Each year we usually go see the fireworks put on by the city of Auburn, and this year they were worth the wait. I wanted to post a very quick video of the finale, in part for a friend of mine who didn’t come out to see the fireworks saying he would prefer to watch them on the computer, so here they are. I also wanted to test the video quality of my iPhone while shooting at night, not bad video for a phone. Too see the full 720p HD version change the resolution below or click on the video.
2009 was a busy year that saw a lot of changes in our household. Throughout each month of each year for the past 15-18 years or so I have taken photos every chance I get, but it has only been in the past several years where I have taken photos of just about everything my wife and I do as we go about the year. This puts a new perspective on the year when you look back at an entire year of photos and see what all we were able to do.
People often think you need special equipment or expertise to be a good photographer, and in some cases that is probably true, but for every day events, any picture is better than no picture. Most cell phones have cameras now and they are around the 2MP range which is certainly good enough to shoot a passing smile. In fact, a good majority of the photos you will see in the video below came right out of my iPhone camera. It has taken some practice but I have gotten very good results with just using my iPhone camera, and there are many photographers that have made a point to compose a gallery here and there using their iPhone camera.
This video below is a combination of about 1,200 photos over about a 5 minute period, hope you enjoy it, happy new year to everyone. If you want to watch the video in a larger window just click 2009 Year End Photo-Video.
Last week CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) 2009 took place in Washington DC. News this week has been coming out of that conference from the Keynote speaker Rush Limbaugh all the way down to a speech given by Jonathan Krohn on the meaning of conservatism. Haven’t heard of Jonathan Krohn before now? He wrote a book called Define Conservatism that was published last year at a time in the country when people didn’t quite understand conservatism. He set forth to try and explain that conservatism does not equal republican, it does not equal a mean and uncaring mindset, but does stand for a set of principles like life, love for this country, believes each individual can succeed if they choose to, takes personal responsibility for their own lives, thinks people are over taxed and wants less government involvement in their lives.
Did I mention that when he wrote this book he was 13 years old! At 13 years old he did more than many will ever do in their life and published a book, and Krohn gave a two minute address on “Conservative Victories Across the Nation” on the second day of CPAC in Washington DC last week. He gave the speech in the video below in front of a huge crowd, that was broadcast live on CSPAN, all at the age of 14.
Even if you don’t agree with his politics, he is an amazing kid that is bound to do something amazing with his life. Even if you just watch the first part of the video below, you will see someone who is far more advanced in his ability to speak and conceptualize a concept and principle than many of us “well educated” adults.
Noticed I filed this post under “political” so if you don’t like political stuff, just move on to my next post (and coming up I will post a photo shoot I did yesterday). Until then, I came across this site, If I Were President from 247 Town Hall, a while back during the election and forgot about it until now when I saw something similar on another blog. This site was a “get out the vote” type video site, filled with tons of well made videos from high profile, almost all left wing liberal celebrities. Always great that no matter what the message now, you know you can package something to look so good and tasty that it just has to be a good thing.
Everything now is hope, hope, hope, we have hope for change, we can change change to a new change and hope change can bring about a new kind of hope and change. I love it. Now that we actually do have change on Pennsylvania Avenue I think this video is a pretty good monologue of what kind of change we are in for.
Some of it is pretty funny, and I don’t totally disagree with all of it, there was one person who said they wanted to legalize marijuana (think that has basically already been done), Deb would go for the ban on Asparagus, and another to ban all hummers and buy everyone a bike. I already have a bike and can’t afford a hummer. I will say this has probably been one of the most difficult first few weeks in a new office but the job is for 4 years so there is a long way to go. Tonight when Mr Obama speaks to Congress we should get a better glimpse into what is coming up. More doom and gloom or pumping up an economy in the tanks right now.
Either way, I bet not a whole lot of people watch the address to congress as much as I am guessing that many reading this didn’t even know he was going to speak tonight, and wouldn’t until they see that he has interrupted American Idol. Perhaps Mr O should play this video below to make people feel better?
This has been done a million times but not by me, and not on this Sunday, so today I took my video camera with me from start to finish through a normal Sunday at Cornerstone Church. The video is a little long I know, I will try to keep the rest of them down to 2-3 minutes but this one covered about 8 hours of the day. It has a cast of many, special thanks goes out to Jack Fisher for putting up with me posting what he didn’t want me to post (always seems to work out that way with Jack) and everyone else that appears on the video.
I would like to make special mention of two songs in the video I briefly used, one was Love Love by Brett Younker and the other was Offering by Daniel Boshta and I would recommend both of their current albums, both of which are available on their websites. I have met both of these guys and they are very passionate about what they do, so go buy some of their CD’s if you like their music. The song Brian is singing throughout the video is Glory to God by Fee which will be released by Steve Fee in a few months.
