Proverbs 3:5-8

"Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD, and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones" (Proverbs 3:5-8, English Standard Version).

Sometimes it seems like my life is a roller coaster. I don't know if it's like that for everyone, but I know that for me, it's up and down, side to side, round and round, and all over the place at different times. Some days I feel great, and other days I just feel rotten, so when I came across this verse, it was really neat for me. It was a great reminder that God is in control, that He knows everything, and therefore He is the one to trust with my life. I simply do not understand what is going on around me well enough to control my life. But God does, so if I trust Him, acknowledge Him, fear Him, and turn from evil, He will make my paths straight, and less like a roller coaster.

So I took this verse, and did the best I could to get a photo that summed up verses 5 and 6. I like roller coasters for the most part, but I do not like having a roller coaster life. Solomon shows that life trusting God is no roller coaster, but rather a straight path.

What is Black and Yellow with Red Eyes?

Any ideas as to what this is? Pretty tough huh. You can see the black and yellow though, and you have a few hints as to what it is. But unless you're really smart, you won't get it yet. But you should know that it is something between a dragon or a dinosaur and a lizard. I think the next picture will clear some things up. Or will it?

Now it's pretty clear. It's a dinosaur. Right? Hmm... My brother Tyler and I were out in the woods when we came across this beast. It was a cloudy, wet day, in the middle of fall. The fall colors weren't particularly spectacular yet, but many of them had come down. To get really specific, it was October 22, 2009 when we ran into this wet-loving monster. Though not particularly speedy, he made up for it with his ferocious looks. You might think that we would have been too terrified to take pictures, but surprisingly we were not afraid, only a bit surprised. As we got closer I took several pictures. Now I think you'll understand what it is:

It was just an especially evil-looking Box Turtle. Actually, in real life he didn't even look particularly evil, just very brightly colored. I just took the pictures in a way that made him look mean, but he really seemed pretty friendly for a turtle. Usually Box Turtles are mostly black with a little bit of yellow. But this one was not that way! He had a lot more yellow than most of them do. I really like the little patterns on his shell. They look just like little yellow hand prints or something. He was really quite a spectacular looking little guy. I enjoyed seeing and photographing him. It's especially nice photographing turtles because they're too slow to run away! So while he was stuck there, I just had to take a picture that portrayed him as a nice turtle rather than a mean one. Smile, Mr. Turtle!

Isaiah 55:8-9

On November 11, my brother (who also enjoys photography) and I went outside at about 9:00 PM with our cameras and my tripod. It may seem crazy (I know it did to me!), but we were out there on that pitch dark, moonless night to try to get star pictures. I've personally never succeeded at that, but tonight was different. Tyler had been showing me a lot of the camera functions he had been learning, such as aperture, iso, and shutter speed. Using these functions, we managed to get some amazing pictures that brought out the awesome spread of stars.

I'm sure some of you have been outside on a moonless night, and if you happened to be out there sort of far from any town, you'll know how awesome it is when you look up toward the stars. They are EVERYWHERE!!! Just millions and billions, all over the place. It is really cool. These pictures don't quite do it justice, but that night it was really awesome. We spent quite a while out there, taking turns with the tripod to get good pictures of the stars.

It was really neat when we got inside to see the pictures and how many stars our cameras had picked up. That little star cluster down in the bottom right corner is called the Seven Sisters or Pleiades. To our eyes it was just a little bright cloud, but when we got it on our cameras we could see even the individual little stars! Our cameras were almost like digital telescopes or something!

After we had gotten these star pictures, I wanted to make one of them into a verse picture. So I looked in a concordance for a passage that would go with one of my pictures. I found one in Isaiah 55:8-9. I also wanted to incorporate a little bit of Star Wars, so I had some fun getting all the text just right. Here's what I wound up with:
It's such a neat passage, especially if you take it out and think about it when you go out under the stars. They are so high! And to think that in the same way God's thoughts are higher than my thoughts. It really gave me a new perspective on God and how much higher He is than I am. It is awesome to think about. It's one of those neat parallels God has put in creation to show me spiritual truths in a physical way so I can understand them better. He gives a spiritual concept a physical parallel that I can relate to, which gives the concept more meaning and reality. How neat for me to have been able to see that parallel, and photograph it! Isaiah wasn't able to photograph it, but I bet he would have if he could have.

June 2, 2009 - Job 36

After seeing the pictures that I had gotten that day, as well as a few other pictures I had gotten from other storms, I began to put together a series of pictures with verses on them that wrote out a portion of Job 36. It was such a neat bit of Scripture, and seemed to fit really well with the pictures I had gotten. All but two of the following verse pics (the second and last ones) are from June 2, 2009. Hopefully the text is readable. If not, just click on the image and see if it will enlarge. But just in case that doesn't work, I'll write out the passage as well.

Here's the passage:

Remember to extol His work,
of which men have sung.
All mankind has looked on it;
man beholds it from afar.
Behold, God is great, and we know Him not;
the number of His years is unsearchable.
For He draws up the drops of water;
they distill His mist in rain,
which the skies pour down
and drop on mankind abundantly.
Can anyone understand the spreading of the clouds,
the thunderings of His pavilion?
Behold, He scatters His lightning about Him
and covers the roots of the sea.
For by these He judges peoples;
he gives food in abundance.
He covers His hands with the lighting
and commands it to strike the mark.
Its crashing declares His presence;
the cattle also declare that He rises.
(Job 36:24-33, English Standard Version)

A neat passage. I had to think about that last verse, where it says, "the cattle also declare that He rises." I decided that it was just showing that it's more than just the crashing booms and flashing lights that declare the glory of God, but even the cattle. The focus of the passage wasn't meant to be the great big thunders and storms, but the God that they declare.

