water sparklers

water sparklers, originally uploaded by use2blost.

SOOC... I am perhaps tickled with this all out of proportion to the uniqueness of the shot but I usually don't fart around with the "manual" setting... my MOD has been based on the philosophy that "even if a complete idiot takes 1000 pictures... he'll get a few good ones" and that has worked for me. LOL. The manual settings thing is a result of my desire to get the hang of HDR imaging. Hey, it might help me grow, huh? I gotta back off till the Christmas break, though. I'm really WAY too busy this quarter. The photo obsession thing has run away with me before..

I am alive. School is extremely demanding, lately, or perhaps it is simply my ability to perform... I made straight A's last quarter... WHOOO HOOO!!!, and seem to have broken the blogging addiction...oops... i just piddled around for an hour trying to find a link.

God is in Charge

Disclaimer: This is not my work, either in the original photo or the postprossesing. As near as I can figure it was done by Jill Greenberg, who, along with Dave Hill have achieved fame/notoriety with their photo processing style. It is something I myself have never tried (yet!) but seems to involve multiple light sources, and of course, a masterful hand with processing software. This style makes the photoartist in me grin in jealous admiration :)

Isn't He? 

I have a love-hate relationship with the 

pauline epistles. Many of his directives seem so counterintuitive, requiring the Christian to give up all attempts at self-protection, and whatever tenuous grasp he has on his personal agenda. Paul gives some rather hard to swallow advice on how the Romans should interact with their Government at a time when some of them were being utilized as human tiki-torches for the Imperial Backyard Barbecue. By reminding them, that "God's in charge" (Romans 13), But one of my basic beliefs, and there is scripture to support this, is that God want's us to DO something, to Impact our world with our God-given abilities in order to make it more closely resemble HIS ideal, and that we get a clue what this is by investing in, prioritizing, and seeking with discipline a Personal Intimacy with the source, or author of this ideal. 

  Wanted to get this striking and diabolical picture up so Deacon could see it

Angel Dust

Well, it's been a while since I posted a picure I took. My perspective and sense of accomplishment changes, and the first insect macros that thrilled me so much, didn't seem all that great after surfing through some of the content on the web, especially some of the amatuer photos uploaded on flickr. This recent shot, taken a few days at the campus pond, I am really pleased with. :)

And it is unmanipulated. SOOC (straight out of the camera) except for the crop. :D

she looks great on black

Why...

Do they always give you more antibiotics than they do pain pills? I have a tooth that has been killing me since thursday night, and I took the last two Darvosets about twenty hours ago. I actually had to take my GMC 100 final slightly stoned on opiates... I'll post my score when I get it.

The Tooth Thing, and anything like it, makes me aware (painfuly, lol) that I am one of the uninsured. When this comes up, It's always with mixed feelings.

At 41, I am just beginning to experience medical conditions that would benefit from ongoing management by an actual doctor. So, hand in hand with my self-pity (just a little) I keep the background awareness of millions of people with immediate life-and-death health issues that make my own pale in comparison. But my tooth still hurts. affecting my eating, sleeping, and performance. I wonder how much awareness, on a national level is shunted aside, how much action is not taken, because my "tooth still hurts", because I'm "limping away from the wreckage of my divorce", because the "grief over the unexpected passing of my Father still colors my life"...

the Gross Domestic Product of this country works out to about 45,000 per year for every man woman and child. An ocean away, A life flickers out, every three seconds from poverty, and the lack of clean drinking water.