Cornerstone has two services, one at 9 and 11 and I am usually working both or at least at both. I edited out as much as I could to still make it flow as the day went, but it gets quite busy and hecktic at times. We just launched a new website so check it out if you have time, and if you can make it through to the end of the video you will have seen all 4 of the leadership team at Cornerstone, Rusty, Josh, Brian, and Jack. Enjoy.
This past weekend Deb and I went to Callaway Gardens in Pine Mountain Georgia to go for a bike ride and do a little photo and video shooting at the Butterfly Day Center (see my Callaway Gardens Butterflies // Friday Feet). Generally when you are shooting butterflies in an enclosed area you will need some type of flash, and to get a nice even smooth light across your subject, you need to diffuse the light source. It is all in how you want the end result to turn out, you can shoot with a more harsh light (no diffuser) and get a nice solid black background with a brightly lit subject, or use a diffuser for a little softer look.
You can buy several very expensive diffusers and there are some very good ones on the market, but if you are looking for a cheap and quick fix when you don’t have any diffuser, or any money to buy one, try a milk carton. They are cheap, and quite effective, and can you make one in about 5 minutes. I started cutting up this milk carton on Friday and realized some video would be a good idea.
The tools you will need are a semi-transparent milk carton (not a white one), a razor blade, some tape, and that’s about it. The equipment I used in this photo shoot was a Nikon D90 and a Nikon SB-800 flash (borrowed from Jak Blount) a flash braket and flash extender cable. The video is about 4 minutes long and includes some images from the shoot as well. Hope you enjoy.
It has been a busy weekend but I did have time yesterday to finish up the video segment of the friday feet post (see Atlanta and the Georgia Aquarium // Friday Feet) on the Georgia Aquarium. So, this would be the Georgia Aquarium video from our perspective as we went through the exhibits on Friday. A combination of videography and photography narrowed down to just around 3 minutes.
I love video editing almost as much as photography but one super expensive creative skill was all I could put my time and effort into developing over the last several years and my video skills are a little more on the amateur side than my photography so bear with me. I would like to say we shot this with a Canon XH-A1 3CCD HDV Camcorder 1080i HD 16:9 or something a little more professional but it was with our JVC GZ-MG130U 16:9 Everio (which is not a bad little camera if you are looking for the highest quality and the cheapest price).
Anyway, point is, I always try to produce the highest quality whatever I can, and at the moment, this is it. I hope to continue producing videos just for the sake of my blog so be on the look out for more coming up. So here is a quick video view of the Georgia Aquarium from our perspective. (By the way, you can click on the photo above to see the larger size, and those white specs in the image are actually food that was being dropped down for the Jelly Fish while we were filming.) If you are reading this via RSS reader, you will need to open this post title above to view the video or view the video directly on vimeo. Enjoy.
So today was the 2009 Super Bowl and as always the commercials seem to get a lot of attention. Overall I was not all that impressed with any one particular commercial this year, and some I was pretty disappointed with some, mainly for their strong sexual content. Some were rehashed from last year, some are getting old like the Budweiser Clydesdales, the G.E. windmill, and the baby commercial for E-trade (which I hated all year long and now they are adding to the misery for 2009).
Maybe it is because I am getting older or something but I just don’t care for watching a commercial with my extended family where a Doritos eater blows off the cloths of someone on the street or GoDaddy shows Danica Patrick taking a shower at the whim of some domain name morons (which was only part of the extended commercial, most of which was not shown on TV).
Production wise, both of those commercials (especially the Doritos commercial) was good and the Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl” commercial was hilarious but save the sex for Jay Leno’s hour. Some others good commercials of note would be Bridgestone, the Hyundai Genesis with the screaming board members from BMW and the Japanese car makers, a Pepsi MAX commercial and some of the job search commercials from Career Builder with the screaming lady in the car.
Open Happiness with Coca-Cola
My second favorite would be the Pedigree Adoption Commercial. It was funny, and was actually trying to do something unique with their time slot, but my favorite commercial has to go to a company and not a single commercial Coca-Cola.
Coca-Cola has done a fantastic job with making commercials that are just happy. The end of the commercials say it all, “Open Happiness”. Coke has a long running line of great commercials that just want to make you hold hands with the world and drink coke. They don’t tend to sell sex, try to gross you out, or fight for the most racy commercial on TV, they sell liquid happiness in a bottle, and it’s not beer.
One of my favorite of the Coke commercials was the Coke Zero commercial spoof on the 1980 Super Bowl commercial with Mean Joe Green (YouTube Video), probably one of the all time greatest commercials for the Super Bowl. Even during the 1979-1980 football season when this commercial came out (yes, it was not newly made just for the Super Bowl) Coke was still selling happiness.