As a side note, in the second verse picture from the top (not one from June 2), all those little black specks are raindrops! You might not be able to see them very well, so you might just have to take my word for it, but they're there. It was neat when I looked at the picture to see all those millions of little raindrops falling from the clouds! Clouds really drop a lot of rain, don't they!

Well, that wraps up the posts on June 2, 2009. It was a really neat day that God blessed with several neat photographs. I enjoyed that day, and I've enjoyed remembering that day as well as I shared it on this blog. But now it's time to move on. . .

June 2, 2009 - Lightning

I kept my eye on the radar, watching the storm come closer and closer. I went out on our front porch and heard the thunder off in the distance. The first flashes of distant lightning were appearing in the sky. I got my camera ready, setting it up so that I could just hold the shutter button down and have it take picture after picture. I set up my tripod on the porch stairs, and watched. I sat there for about 20 minutes taking pictures of the dark sky, for it was not only cloudy, but also about 9:30 at night. I got this distant flash of light in the clouds, but that wasn't quite what I wanted.

As the storm got closer, I realized I wasn't in the most ideal location for getting the pictures I wanted: there were too many trees. So I moved over to a different side of the porch where there was a shot of more open sky. There I set up my camera and tripod and began snapping pictures like crazy.

A little while after I had started taking pictures from this location, I got a teeny bit of what I was after. In some ways I couldn't believe my eyes: I had finally gotten a lighting picture! But I was determined to keep at it and see about getting a better one. The following pictures reveal what I ended up with.

In short, these photos were simply awesome for me. The thunder was really loud, particularly that last one, but I was thrilled and thankful. After that last lighting bolt I went inside, with over 600 photographs on my camera, though all but 6 were totally dark. It was such a neat experience. I love thunderstorms, but I never thought I'd actually capture a bolt of lightning. Normally they happen so fast you can't really see them, but when you capture them you can see how intricate they are. If you click on the third bolt pictured above, you'll see bunches of little electric strands coming off the main bolt. It's so neat. And so loud!

And so ended that day of photography. I had really enjoyed it and was very thankful for the pictures that God had given to me! But that was the end of that amazing evening. So now I bet you're thinking: "Hey! You said there would be five posts for June 2, 2009. What about the fifth one?" Well, that post has pictures from June 2, even though I put them together later. If that doesn't make any sense to you, hopefully you'll understand it better when the next post comes.

June 2, 2009 - Final Clouds

After I had scared off the little herd of deer, I headed back up the hill toward the place where I had first seen them. I looked out towards where the big ice-cream cloud had been, and found it had gone atomic. So far everyone who has seen this picture has said that it looks like an atomic bomb going off. It was an awesome sight. I sat there and took a lot of pictures, but really not that many good ones. I just couldn't photograph it like it really was. You just can't capture the sheer size of a thing like this with a camera. By now (I checked on the radar again), this cloud was about 40 miles away, if that helps you get an idea of how big this cloud is. I can't recall if I used any zoom or not, but if I did it wasn't much. This cloud was simply massive.

After I'd spent some time up at this cloud, I went back toward our house and took pictures of many of the other large clouds that were floating around our house.



All these massive clouds just got me thinking how amazing it is that I could be out there so fearlessly. Here were all these massive clouds just floating around me, and I wasn't even the least bit afraid. I was certainly a bit awe-struck, but not afraid. I realized how very confident I had to be in God's rules staying the same and these monstrous clouds following them! If one of those giants were to somehow break the laws that held it in the air, I'd be smothered with cloud very quickly.

I was also reminded of how very small I am. Here were these gigantic clouds just flying around through the sky over my head, so high that I had to strain my neck to see them. They were reaching heights I never want to reach without an airplane, and were way more massive than I could ever be (unless I ate WAY to much!). Those clouds were really amazing.

As it got darker, I headed inside and checked the radar and saw that there was another big storm coming. When I saw that, I thought I'd try some photography that I'd never tried before. Little did I know that I was about to get some pictures that I have always wanted to get.

June 2, 2009 - Deer

After I had seen the first clouds, I got a big surprise. I was shooting pictures, and I happened to look up from my camera screen. I gasped. My initial response was to duck down out of sight. But as I knelt there, I realized that there was no way to get a picture if I didn't stand up at least a little. So I stood up and began snapping photos.

I got tons of pictures, but hardly any were good. The ones I listed, however, were the ones that were decent. This picture is where I first saw them. There are three bucks here, apparently in order of rank. The first one has the biggest antlers, the second one has the second bigest antlers, and the last one has the shortest antlers. That last one was the one who seemed to see me, but aparently wasn't convinced that I was really there.

After a while, without spotting me, they headed down the hill. I followed them as best I could, taking pictures as they went.

They got to the bottom of the hill and came to a little grove of trees where they laid down for while. I snuck up on them and tried getting pictures. But I dropped my walking stick. The deer pictured to the right saw me and gave his deer snort, which isn't like a horses snort, but almost more like a coarse train whistle or something. Very difficult to describe. Anyway, he gave his snort and all the deer ran off, and that was the end of the deer watching.

After the deer had run off, I headed back up the hill to where I had first seen them. There I saw and photographed an awesome sight.