3 weeks, teaching.

my staff Ashley and me in the studio, photo by becca

Cliff, myself and Jim out on the lava rocks next to the rising ocean tide with Kona climbing up the mountain to the left, 

the stars to the right. 30 second exposure. Jim was doing his 'location lighting' assignment.  Jim's photos.

I'm watching a video by a band named Cornelius called Fit Song.... and it's ridiculous and I can't watch it anymore because it's THAT absurd. 

The past three weeks have been rather intense.

They began with Gary S. Chapman teaching us on photoshop and stock photography, and getting the ball rolling with our guest speakers. At the beginning of that week our school leader was gone to Pennsylvania to take care of things after his mother's passing that weekend. So Gary and his wife Vivian were here and it was amazing and encouraging and all things good.

Then directly after Louis DeLuca came and spoke to us to teach us on photojournalism. We had to do a photo story on someone/thing and some of my classmates stories were above and beyond what was expected - yet again, it just showed how much talent I'm surrounded with and how powerful our gifts are when utilized, with growing potential. 

This week we had Stanley Leary come speak with us on business and studio lighting. It was really good just to know how to budget what you do and see realistically what you'd need to charge to be able to just have enough to live. It really hit me, the correlation of how valuable our gifts are, are intertwined in our own personal value. Even to the point of when people have mindsets that what you do is not worth much monetarily, that that even reflects your own personal value and how that has played a role in my own perception of my personal worth, aside from the addition of gifts in photography etc.

I'll be honest, I was a little ticked off the more I realized that what we do is a luxury, and that people are expecting to trade a Chrysler in for a Bentley. And by luxury, I mean that you don't need a photographer to get married or to graduate high school. You don't need flowers, you don't need rings, you don't need much at all but a bride and a groom, witnesses, a license etc. You don't need a gown or tux. You don't need a photographer. You don't need photos to document your event. Quite simply, you don't. You don't need music or musicians, you don't need a caterer or food.

Basically I was ticked off at how walked over we can be, how "I need a photographer at my wedding, you need to do it for cheap."

Sorry princess. I have to live too. I don't just spend 6 hours with you for one day, I have a lot more work to do once I get home. I don't expect to go to a movie for free because I have the mindset that you made that movie just to entertain me, and that there is no trade off.

I don't like talking about money, so I'm stopping this here. Just know that when you ask someone to do something like that, don't do it expecting it for free or for cheap. One, your Grandmother will tell you that's rude. Two, respect the people around you and what they have to offer you, for it is a gift that they hold, not just addressed to themselves, but to you as well.

Yet that doesn't mean they won't give you a steal of a deal sometimes... :)

All in all, these past three weeks have been good yet tiring. These guys are the top of their leagues and I don't think that's something we quite realized. Gary is at the top of his medium and there are very, very few people in the world who are good enough to make a living doing what he does. Louis is a senior photo editor for The Dallas Morning News and has consistently been at the top of photojournalism, competing with the best in the world in photo contests and has won many prestigious awards. 

Stanley is one of the head go-to guys in the industry for lighting and business and plays a pivotal role in the South Eastern Photojournalism Conference and Christians In Photojournalism. 

All three of these men are humble and have great hearts, are solid teachers and are eager to lift others up where they can. 

Stanley was saying today that he doesn't know if we realize how high the bar has been set by our school leader on the kind of people he brings in to speak and teach us. The bar is Pulitzer high. There are top university photography programs that don't teach business and don't teach lighting and who's students come out with a degree but no portfolio. He definitely wanted us to realize and see what we are in fact being offered here. 

12 weeks, no debt... life is good. :)

These men practice what they teach and are eager to release us into bigger things then they've done themselves.

That my friends, is a blessing.

+++++++

WE'RE TRAVELING TOMORROW!!

Tomorrow, Tuesday, we will begin our trek around the island! Now really, if you've driven for 2.5 hours at the legal speed limit around the island, then you're already coming home, but we're taking 2 days to take it all in. Stopping at some waterfalls, stopping at various places, staying the night in a military camp and we'll get back Wednesday at 9 or 10pm. 

So, EXPECT PHOTOS!

At the same time, I'd really really really like to ask for prayer for protection and safety on this trip. This island has a phenomenal amount of auto accidents due to drug and alcohol abuse and we will be traveling around in two 15 passenger vans for two days.

Prayer that the drivers would be alert and that protection would be over us would be an incredible blessing to me.

Much love and hope you're well 

-K

[ps: just because this isn't an email, doesn't mean you can't respond or reply... so.. ya know... do it if ya want.]

this is a teaser to make you go to my flickr.com account to see more photos :)

[link]

Hearts - sometimes break.

I dunno. I guess I'm wondering what makes hearts break.

I was walking the other night, past dorm rooms and a lyric sprung through my head "I'm waiting here for something new to break my heart..." -jars of clay. And I recoiled. No, not now. Not now... 

I guess I'm wondering what it is that causes cracks and schisms, which in turn allow enough room to begin placing space and tension in that crack to cause it to become larger, to eventually break or to have fragile potential to.

