’t really found to much outcry against such use of the historical painting. Should we care?

I would hope that our hometown school of Auburn University would restrain from such use but they did feel it was necessary last year to have a gay pride day and parade for Auburn last year, so I guess I would take the flyer over promoting a lifestyle (being that there was no heterosexual pride parade but that’s a whole other set of topics all together).

Being somewhat interested in design and marketing in today’s web 2.0 world, I would love to know what department created this flyer in the first place. It looks and reads like a 1960′s ad… is this all we can come up with on a University level these days?

I would think at this point the University of Georgia has taken the flyers down from their dorms but if not, I would love to hear from a UGA dorm student or anyone that can email over a higher quality image of the flyer. If so, send it on to my email address scott.fillmer [at] gmail and I will post it here instead of the one above.

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Light Painting in the Image of the Calvary Cross

Scott Fillmer — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:16:46 +0000

I should have my next edition business cards in the mail any day now. I usually print them in very small packs of 100 at a time, probably because I can never make up my mind what I want to show on my card. This time I went with something a little different. This is a photo I took with the help of a friend a few months ago and turned out to be one of my favorites of the day.

Light painting is something really fun and easy to try if you have a few simple things like a camera, tripod, and a light source. We did this round of light painting with a sparkler.

What do you think? A little over the top for a photography business card? Well, I ask, but they are already printed and on their way to me. I was looking for something unique, related to my faith (think I got that one), and photographically challenging. Not going to show the back side right now but when I get them in I will take a pic of the cards themselves.

The verse I chose goes along with the theme for 2009 for our church (illuminate), but I really like the overwhelming number of scriptures that talks about “light” and this photo is taken in darkness with only the crosses showing “light”.

John 8:12 - When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

The image itself was one of several I really liked (see Light Painting Photography is Thinking Outside the Box, I Think? for others from that day), none of which we ever used for the intended purpose, but it was still fun, and different.Â You can still just see my shoes at the bottom of the image as I walked across the scene, but I think the image of the three crosses is a powerful one to me.

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Caitlin Beidler Redemption Art in Worship Photos at Catalyst

Scott Fillmer — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:04:15 +0000

I have been waiting and waiting to get to this particular edit from Catalyst finished…so today I finally got around to posting these images from Catalyst08 in Atlanta. This is Caitlin Beidler from Redemption Art. This very well could have been the greatest live acts of worship I have seen in a long time. It took me by surprise and I came to find out later that not everyone there even saw the entire painting in worship as it happened. It really was amazing to see a painting being created before your eyes, to music, in worship.

I did not get a chance to meet Caitlin but I appreciate the many different ways we were able to worship for those few days, and she was a big part of that. The images below are a short progression of how the painting-worship to music went. The very last photo was taken after they moved on to the next session and turned off the lights. The paint is not a glow in the dark (as far as I know) or black light paint, this is just how it looked when the lights were turned off. The glow of the white paint in the dark was amazing to me and to me it showed Christ at the Cross in the dark. To see more of the painting from my photo perspective visit the Catalyst Gallery.

Coming up soon I will have a few more posts from Catalyst. If you have a chance, run over to Caitlin’s website and see her other paintings.

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Light Painting with Sparklers and Some Low Light Photography

Scott Fillmer — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:00:53 +0000

I love expanding my photographic abilities and learning new ways to be creative, it just isn’t as easy as it sounds some time. Light painting photography seems to be all the rage now but it is something I tried when I shot my first photos of fireworks back in 1997. It just looked so neat that I had to try it again and again before I finally figured out what was going on photographically.

What is really interesting is if you look at the definition of photography, it needs no other word (like “light”) in front of it to give it meaning.

pho·tog·ra·phy [fuh-tog-ruh-fee] noun
the process or art of producing images of objects on sensitized surfaces by the chemical action of light or of other forms of radiant energy, as x-rays, gamma rays, or cosmic rays.

In other words, photography is “painting with light”. Without light in pure darkness photography actually isn’t possible, but add any light to anything, and you can record what that light does on a specific medium or surface.