Something has to be said about a company that can still produce that image in 2009 when we are completely inundated with junk on local TV I wouldn’t want to watch with anyone other than possibly my wife, so here it is. Coca Cola wins top spot in my book for the best overall commercial spots for the Super Bowl 2009.
This video put me over the top for this Christmas. They put it up on YouTube (or posted online) so I figure it is fair game all around. Is this really how much we love our things today? I am sure the family was happy they got their son something he would like and were excited themselves, but this video was pretty disgusting to me. This was this boy’s true reaction to receiving a gift of plastic and metal, something the world has created into a level of importance like few other things this Christmas. Maybe I am seeing it totally wrong, quite possible. I have a tendency to over-analyze anyway, but to me this video showed where our hearts really are in the world today.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying the Wii or Nintendo or anything like that is evil or wrong, heck, I bought my wife a Nintendo Wii for Christmas, but thank goodness she didn’t have this reaction. It is the reaction we have in our heart, the importance we place items and objects, especially when we give them priority over our Lord for one, but our family, and our sanity. Anyway, here it is… be for warned, lower your speakers.
So… what do you think? Not sure what I could give Deb that would make her have that reaction, but then again, she already has the best gift of all, and we tried really hard to focus on Jesus this Christmas, not just the Nintendo Wii.
Update: New Nintendo Wii Video
Seth Godin’s blog picked up this video from the post here, this is a collection of more of the same from the video I posted above. I think Seth is correct, it has reached critical mass.
I love technology. We can find so many ways to do things we never dreamed of before and create things we can’t live without before we even knew they existed. Some things are trendy, some useful, but many are to organize our life in some form or fashion, basically to make our life more simple and easy than it already is today. Problem is, some of the time it just makes our lives more complicated.
The Internet of course is a place that moves at such lightening speed that it is almost impossible to keep up with what is going on outside of your circle, which is one reason the social networking sites like Twiiter and Facebook work so well. So after a rather frustrating day of working with code for hours on end I went for a walk and came across this song. You have heard of the term “code is poetry”, well how about poetry is poetry. I really thought this poem (song) spoke to the frenzie that sometimes is technology.
Message in a bottle, rhythm of a drum
Smoke signals and telegraphs make the airwaves hum
But that’s all ancient history like bongs and Lincoln Logs
Now we livin’ like the Jetsons in a wacky wireless fog
Talkin’ squawkin’ hawkin’ who knows if anybody’s gettin’ through
Toasters talk to crackberries, Boston to Bombay
Teenage schemes and Ma-bell’s dreams as minutes tick away
We act like crazy people talking to ourselves
Crashing cars in conversation while that stuff flies off the shelf
The information superhighways locked up like a L.A. traffic jam
Everybody’s on the phone
So connected and all alone
From the pizza boy to the socialite
We all salute the satellites
Let me text you with your master plan
You’re loud and clear but I don’t understand
I’m a digital explorer in analog roam
And everybody’s on the phone
Do you remember dialing up?
Yes I remember well
Now I just can’t go anywhere with out that sacred cell
I think that I might die if I miss anything at all
Text me, send me an e-mail, link me up, give me a call
I’m ADD on AOL tryin to read the writing on the wall
Everybody’s on the phone
So connected and all alone
From the pizza boy to the socialite
We all salute the satellites
Let me text you with your master plan
You’re loud and clear but I don’t understand
I’m a digital explorer in analog roam
And everybody’s on the phone
Now I’m a real jungle jumper
I’m a megahertz man
I swing from tree to tree on the very latest plan
On the download In the dropout zones
In every major city ‘cross the land
I got my Marley on my ringtone, get up, stand up, reach out, touch somebody man
Everybody’s on the phone
So connected and all alone
From the pizza boy to the socialite
We all salute the satellites
Let me text you with your master plan
You’re loud and clear but I don’t understand
I’m a digital explorer in analog roam
And everybody’s on the phone
Can you hear me?
Can you hear me now?
I gotta get over by the beerstand
Oh no my batteries are going
I’ll call you back
(Jimmy Buffett, Peter Mayer, Roger Guth, Will Kimbrough)
Yes, I like how Buffett can take you to a tropical island from right here in Alabama, but he really makes a point here in “Everybody’s on the Phone” that we can have it all and nothing at the same time. I love the line “so connected and all alone”. For me with the church, the question becomes how can we use technology, for good, to reach people for Christ. This video has been passed around to various blogs and I first saw it over on Brad Rugles’ blog (Shift Happens) but still wanted show it here in case you had not seen it yet.
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