It is said that absence makes the heart grow fonder, I’m not sure  how it works for others but it sure works on me! When I go out speaking around the country, I often remark about how much in love I am after 43 years of marriage! On one occasion my bride was with me, and a woman from the audience asked Sherelene how that was possible, she answered, “Well, he has only been home 15 of the 43 years!”  We all got a good laugh but it was pretty accurate. I know that being away a lot makes it fresh when I get home, but my love and respect for my wife goes a lot deeper than that.  Now before I start please know I’m not just bragging, o.k. well a little, but I really do want to address this to the men out there, I want to share about how to keep that love alive and well in a relationship.

 

Let me start by saying that I not only love my wife, my bride, my girl friend, my best friend, (yes, they are all the same person!!!), I also admire and respect her.  Let me start there.

 

Sherelene is amazing, she is a great mother, a wonderful grandmother, a spectacular wife, an accomplished Nurse Practitioner, a caring person, a real witness of her faith, and a classy, beautiful woman.  *Time out, I know you are wondering how on earth I landed a gal like this, well for one thing, I’ve never let her get her eyes checked and gotten glasses!!!   Sherelene is my best friend my most trusted compatriot, and the person I love to have time with more than anyone else!  She has given me a wonderful family, and we are enjoying them immensely, together!

 

O.K. How do you keep love alive.  First, it helps to have someone like Sherelene who makes all my efforts a labor of love!  May I make a few suggestions?

 

1.  Never stop dating your spouse!  When you first met, you went out of your way to impress her, and do things you think she might love!  Don’t stop.  I buy Sherelene fresh flowers every week I’m home.  I take her out to dinner as often as possible, I even take out the trash, and straighten up around home before she get home from work.  I make it a point to know what she values and act on it!

 

2. Listen to her.  When she wants to share about work, or ask advice, I stop what I’m doing, (for me this is really hard, it’s a learning process), and truly listen and try to respond in a thoughtful and honest way.

 

3.  Study the word, and pray together.  We lift up our needs, our family and friends, and we spent a lot of time praising God for His Goodness and countless blessings!

 

4.  Try to get away for weekends and vacations as often as your schedules permits.  We try to make those trips personal time to just catch up, and get re-connected.

 

5.  I ask her to critique my images.  She is one of the few people that will tell me the truth, and when she says she really likes an image I know it’s good, because she is a very astute visual person and very good photographer herself.  Best of all she won’t try to pull the wool over my eyes or brag when it’s not deserved!  She’s not harsh, but i can count on her judgement!

 

6.  Never stopped romancing her.  I treat Sherelene just like the girl who’s heart I had hoped to win so many years ago.

 

Men, keep your bride happy, make sure she knows how much you appreciate her and how far you will go to protect her and take care of her!!  Not because I said it, but because of what Paul told us in Ephesians!

 

Ephesians 5:25-27

²⁵ For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her ²⁶ to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word. ²⁷ He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault.

 

Do these things, and reap one of God’s greatest gifts, a wonderful marriage and life long friendship!

 

Be blessed,

 

the pilgrim

I’ve now had the D600 for long enough to really get to know it and I have some additional observations. I will cut right to the chase, I think the D600 represents the best value in DSLR on the market today!  Here’s why;

 

1.  The D600 is the highest resolution DSLR on the market, save for the D800, and is more than enough detail for virtually any subject you and I will ever shoot.

 

2.  The D600 represents a significant bargain, especially when you consider just three years ago a D3x was $8,000. and the closest competitor from Canon with slightly less resolution is $3,500.  The cost alone is pretty amazing, what’s even more amazing is that the D600 outperforms either of these cameras.  It is much lower noise than the D3x and very close to the 5D Mark III.  It is only 1/2 stop slower than the frame rate of the 5D Mark III,  and it costs $1,400 less!!!!

 

3.  With the exception of my favorite DX body the D7000 the D600 has the sweetest release and quietest shutter in the line up.  It is a joy to shoot hand held and when you lock it on a tripod it uses the ML-L3 wireless remote,  I truly love this combination.

 

4.  The very vital aspect of ergonomics, this camera simply feels great in your hands.  It has enough heft to feel substantial, but is light enough to be refreshing.  I don’t think anyone should be concerned about the build quality!

 

5.  After doing a number of HDR images by shooting three images 2 stops apart, I’m convinced, that unless you are an HDR master and shoot almost everything as an HDR, this camera will cover your bases just fine.