Light Painting Photography

Light paint photography (more accurately called low light photography), or just “light painting” to use the trendy phase at the moment, uses just about the same techniques as lightning photography, or fireworks photography (see a few examples at How to Successfully Photograph Lightning // Equipment and Techniques, Auburn 4th of July Fireworks Celebration // Photos, or Do it Yourself Low Light Fireworks Photography). Coming up I might write a how-to do light painting photography just for the few differences it has over the above posts, so stay tuned.

A recent photo shoot with b/ turned out to produce a whole lot of duds for the intended purpose, but it was loads of fun trying. Below are two of my favorites from that particular night. I have several other “favorites” but will save them for later. This is really one of the easiest forms of photography, for me, since you can control most all the variables and bring the technique down to just holding a button down for the “painting”.

One thing I mentioned above is to try something new and get creative. I don’t know about other “creative” types (and I don’t really consider myself all that creative) but I need to have the right atmosphere and surroundings to get my brain thinking outside the box. This was something we tried that didn’t work all that well for what we were doing, but taking the time to try keeps you thinking.

Catalyst08 – The Catalyst Conference in Atlanta

One other way to get creative, go to where the creative people go and learn from them. In this case, this week, that will be the Catalyst Conference (see their really cool blog here) in Atlanta for me (and gotroot). Catalyst is a leadership conference for what is the Church of tomorrow (see about), something I have been looking forward to for quite a while.

Tomorrow I will update this information in more detail and how to follow along. I will be spending a good bit of my time photographing the event as well (sorry in advance to those going with me) and will post event photos here on Thrusday and Friday as soon as I can get them uploaded. In the mean time, I leave you with some light painting.

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Auburn 4th of July Fireworks Celebration Photos

Scott Fillmer — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 22:07:39 +0000

Last night we went to see the fireworks display in Auburn. It was a very enjoyable night to have even just an hour or so to hang out with some friends and family while we waited for the fireworks. The fireworks display that the city of Auburn Alabama puts on each year is great, and we have been to see fireworks all over the country.

This year they started a little early, we presume because a storm was on its way, but they were still great to see. I decided to take my camera equipment and do some fireworks photography this year. I have not shot any public fireworks display in many years, but still came away with a few good shots.

Normally when doing fireworks photography you want to setup using a sturdy tripod so you can use your remote shuttle release in manual mode, but I found another Auburn photographer on Twitter (ToomersCoffee) who also got some great shots hand holding with a faster ISO.

I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July weekend.

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Sailboat Trailer Restoration [After]

Scott Fillmer — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 10:32:14 +0000

We had to finish the trailer restoration in time to pull the boat out of it’s slip by 11-30-06 when the slip rental expired. The remaining painting, winch installation, and tire replacement went pretty smoothly and this is what she looks like now. We are now back down at the marina where we will pull out the Catalina 22 we purchased for the first time. It will be interesting to see what the bottom looks like after 5 years on the water without anyone touching it at all, I expect, slimy.

To restore the trailer we used a Rust-o-leum burgundy color which looks nice but was not that easy to find. It took about 3-4 full coats to cover over the white but it should be good now for a few years. It took about a week to completed and cost about $300 in parts [new winch, paint, 2 new tires].

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Sailboat Trailer Restoration [Before]

Scott Fillmer — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 14:35:50 +0000

We picked up the trailer on 9-24-2006 and began working on the restoration. The seller drew us a comical map of where it was located and we are confident that we picked up the correct one. The trailer wasn’t too bad off. Like the boat, it just needed some cleaning, sanding, and repainting. We decided on a deep red paint color. Eventually we will have to replace the tires in order to haul the boat any significant distance. Here are the before photos.

The trailer was still in solid condition with little rust, just needed a little work to get it in a respectable fashion to move a sailboat.

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Our MCI-9 Bus Conversion is Under Way with Painting

Scott's Misc — Sat, 10 Mar 2001 02:10:00 +0000

We now finished the painting on the side of the bus where the windows were taken out. You can’t see to much from the photo but I think Scott would rather the photo be taken from this far away being that this was his first paint job on a vehicle.