martial arts tourney.

Once upon a time, I did Taekwondo...

This little guy was not at all paying attention to the Star-Spangled Banner.

Then again, I guess I was focused on something else, too.

never let me go.

Summer Conference 2009: Unshakeable Faith.

viva la vida.

I shot this a few weeks ago at a cemetery near my home-home (as opposed to school-home). I was clicking through some of my images today, and when this one surfaced it stopped me, because death's a subject I've been thinking about recently -- not in a morbid sense, but more of a contemplative one.

My mom always went to this cemetery when she needed to "check perspective", to use her words. After accompanying her on a walk to it one day, I figured out what she meant.

You can't be in the presence of the dead without thinking about your own life. And, in thinking about mine... there's so many more things I want to do. I want to be so much more of a person than I am now. How much time do we spend thinking about ourselves? That's not the way to making anything better. Maybe societal improvement begins with self-improvement, but that doesn't begin with selfishness.

This is the only life we've got, and it's precious and terrifying and exhilarating and wonderful.

Like Stephen King said, "Get busy living or get busy dying." One day all that's left of any of us is going to be a headstone so old it has to be supported against a tree.

I plan to take the former of Mr. King's choices.

Viva la vida.

light show.

I used to be terrified of storms. 

I had a valid reason for it -- when I was seven, my house was hit by what was probably a tornado that hadn't fully descended. After that night, any cloud cover I saw swelled in my mind to something monstrous, and I spent a lot of rainy evenings following my dad around the house and quite a few nights dragging my blanket and pillow out in front of their bedroom door to sleep any time I heard thunder.

Now, I think storms are glorious, awesome examples of God's power. This is a good paradigm shift for me, because there's no shortage of rocky weather in southern Illinois. 

Tonight, my older sister called me while I was at small group, telling me to grab my camera because there was a gorgeous cloud being lit up by lightning from within. 

I was too late to catch that particular system -- at least as the late evening light illuminated it perfectly -- but I did run home, grab Audra, and then drive out to a reservoir near town, where we stayed for about ten minutes, me shooting and both of us enjoying the light show.

I don't have a tripod (it's on my list), so I used my shoes to steady the camera on a couple of the shots...and almost all of them have crooked horizons. They're not excellent examples of weather photography by any means, either.

But I can honestly say that I look forward to the storms coming this summer, and I already have a couple locations in mind to shoot from the next time I see a front rolling in.

And maybe next time I'll have a tripod.

Thanks to an excellent tip-off, I learned that June is national Adopt a Cat month.

burger joints and well-made points.

p.s. as soon as I figure out how do get my images to a size I like on here, I'll resize them all so they're uniform and this site isn't an eyesore.

the gov.

Governor Quinn.

Not the greatest shot, but a learning experience. I've had a lot of those recently.
Memo: crowded, back/sidelit press conferences suck.

headlights on dark roads.

I love the dock this photo was shot from.

It's not a spectacular image by any means. It was just a little bit of experimentation. But I still like it, because the place means something to me.

I know that in my next three years at SIU, I'm going to discover new places with new people, and I'll love those moments too.

But I think that, no matter what, this one will always be one of my favorites.

summer skin.

This is the kind of thing you do when you're underage at a wine tasting.

An angle of the Biltmore in Asheville, NC.

A man waiting patiently for his wife to explore the Biltmore gardens.

Now...hopefully I've got plants and architecture out of my system, and can focus on people.