Special Christmas Service and High ISO

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 Every December my church holds a special pre-Christmas Sunday evening service.  That service took place two days ago. We sing many Christmas Carols from the hymnal, there is a lot of other music and Scripture is read chronicling the prophecy of and the birth of Christ.  Following the service there is always a food reception, the reputation of which precedes the event and spreads far and wide.  

I always go about an hour early. That way I can photograph to my heart's content without interfering with the somber but joyous nature of the event.  I refuse to use flash though and because the service takes place at night when there's no ambient light from outside, I have to bump the ISO up pretty high.  Even after all these years of using a digital camera and experimenting with high ISO and knowing how good the cameras of today are, I still almost hyperventilate when going past 800 or so.

But I had to go high in spite of my stubborn innate resistance. So I tried 1200--no good.  Then 1600--no good.  Then 2000--still no good but getting close.  Finally up to 2500 and knew I didn't have to go any higher.  Whew, I was getting nervous.  My camera is excellent at those ISOs, I need to learn to relax and just go with what's necessary to get the images.

It was a great evening and I'm pretty happy with the images.  They'll be a nice addition to the church history scrapbooks.

In the Great Outdoors

My church meets in an elementary cafeteria normally. Last week, pastor announced that we would be meeting in a park this week, due to the fact that the school had an event scheduled in the cafeteria this Sunday, so we were preempted.

So today we gathered in this park. Not a lot of trees, but fortunately it wasn't extremely hot, so it was tolerable. There were a few times, however, when we thought we'd swept away by the wind. But all in all, it was a pretty neat experience, if not a lot of work to get set up.

Last night I went to a Scottish Music concert. This lady, Coreyanne, plays the bagpipes with a military group. Before the actual concert began, three local groups performed: the bagpipers, a Scottish dance group, and an Irish band. It was just too wonderful!!!

Then this morning, Coreyanne played the flute for the hymns. She not only has this musical talent that she uses to bless people, but she has 4 children, 2 dogs, 1 military husband (who by the way was away this weekend), she bakes her own bread (after she grinds the wheat flour--even if it is with an electric grinder), she's involved with Right to Life, she homeschools her oldest child and tonight at Bible Study she was organizing people to provide meals for one of the other families that has just had their third baby. Whew!

Pastor had an article printed in yesterday's newspaper, and apparently he and this guy were having a chuckle over something concerning the article. The article paid off, we had a guest family that came because of reading what Doug had to say. God at work.

John lives right at the far end of the park, and he was busy showing one of the newer members where his house is.

Posted at (that underline sure gets around) 9:30 on Sunday, Feb 22, 2009