How susceptible am I to it?

How does it snake its way into other's hearts?

I mean, sometimes this is good. Sometimes I need my card houses to fall and for the horizon to flip, for the land and the sky to invert. I'm human. I build houses that were never meant to be built and therefore since I created them, they now have a purpose, and that purpose is to collapse. Because I built them.

So that breaks my heart. When those houses fall, the heart is cracking. Yet actually, when they're built is when it begins to split. Ahh, when I build those houses is when I take it into my own hands and understanding, and doing that is abrasive to the smoothness of this beating metaphor. I crack when I build. I break when it falls. And then ironically, everything feels like you'd think it should always feel. It feels right, it feels humble, it feels meek... it feels right.

But it's so hard to keep taking that step back. To keep feet grounded and mind clear.

To feel things, to know things, and to then realize that perhaps what you felt was out of line, and perhaps what you knew, you didn't know at all. The knowledge manipulating the emotion, the emotion manipulating the knowledge.

And perhaps your reliance on these things, for so many years, was unhealthy, untrue and dissatisfying... even when you thought it was right.

Maybe it's best to tear it down and walk away. To sit down while it rains and let it dissolve everything off of you and just listen. Just think about the rain, about how clouds are nothing and yet they block the sun, about how evaporation is invisible - or just don't think at all. Just don't talk at all. Just let revelation hit. Just sit. And to not even be tempted to consider having a roof over your head, because the importance of that has been dissolved with everything else.

Peace. That's that place to me.

I don't tell anyone that there are songs in my head that I cannot write down. There are images I cannot draw. There are experiences I can't explain, dreams and nightmares that aren't ascribed words when they're given.

But they're there.

They're inside of me and they affect me and I cannot get them out.

They are parts of me that people will know without knowing it, because they will never be named, they will never exit, but will remain internal and will therefore contribute to the external.

What is this place we go to when our hearts break? What is this vulnerability, this insecurity, this exhaustion and tension?

Heartbreaks don't just lie where other's have handled it irresponsibly. They come when I am irresponsible myself. They come when I ask for them to come, when I ask for something new to break my heart, for some injustice to be brought to my attention, for there to be a fire lit. Because I don't like mundane. I don't like mediocrity. I don't like monotony. I'm not satisfied or happy if there is nothing to chase after. If there is nothing to fight.

I say this - often, I feel.

What makes hearts break?

In good ways, in bad ways, in all ways?

Is there survivors guilt to someone once suicidal, a guilt that nags the question, 'Why did I find hope? Why couldn't all the others?'

Does scar tissue move in to places once soft, when something good is abruptly left behind through rash decisions and sudden emotional distance?

When what is good, but not good enough is decidedly ended, what keeps the decision firm and the motive clear and the heart protected?

Is letting the bird out of the cage and feeling the loneliness, the pain in the now silence where the song once vibrated, pivotal to whether or not it will return?

When is it okay to love? To let someone in?

I don't know.

I guess I'd like to. Or maybe more so, I'd like for you to. And for you to tell me. 

For you to change my mind about some things.

I guess I just don't know why hearts break, and why when other's are broken, I have a sympathy-break. 

I guess I don't know why when my heart shatters, I isolate myself.

And I don't mean heartbroken-over-he-once-loved-me-and-now-loves-someone-else, although sure, we can include that, but I mean everything. I mean when someone gets sick. I mean when someone hears bad news. I mean when someone makes a snide remark or has a sharp tone of voice. I mean when you find out about some injustice. I mean when something important was forgotten. I mean when you get a revelation about something absurd. I mean all these things.

I usually stop and make myself talk with You. Sometimes I don't and I go to others first. I just don't know where the line is, for man was not meant to be alone.

"Why do you keep asking where the lines are drawn? Who said there were lines?"

... I've been providing the wrong questions.

And the card houses fall.

+++++++++++++++++++++

"In an instant of time - while your friend hesitates for a word - what things pass through your mind? We have never told the whole truth. We may confess ugly facts - the meanest cowardice or the shabbiest and most prosaic impurity - but the tone is false. The very act of confessing - an infinitesimally hypocritical glance - a dash of humour - all this contrives to dissociate the facts from your very self.

No one Could guess how familiar and, in a sense, congenial to your soul these things were, how much of a piece with all the rest: down there, in the dreaming inner warmth, they struck no such discordant note, were not nearly so odd and detachable from the rest of you, as they seem when they are turned into words. We imply, and often believe, that habitual vices are exceptional single acts, and make the opposite mistake about our virtues - like the bad tennis player who calls his normal form his 'bad days' and mistakes his rare successes for his normal. I do not think it is our fault that we cannot tell the real truth about ourselves; the persistent, life-long, inner murmur of spite, jealousy, prurience, greed and self-complacence, simply will not go into words. But the important thing is that we should not mistake our inevitably limited utterances for a full account of the worst that is inside."

