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1 week, 1 day ago 19
Posted in: blog

 

 

Today is my Birthday, and I’m celebrating 79 trips around the sun!  I just returned from a great week with my wife in Durham North Carolina for the Carolina Nature Photographers Association’s Annual Convention where I was honored to be one of the presenters!  That experience was one of the 4 great birthday gifts I received, please let me elaborate!

 

  1. 1.  The great people at CNPA!  Two years ago David Hartfield called  from the club to ask me if I would consider being one of their four main speakers for the annual conference.  My response was,   “Are you sure you’re calling the right guy!?”  My teaching and speaking career has slowed way down and I was a little shocked about the invitation!  He then explained then that the invitation was for February 2025, two years in the future!  I told him I would be happy to sign a contract but they would have to forgive me if I didn’t live that long because on the date of the call I was 77!!!!!  We agreed and a contract was signed and so began a two year period of my regretting that I had a agreed to do the talk.  Since agreeing it got even worse when I  had to have a heart valve replacement last year, then started having AFIB,  week later coded twice in the emergency room and had to get a pacemaker, and started using walker to get around a lot of the time.

The point is that for many years I’ve been asked to do lots of talks to groups of all sizes, and to be honest, I have a reputation of consistently knocking it out of the park, not to be immodest,  but with all these health issue I was concerned that I would not give them what they wanted and to the standard I’ve held myself to!  I prayed, as I always do, Father I pray I will do the best I can and that you will get all the Glory!  As He always does, my prayers were answered and it went very well!  I want to thank the wonderful attendees and staff of the convention, Don who introduced me, David who arranged everything for me, Nicole the president of CNPA and everyone who were very warm and welcoming and treated me so vey well, I can’t thank you all enough!  It was a great experience!

 

2.  My dear friend and former boss at Nikon, Bill Pekala.  Bill was kind enough to come over and attend my two lectures on Friday morning and we had a wonderful visit!  As I told the attendees at the conference, Bill provided me so many wonderful opportunities when we work together at Nikon, He was the best boss I’ve ever had and a true lifelong friend!  On top of everything else after my first talk he said “You haven’t lost a step!”  I needed that!

 

3.  My wife Sherelene knew I was a basket case about wanting to do well for those great folks at the conference and she insisted on going with me and keeping me in good shape!  We had a great week together and enjoyed a rare time alone away from the house.  Sherelene is a world class nurse practitioner and her schedule is brutal so this kind of one on one time was a treat for both of us!  On the 14th we will celebrate 55 years of marriage!  I really knocked out of the park when I asked her to marry me!  She had all her Sunday School class praying for me last week and this morning we were able to give them a good report!

 

4.  Lastly a very nice lady approached me after my last talk and shared that she was so happy that I was open about my faith and that it was a blessing to her!  I so appreciated her sharing that with me and of course I told her so.  Being an out spoken Christian in our world today is not always easy, but with all God has done over my career and life there is no way I would be reluctant to give Him all the credit.  I would not be enjoying all the blessing of this life without Him!

 

So I’m having a great birthday, feeling very blessed to have all of you in my life!

 

 

Blessings,

 

the pilgrim

 

 

 

1 month ago 7

 

I’m attending a photo meeting next Wednesday and anything not sold will go to Used Photo Gear.  Make an offer and we will do a deal!

 

Contact me at:   [email protected]. or call (606)-528-6119

 

Blessings,

 

the pilgrim

 

 

 

 

A practice in bars across America is called the tab.  Owners of bars, for trusted customers, will sometimes allow them to set up a tab and charge drinks and food to that tab throughout the evening to be settled at the end of business, that day!

 

In the book of Romans in the scripture it is written that “all have fallen short of the glory of God”,  in other words everyone has sinned against God by not obeying His laws and His instructions for living.  It also says that death is the wages of sin.  That’s the bad news, we all are condemned since all of us. have sinned against God.  There is good news though, God loved us so much that He gave His only son to die on the cross to pay our sin debt. To receive that forgiveness we need to confess our sins, repent, (be genuinely sorry for our actions), and accept Christ as our Savior and ask for His forgiveness!

 

So keeping with my illustration at the start;  We have a a tab we can pay and God is the Bar owner and, living in perilous times, we don’t know when the bar is closing, so it might be the right time to settle our tab.  After all we can’t settle things after the doors are closed.  Are you willing to take that risk!?

 

Blessings,

 

the pilgrim

2 months ago 1
Posted in: blog

 

When in doubt, look up!  This morning I awoke to a very low blood pressure. Sherelene went on to Church as soon as the was sure I was ok and I sat on the couch feeling dizzy.  I leaned back and looked up through the skylight and saw this single Japanese maple leaf surrounded by rain drops!  My camera bag was close by so I grabbed it and with a 420mm lens and was able to capture close to what I wanted in the image!  Even at 300mm plus a 1.4 teleconverter (420mm equiv.) it still was not tight enough for my liking,  so I did a little cropping and this is the final result.  The image was processed with Topaz AI 3 and Photoshop.

 

Technical Notes:   Lumix G9, Olympus 40-150  f 2.8 Pro @ f 16, 1/5ooth of a second shutter speed, ISO 6400, hand held.  The Topaz sharpened the image and eliminated any noise present in the file, of which there was very little.

 

Blessings,

 

the pilgrim