Up Late Working & Thinking

As I stay up late working into the night while my wife and children are tucked gently in bed, I can’t help but let my mind drift into yet unchartered waters for my life. This existence affords us many opportunities that we have the ability to grasp, pass by, or grasp and then release. Many times they can take us places we have never been or have even thought to be.

In these moments, I struggle with discernment. When should I grasp and when should I release? I have had a lot stirring within me the past 3-4 months and am seeing a vision of what I believe the future future holds for me and my family. At the same time I notice good opportunities arising, but one glaring question remains – what will lead me to the future the Lord is preparing? Is it holding on and keep climbing the rope I have or releasing to grasp on to that which is new?

There are a lot of decisions ahead, but one thing remains…to make my actions have meaning and worth far greater than myself.

One Small Step Forward

This drawing is not a unique idea, in fact it uses many of the same techniques as the drawing in my first post (just yesterday). What is different about this piece is the base layer. I am a scooter owner and enthusiast, so I used one of my scooter photographs I took with my iPhone on a recent trip to India as my starting point. I used Tiffen’s iPhone app, PhotoFX, to create an outline version of the photo in black and white. I used about 7 different filter layers to get it to the point I could use it to start my drawing. The last step in PhotoFX was the pencil drawing tool. See the process and final image below.

Back to the drawing board

I find myself back at the creative drawing board looking for inspiration anywhere I can hope to find it. Unfortunately, my searching has left me empty handed and envious of the creativity I’ve seen elsewhere. I’ve become a consumer instead of a producer. The rut I’ve dug is very deep and has filled my head with questions. How can I take my passion for photography and video to new creative levels? How do I go beyond the rigid levels of safety I’ve begun to subject my work to? Where is the motivation to continue creating when there is much better work being created? These questions freeze me before I even begin a project.

Enter the iPad. It has many limitations, but it also opens creative avenues for expression that weren’t available to me before. It has the potential to spark my creativity like the iPhone did for my photography. This time it is a little different. While I have lost a bit of creative interest in the flooded photography market, I’ve become very intrigued by the possibilities I’m seeing for mixed mediums using the iPad drawing tools and photo apps. So far I’ve only begun to delve into the art software, but I’ve already mixed apps and loaded images to use as a base for the art I’m creating. I’m hoping this will bring back some of my creative interest in photography.

I plan to load some photos onto the iPad this weekend so that i can begin layering them with the drawing apps to create some interesting pieces.

The piece I’ve attached to this post is called: We All Are HOPE To Someone.
I used Qvik Sketch to start it, TypeDrawing to fill it in, Filterstorm to crop it, and Qvik Sketch to dirty it up some more.

En route to Haiti

I find myself en route to Haiti once again, but this time for something far worse than I would’ve ever imagined. Haiti and it’s people have been weighing heavy on my heart for the past few months. I’ve had several conversations with friends about why I love Haiti and every time I realize it is the people. They are a people who have most if not all the cards stacked against them, must constantly overcome the odds just to survive, yet still have an overwhelming, overflowing, unwavering Hope.

It is this Hope that made me come back when the 7.3 magnitude earthquake devastated Port Au Prince.

I’ve been pouring over old photos from previous trips to Haiti and am compelled by the faces I see there. As recently as this past weekend I’ve been re-editing those photos for some greater purpose than to fill my own photo albums.

Belladere Haiti June 2009

As I type this post, I am driving on back mountain roads in Haiti heading toward Belladere. The 3 person team from OBI arrived in Port Au Prince at 4:30 to live music as we entered customs.

We were picked up by Eric, from New Hope for Haiti and drove a few miles to meet up with a member of Partners In Health. We are heading to a hospital where they have been helping the Ministry of Health facilitate operations.

The hospital has a dire need for clean water. Currently patients have had to bring their own water to the hospital. So we are driving 4 hours east of Port Au Prince, over the mountains, bouncing up and down in the back of the SUV as we head almost to the Dominican Republic (15 minutes from the border).

We will be here one week as the filtration system is installed. I will be gathering video stories and photos as it is implemented.

