Last Home Games of the Season

Eastern's men's and women's basketball teams had their last home games of their seasons tonight, and I got to shoot both of them for the Progress. Here are a few of my shots.

A Stroll in Black and White

Back In Business

It's been a while since my last post. Here are some photos from an Eastern track and field meet and the Eastern vs. Cincinnati season opener.

















For the track and field meet, I experimented with rear autofocus. That means my shutter button only took the picture, and my exposure button on the back of the camera controlled the autofocus feature. This let me set my focal length as the runners were approaching my position, then just snap the shot—without my camera trying to refocus-as soon as they came into focus. If my focus was too far away and the runners were too small, or too close and I couldn't capture enough of the runners, I just re-focused further or closer with my rear focus button. It's not much of an improvement over just using manual focus, but it was interesting.

Good football photos are hard to take when your team gets slaughtered 40-7. Towards the end of the game I was looking for shots expressing exasperation, anger or frustration from our players, but this was an even more difficult task than taking good shots of a team who barely squeaked out 100 total yards. When you look at really great professional photos from the best photojournalists, they have always captured "the moment" or they express an emotion with incredible clarity. There's a reason only the best catch these shots, but I don't think it's necessarily because they have an extra sense for where and when to point their cameras. I know where and when to point my camera, I see the moments I want to capture. I think you get those perfect shots purely by luck, and the only way to increase your chance of catching the moment or the emotion is to take lots of photos.

One More Photo

This is a panoramic photo made up of eight images I took while hiking up Vista Hermosa. I also have a minor correction to make to a previous post. Vista Hermosa is actually the community right next to where our work projects in Guatemala were. Our work projects were in the San Felipe community. This photo is from Vista Hermosa, where we delivered food and care packages to Guatemalan families last Thursday.

The End of My Summer

I head home tomorrow. Thanks to everyone who helps me do this every year. Your help lets me show love to people around the world who don't get to see a lot of love.

Escuela Integrada

The Escuela Integrada is a K-9th public school located in Antigua. However, unlike other public schools in Guatemala, Integrada covers 90 percent of the cost of going to school for each of its students. It is free to attend public school in Guatemala, but students must purchase their own uniforms, textbooks, school supplies, food, etc., so while it's technically "free," only the rich kids go. Integrada was started by two missionaries - Andrew and Rebecca - who moved to Guatemala nine years ago. Andrew said he and his wife came to Guatemala because there is a severe shortage of biblically-educated pastors. Once down here they realized basic education was one of the best ways to influence the trend of uneducated religious leaders. They started Integrada, which is a state-run public school. However, they and their supporters in the U.S. pay for almost everything so the children's families do not.




Integrada calls itself a school for "niños trabajadores," which means worker children. This title actually serves as a repellent for rich families because they feel above the "worker" class, and do not want to send their kids to such a school. And so the vast majority, if not all the kids at Integrada come from families well below the poverty line, yet they receive as good an education as they would get at any other public school.




Mission Discovery works with Integrada to find poor families who need their homes repaired. We also send a small group three days of the week out into rural communities to deliver food and care packages to Integrada families who have next to nothing.

Volcan Pacaya

On the group's day off, we took them to Volcan Pacaya, the most active volcano in Guatemala. A very steep two-hour hike found us at the foot of the crater, where the lava pours down the side and creates a lava field. There was no river of lava flowing through the field while we were there, but there were several areas where you could stand on very hot rock and look through openings to see the magma below. Some of the campers stuck their walking sticks in and lit them on fire.





One of the Mission Discovery staff here in Antigua, Jimmy Rivera, got a little too close and singed his arm hairs.



An eruption a while back that destroyed the original paths to the very top and a recent incident involving a hiker who broke his thigh bone have caused the guides to stop taking groups to the crater area, but we did see an eruption from where we were.





Nearby there was a geothermal power plant.



From Pacaya you can see Volcan Agua to the north, which is the same massive volcano you can see in the south when you're in Antigua. Far beyond Agua and a little to the left, Volcan Fuego is also visible when cloud cover is very light. In the first of these pictures, you can see the side of Fuego in the middle of all the clouds.




On the hike up there were hundreds of these fuzzy caterpillars everywhere, especially on mossy tree trunks. Our guide said at night they glow in the dark.