-Clive Staples Lewis, The Problem of Pain

++

"You can't control what breaks, but you can control the kind of person you're becoming. Hard hearts that transform into hearts that beat for the things that God's heart beats for. We control our response."

-Rob Bell

Love?

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe and in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable... The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from the dangers of love is Hell."

-CS Lewis, The Four Loves

Just Stop.

Yesterday the time was taken to stop.

Beginning Thursday evening, the base went into a 22 hour fast, that ended with a straight 8 hour prayer meeting, and eventually dinner.

The leadership felt that although their hearts and motives have been good, they wanted to humbly stop everything and prioritize by keeping God central and seeing what he had to say to each of us individually, as well as to the mission and where he was leading us. It was open to everyone and anyone who didn't want to join in didn't have to, yet even still there were about 500 people there which is pretty much the whole base.

The meeting went back and forth, between prayer and music, between repentance and forgiveness. We prayed for the upcoming generation, we prayed for the older generation. It was a time of coming before one another and God and asking for forgiveness and letting God know you're available to him for whatever he wants to do, setting aside agendas, setting aside convenience. To be inconveniently devoted. Work stopped. Cell phones were turned off. Computers were abandoned. 

To say that; if we've forgotten, we're proclaiming again: it's all about You, and where You are is where we want to be.

At one point one of the high school girls got on stage and took the mic, and in front of 500, she admitted she was terrified of what we would think of her after she'd said what she was about to. With a strong voice, she asked that the church would stop ignoring this problem - that there are beautiful kids, missionary kids, pastors kids, and they are hurting and in pain and they have scars up and down their arms because they are cutting themselves. That she's so sick of watching the Christian church sweep what it doesn't understand under the rug. And as she began to cry, her voice became stronger and she proclaimed and petitioned for it to stop - the ignorance and the pain, the cutting, the depression, the suicidal thoughts, and the oblivious eyes. That being a missionary kid can be hard, can feel like you're being drug along under your parent's faith and that it's not your own and that the only outlet to that can seem to be by self-inflicted wounds.

 

I was locked on her while she spoke - you could tell she was obviously scared to be up there, but at the same time, you couldn't at all. She held absolute power and clarity with her words, and as she spoke and began praying for this to stop, the crowd came more alive than it had the entire morning. There were walls falling down with each yell and there were chains breaking with each word, and you could feel it, you could see it, and the catalyst was this young woman.

A while later I was walking through the room and turned my eyes to see them being met by hers. We exchanged knowing, warm smiles and passed each other by. I really hope I can find her again...

I tell you this because it stood out to me. I tell you this story because I want you to know.

The meeting, the time, it all was great. It was good to be in a place where people were willing to stop production, stop daily life, and focus. Focus on what really is the point, what really is the purpose and the goal and on Who really is important. To realize that the benefit to that break is immeasurable compared to the production of another day of work. Yet to realize that you'd do it no matter the potential profits.

That is a place I enjoy being.

That is a place that fosters things good and produces things that are good.

Not without flaw or fault, but with every attempt to do what they can to do what is right.

++++

In other news, this week we've had our first guest teacher, Gary S. Chapman and his wife Vivian here this past week. Gary's been teaching us about Photoshop CS3 and other techniques/programs etc. He has a great story, a great history and their life together is amazing too. Vivian spoke on what it is like to be married to a photographer and they shared their stories together. Just that side of it, the relational-personal part of this week that they shared with us, was just as important and encouraging and educating as the time spent on the computers. I met with them both this morning for a little while and it was amazingly encouraging in what we discussed and their opinions on my work and future etc.

Check Gary's website out here: link

++++++++

I'll introduce you to this organization now, but we'll talk more about it later.

To Write Love On Her Arms.

++++++++

Love you,

K

Peanut Butter Jelly Time....

Hey!

So first off, I've just found out two of my classmates are awesomely musical. Well I mean, lots of us actually are quite musical, but Jim and Becca have some stuff self-recorded.

So I'd encourage you to check it out... 

Jim's Music [link]

Becca's Music [link]

++++

In other news, two different classmates found out only a few days apart that they're pregnant! My classmate Johnny and his wife Karine found out on Monday. Their family will expand to four as their daughter Maria Elisabeth is 14 months old.

And my classmate Pranee and her husband Malachi are pregnant with their second child as well! Their daughter Hannah is nearly 10 months old. :)

Malachi, Pranee and Hannah

+++++++

So we were given a word and were told to go shoot, edit and have it finished in an hour.15 minutes. The words were calm, independent, solemn, simple, power. We each got one word.

Here are some of my classmates shots. :)

by Vanessa, INDEPENDENT 

by Jim, SOLEMN

by Amy, INDEPENDENT

by Gabi, CALM

by Steven, SIMPLE

by Johnny, POWER

by Sophia, SOLEMN

by Cliff, SOLEMN

by Kaarin, INDEPENDENT

by Lindsey, CALM

by Johanna, SIMPLE

by Becca, CALM

Each of these shots were done in just over an hour.

++++

Hope you're well and let me know how you are!

-Kaarin