(please excuse any typos, grammar errors, and poor sentence structure. Not easy to type or read what I hbe types in these conditions…and I will me too tired to check it when I arrive at our destination. Sorry Heidi. I know this type of thing drives you crazy.)

Favorite Camera Right Now: iPhone

The past couple weeks I have really been creatively enjoying the lo-fi pictures produced by my iPhone. There are a plethora of great photography apps available that make it fun to produce interesting photos. When combined, the possibilties are only hindered by our imagination or lack thereof. I’ve been posting my creations on Twitpic to share on my Twitter and Facebook accounts for several months, but have recently started posting a daily photo that I call “iPhone Lomo of the day.” I find that daily posts are stretching my creativity and allowing me to enjoy the simplistic ease of creating art on my cell phone.

While I have professional equipment, and carry it with me on most days, I find myself chossing to shoot more and more with my phone. I love the ability to shoot, edit, and post my images in a matter of minutes. The creativity is more in the immediate visualization and not hours of post processing.

St. Marc, Haiti 2008

Day 4 of our trip to Haiti is almost done. Kumar went out with Humedica today to administer medical relief in the rural village of ….. I stayed back at the hotel to compress video footage and put it on our FTP server so that team members in America can take a look at it and use it for their news and packaged stories. I also uploaded audio files of interviews and pictures that could accompany any possible print stories. It was very stressful. The Internet in Haiti is not very fast. I was averaging upload speeds of 25KB/s, which meant that I had to really compress our video footage in order to get it on the server…but it still needed to be HD. After two unsuccessful attempts at compresion settings, I had the footage to a manageable 130MB. This took about 1.5 hours to upload. The other interesting factor was that you could only access wifi down on the patio by the pool and there was only one location with an outlet. Anyway, I think both videos uploaded ok.

We drove back to Port Au Prince in the afternoon, but made a quick stop at Water Missions to help unload our water purification unit. Once it was unloaded, we finalized plans for the journey tomorrow and went to the hotel where I was reunited with my luggage. It wasn’t that easy, but it’s not worth explaining on this blog. After an hour and a little more hassle, my luggage was finally here! Kumar and I enjoyed a wonderful steak dinner (our first “real” meal in two days) and then I immediately grabbed my swimsuit and went in the gorgeous pool at the hotel. The hotel is very nice and has many ammenities that we Americans take for granted (A/C, hot water, properly sealed windows, comfortable mattress, etc). The Internet is the only thing that is lacking and that appears to be caused by the weather. This happened the first night we stayed in Port Au Prince as well.

After my swim I went to the restaurant to grab a coke and struck up a conversation with another gentleman, Dan, who was here watching the Georgia football game. He is an American who has done humanitarian work in Haiti for 8 years. He was a wealth of information about the culture and people of Haiti. I am fascinated by the Haitian people more and more every day that I am here.

Delivered food supplies to shelters in L’estere, Haiti

As I write this post it is 2:30am in Haiti. We are staying in a hotel in St. Marc. I still don’t have my luggage and look forward to going back toward Port Au Prince tommorrow so that I can have fresh socks, boxers, and pants. First, we have a medical mission to do in the morning with Humedica.

Today we went to L’estere and delivered food supplies to shelters. At one, we spent time with the people who currently call it home. They were very friendly and grateful for our help.

I spent the evening capturing and editing the footage we have so far and am currently compressing it for FTP upload. I am very sore and tired from our journeys (most of the time is spent in the back of a pickup truck driving on really bumpy roads).

I’ve attached a few photos from Thursday.

Clean Water HDR Photo

While playing around with Aperture, I found a photo that I had taken to HDR and decided to finish it tonight.  I stopped because of the sunset over the water, but was irritated by the pipeline that was littering an otherwise scenic view.  I understand the necessity of it and decided it was worth incorporating into the picture.  

Clean Water

Originally uploaded by tonycece

New Photos and a New Location

After feeling like I had done enough photography in Portsmouth, I found a new location that was of interest. While driving around my old neighborhood, I noticed a new park that had been created after our move to a new location. These are two of my favorite pics from the day.