Ecclesia

Looking back over the past 2 years or so of blogging, I realized that I rarely (if ever) talked about our church, or for that matter, my faith. Now, I'm not going to use this post to be an evangelical. Nor am I going to use it to try to bring ya' to the Lord. But, I will say this: My savior, Jesus, has given me more grace and love than I could ever hope for, and certainly more than I deserve.

Our church, Ecclesia, has been such a vital part of Scott and I's life here in Houston. Ecclesia, or "Church" (referring to the Christian community at large, not a building) in Greek, embraces its name, living among and working within this large community that is Houston, and loves her well.

These photos were taken at our church service last Sunday, held at our new location in the NE side of downtown. Our backyard is the large green patch that lies under the intersection of I-45 and I-10. The weather and the atmosphere made for some great shots!

For all of the photos below, I used my Tamron 70-300mm f/4-5.6 zoom lens. Enjoy!

f/5.0 : 1/640 : ISO 100

f/2.5 : 1/1250 : ISO 200

f/2.5 : 1/800 : ISO 200

f/2.5 : 1/800 : ISO 200

f/1.8 : 1/4000 : ISO 200

 f/5.6 : 1/50 : ISO 200

 f/5.6 : 1/125 : ISO 400

 f/4.5 : 1/80 : ISO 100

 f/5.6 : 1/800 : ISO 400

f/5.6 : 1/200 : ISO 400

f/1.8 : 1/1000 : ISO 200

f/5.6 : 1/250 : ISO 200

f/5.6 : 1/800 : ISO 200

f/5.6 : 1/50 : ISO 200

Grass in my sandals, 

HK

Album Cover

He's creating his first album soon. He's in my small group. His wife is a sweet heart. He's a natural at posing.

Seriously.

All I had to do was point and say, "C, why don't you go stand over there by that *wall, door, gate*" and he did the rest! Man, made my job a lot easier! He, his wife, and I collaborated on creative poses and locations. I love it when my subjects have a creative eye, too. Sometimes being behind the camera, I find myself paying more attention to my camera settings rather than poses, so it's an added bonus when the subject (and the subject's spouse!) can say, "what about this" or "C, close your mouth."

C approached me about doing the photos for his album cover a few weeks ago, and I was thrilled to have the opportunity! He said he was thinking of doing some shots with him smoking a pipe in front of a Catholic church, which sounded intriguing... plus, I had never shot photos of smoke before, so there was an added challenge. The lighting was beautiful this morning, creating the perfect canvas for excellent exposures. I really didn't have to do much editing to these photos.

C said that he wanted the photos to have a more vintage look, so in post-processing, I ran an action called "Seventies"(photos below with this action applied say "seventies" underneath the photo).

 seventies

 seventies

seventies

seventies

seventies

 seventies

seventies

 seventies

Smoke in my lens,

HK