Unless You Come As A Little Child

There is a small cemetery at the edge of our town that sits along the water, nestled back up under an expansive canopy of oak trees. I've passed it hundreds of times over the years and was always rather intrigued by its appearance but never ventured in before.

Today I visited the Jessie Rogers Memorial Cemetery with my camera. While I don't make it a habit of strolling through cemeteries, when I do find myself in one, I tend to be drawn to the graves of those who passed away very young.

The tombstone pictured above would seem to belong to the young child of the family for whom this place is named. It is located in a section of plots all bearing the names of various members of the Rogers family from the mid to late 1800's.

One of the things I noticed during my visit was that many of the graves have been and continue to be adorned by all sorts of paraphernalia and mementos, some bordering on the absurd for their garish or absurd nature, or just sheer volume.



Being a father myself though, I was particular touched by this one. Here is the final resting place of a young child who passed away nearly 22 years ago as of this posting. Yet it continues to be adorned with small toys. Many are obviously quite weather worn and I just couldn't help but marvel at the fact that they have stayed here undisturbed for however long they've been in place.



I'm not sure what caught my eye about this particular spot. The time was getting late in the day and the entire site was completely shaded over, which would usually render the light very flat and unappealing. But there was some quality in the stone of this marker that for whatever reason gave it a very distinct glow. With the granite nicely contrasted against the surrounding colors of the flowers, I felt compelled to capture this image.

All shots were taken in natural light. The black and white of young Ida Rogers was taken earlier in the day with near direct, but low in the sky sunlight striking a hard angle from my rear left camera position. The other two shots were in total shade of the surrounding oak trees and the sun approaching the horizon well out of the angle of view.
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Heartbreak For Haiti

As of this post, the whole world knows of the tragedy in earthquake stricken Haiti. This poorest of nations was already in dire straits before this calamity. Now all the more so.

These occurrences have an added significance for those of our church family at Wright Baptist Church in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. Among our membership is Chuck Martindale, pictured above. Chuck is a walking miracle. After having been delivered from 26 years of alcohol addiction and having his wife and sons restored to him, Chuck answered a call from God to take up mission work in Haiti.

Chuck has formed his own ministry, Truth Evangelistic Ministries, through which he makes multiple trips each year to some of the most remote and impoverished areas of that country, bringing food, medicine, construction support to build orphanages and churches, and the Gospel.

Even before the earthquake struck, Chuck was already planning a return trip to Haiti this month. With normal travel cut off, he has worked through multiple international contacts to establish an overland route into Haiti from the Dominican Republic and will be returning to the island in a few days to continue his work.

I had already been talking to Chuck about doing a photo shoot with him and these events created an even greater sense of urgency to push forward with the project before he made his next trip.



While we were shooting, Chuck was continuing to take phone calls and emails, receiving word from his friends and colleagues in country, and answering questions from people who wanted to know how they could get involved in the relief effort. We just went right on shooting and a friend who was assisting me said this was the most natural look for Chuck because this is what he does pretty much all day.

The background for the shot is a projected image file on a movie screen that is about 10 feet behind Chuck, being shot from a ceiling mounted LCD projector high above my head at the camera position. I used both of my new pieces of gear here.

In the first shot, the Honl Speed Grid is mounted high and to the right, providing the main light falling on Chuck's face, and the Apollo 28 softbox is just immediately to camera left providing fill. A third speedlight with a snoot is high and to the rear left for the accent light on Chuck's head and shoulder.

For the second shot, we went back to a little more traditional, softer setup with the softbox providing the key at camera right, a flash in a shoot through umbrella for fill on camera left, and the grid on the accent light to the left rear.
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Shooting The In-laws

These are my son's in-laws. I couldn't resist the play on words in the title. We actually have a great relationship with them. Stephanie's (my daughter-in-law, far right) parents live here in the same town with us. Her sisters and their families live in Georgia and Texas, respectively.

Their entire clan was home for Christmas and so I suggested a family photo shoot while they were all together. In addition to this group shot, I also got a couple of different settings with each of the individual families and various combinations of grandparents and cousins.



Although I'm getting pretty comfortable shooting small groups up to 3 or 4 people, bigger groups are still a challenge, mainly because small speedlight-type flashes tend to be a little underpowered for this, especially when they are mounted in a light modifier like an umbrella.

In the group shot I have two flashes set up, right and left of the camera, both in shoot through umbrellas. My main goal was just to get even lighting left to right and front to back. I had to slightly lighten a couple of facial shadows in Photoshop but overall I was very pleased with the end result.
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