 

6.  I can’t wait to get my hands on the very reasonably priced wireless transmitter, the WU-1b, I think it will be a hoot to shoot straight to the iPad!!!  Add to that the App for you iPhone that allows you to operate the camera wirelessly!  Wow, what fun!!!

 

7.  I’m starting to really love SD cards, they are less expensive, are coming on very fast speeds, and it’s easy to carry a bunch of them!  And the D600 works with dual SD slots.

 

8.  But most important of all, this camera makes absolutely gorgeous images!  It is so good it makes me wonder why I will keep the D800, of course I’ll kept a D800 as my 4X5 view camera!!!!   But for everyday shooting this D600 has found an honored place in my camera bag!

 

You couldn’t spend $2,100. any better……

 

the pilgrim

 

 

I  had a person ask me the other day if I was afraid of dying.  I shocked them when I said, “No, I’m rather looking forward to it!”  Take a note, non-believers often are confused by our thought processes!   If I thought that this life was all there was, I wouldn’t be all that anxious to leave it, but knowing that I have an eternity with Him waiting, it’s hard some days to not wish that day would come sooner, rather than later!  I’ve shared this before, but when I had cancer at age 35 and was told I had very little time to live, I faced death square in the face.  Since I’ve already dealt with it, I can’t think of a good reason to deal with it again.  The matter is settled for me, I’ve given my life, and heart to Jesus, it’s His to do with as He pleases.  If He wants me here working for the Kingdom, that works for me, if it’s to be with Him, that’s even better.

 

One of my grandchildren crawled up in my lap recently and said, “Papa, I don’t want you to die, I want you to just stay here with me forever!”   It’s a delicate conversation to try and explain to a four year old how all this works, but I tried. I told Abigail that she knew I go on trips, and sometimes I’m gone for quite a while.  She knowingly said, “Yes, I know Papa!”  Very lady like, I might add!  I told her that someday I’m going on a very long trip and won’t be coming back here, but will see her when she comes to where I’m going.  That seemed to satisfy her for now.

 

I’ve lost a lot of family and friends and I am happy to know that most are with the Lord, they are the fortunate ones, life here can be daunting, but with His strength we can make until we get to be with Him for eternity.  I was visiting with a friend a few years ago  who was dying of cancer, he said something that has really stayed with me.  I said to him that I was so sorry about his situation, he said, “Don’t be, I’ve lived a great life, and I’m going to an even better one, I love you man, and I’ll see you at the gate when you get there!”  He was right on two points, it is something to look forward to, and I will see Him again, and next time, he will be completely whole!!!  What a wonderful, peaceful way to go to our reward.

 

I’m not hanging out in cemeteries because I know something you don’t, I just loved the cross and the trees!!  I’m not going anywhere a minute sooner than He has it planned!  But when that time does come, please rejoice for me, that’s what I will be doing up there!

 

Be blessed, have hope, and know Him,

 

the pilgrim

 

My plane landed in Louisville at 5:00 p.m. last night and my steering wheel on my FJ Cruiser really tried to turn onto I-64 East, the first leg of the trip home, but it was not to be, I had to force the wheel in the opposite direction to drive west across Kentucky to my next assignment.

 

When I got up this morning, thankfully not at 2:00 a.m., like all last week, I showered dressed and loaded up for the first morning of the Mountain People’s Workshop.  On the drive over to the college I saw some beautiful fall foliage and just couldn’t pass up the tree above.  Standing in the brisk morning air and photographing this tree, a lot of memories came flooding back, of lots of cool days, photographing lots of wonderful fall leaves.  Fall is my favorite time of the year for a lot of reason, but mostly the wonderful cooler weather, and incredible color.  You know already, if you have visited here often, that I love color!!  As a photographer, I’ve had the pleasure of shooting so many fantastic subjects that really depend on their great color to make them succeed! Color literally attacks the senses!

 

I plead with my students to discipline themselves to work in a way that their images do attack the senses!  The purpose of making photographs is to tell a story, and if you do not believe that the story is compelling, why are you doing it, and if you do, then you want it to hit the viewer with all the impact you can put behind it!  Your work needs to have impact, change things, cause people to want to make changes, inform, inspire, and teach.

 

Even more so, should your life have an impact!  What  kind of father or mother are you, what kind of parent, or grandparent, what kind of friend are you to your friends?  Do you bring kindness and compassion into the lives of others. When you come into someone’s life and then leave it, do you leave something of value, of worth.  Our lives, just as our photography, needs to be impactful.

 

When it is all said and done, that will be the measure of if your life was well lived.

 

Blessings,

 

the pilgrim

 

Photo Note:   D600 with the 16-35 AF-S VR