Welcome to 30 Hours Famine

Welcome to 30 Hours Famine

This weekend I'm taking 30 hours of my life to stop eating and start helping others. The statistics are chilling. 29,000 children die every day from hunger. Every $30 I raise this weekend through your support saves a child's life for 30 days. That's a fantastic return on your investment and mine.

Visit World Vision's site above and give generously. If you give because you saw it here, plese drop me a note so I know.

Swamped! In The Best Way...

I have been one busy guy lately. I wanted to catch you up just a little bit on all that's happening.

Saturday I photographed a fantastic 25th wedding anniversary and vow renewal. It was so beautiful. Cross Creek Ranch in Dover is such a beautiful venue for an event like this. There is just a beautiful charm to the whole place. It was fitting for such an amazing family. I love having the opportunity to be a part o the best days of people's lives. Hank and Machele were so cute and they must be doing something right to have 3 beautiful kids too. Friends and family from all over came to share the celebration with them. I was really honored to be a part of it.

Sunday, I Photographed the final performance of People of the Passion. Very powerful. I am so amazed at all the talent that my church is blessed with. Everything was done in house - musicians, singers, actors, lighting, video, scoring of all the instrument, writing of all the narration and scripting the action. The whole enchilada. I was blown away.

Here's my final slide show.

Also, I had the awesome opportunity to lead worship and speak at all three services this past Sunday. What an amazing opportunity. The student band and all the students who lead worship with me were awesome. It's so very cool to see how the church responds to them. Teenagers aren't perfect, but they are amazing worshippers. I love being with them.

Monday night I had a great opportunity for Chick-fil-A. They were sponsoring the kick off of an All Pro Dads group at one of our middle schools. The event was very cool and I had a chance to see some other great dads and learn some myself while I was photographing the event.

Here are some of my images from the evening.

The People of the Passion

Wow! My church is doing a world premier of an original musical this weekend. Brad Trumbull, our keyboard genius wrote this amazing musical based on a sermon series our senior pastor, Jerry Van Dyken shared last year. I was blown away when I went to the dress rehearsal last nght. You have to come see this. Very, Very Cool! Go see the slideshow with a few selects from last night. I wish I had some of the music to add to the background of the show. Maybe when I shoot the final performance.

Tampa Open Source Photo Road Trip

Last night was awesome. Tampa, Orlando and Miami area photographers from Pictage gathered for an awesome night. We shared ideas, swapped stories, shot together and stretched each other creatively. I especially enjoyed getting some to the Open Source Photo people together. This is an amazing and talented bunch. Here are a a handful of selects from the evening.

A Day on the Train

Friday was an awesome day. I went on a 4year old preschool trip to ride the Florida Gulfcoast Railraod Museum. This is a working train - "A museum on wheels" as tehy explained. Very interesting and a lot of fun and very cool to see the world through their eyes for a while.

Take a minute and ride the train with us.

Quiet Times at St Simons Island

I came back from an amazing weekend with some kids from church on Monday. When I'm away on trips like that I always make sure I get some time every morning to be alone with God and get spiritually prepared for the day. St Simons is so beautiful at sunrise that I couldn't resist using part of that time to make some photographs of God's hand at work in the beauty of our world. I think He makes the world so beautiful so we can see a peek at His beauty.

Green Beans

My Neice isn't certain if she likes grean beans or not.




Sometimes they are good...





Other times not so good!

Play ball!

My son and I took in a Yankees game on Tuesday afternoon. What a great day. Hanging out with my kids is awesome. Being a dad is the best thing ever. I highly recomend it to all married men.

One of the players rolled a ball to him over th dug out during the game. he was so excited that we had to spend an hour and a half in the back yard with him cracking them off the tee at me and me relaying them back to his sister to tee it back up.

By the way, thanks Brian! Awesome seats!

Children Around the World

I spent last Friday in Pre-school. What a fantastic way to spend a morning! So many bright shining faces and even more laughter.

Visit the Slide Show for More of the Fun!

Architectural Shoot

At the end of last week I had a commercial shoot for a large local sign company, Sign Star. Awesome people to work with and I learned a lot about the sign busniess in the process. I spent the day with Danny, who is a really amazing guy to know and work with. We have a lot of the same thinking about busniess. It's all about relationships. By the way, thanks again for lunch!

I don't do a ton of commercial work these days, I've been focusing on weddings and portraits. It was a real joy though. We covered a lot of territory (3 Counties) to get a good cross section of their work to use in their brochures and trade show booths. Soo we will begin redecorating their offices with some large prints.

Here's some of my favorites from the day.

Senior Portraits

I had an amazing shoot this weekend and I wanted to share it with you. I like to spend as much time as possible with a person as part of a sitting. It gives us a chance to really get to know each other and connect. It makes all the difference in the world as far as the images go. When I was done shooting I was just shy of 200 images into the sitting. That's a good feeling. Here's the slideshow of some of my favorites...

Jordyn's Senior Portraits

Gallery page

Just an update on my update...

My new gallery page is finished. I wanted to have a gallery that really represented the depth of what I do. I found out that is difficult because I do so many different things within photography. I'm somewhat an addict when it comes to photography. Take a look.

http://www.mccrystalimage.com/gallery/index.htm

Reading Reading Reading

I read a lot. I mean A LOT. It's kind of funny that I had to graduate from college before I realized that I love learning. Just a short time ago I diswcovered audio books. Now I am usually listening to a book on my ipod and then reading an actual

book as well. It's a nice way to keep new informationgoing into my brain.

I just finished "The Big Moo" by Seth Godin. Awesome book. I've already listened to it twice. It's a great way to get thinking about change and innovation in my life. Last week while I was discussing the book with a student at my church she reminded me that I needed to re-read "The Dream giver" by Bruce Wilkinson. I will start that tonight. Another fantastic book!

Strangely enough I recently found a stuffed cow on my desk. Thank you to my Big Moo supporter who ever you are.

By the way, pray for David Jay, he is in Brazil on a mission trip to bring water purification into the villages in the rainforest. Very cool. Hopefully his luggage with his malaria medecin catches up with him soon

American Child Photgrapher Charity Guild

I just discovered this organization. I am deeply moved. This is another way that God is revealing how I am to serve Him. I've put in my name incase they need anyone near Tampa. We have so many large hospitals in the area that I imagine there is a lot of need out there. Too much...

Child Photography, children's portraits, children's photographer, child photographers, pre-mature infants, special needs children, American child photographers charity guild, Erin Drallos, Footprints child photography, down syndrome, trisomy 21

One Step Ahead

Last night was awesome. I went over to Orlando to be at the first night of Gary Fong's "One Step Ahead Tour." It was really a very cool night. I learned a lot and I met some great people. I ran into some very old friends who I haven't seen in years and had a chance to catch up a little and I met some new friends who I met through Open Source Photo. I was glad to meet some people whos work I admire and get to spend some time learning with them.

 

I also met a handful of up and coming photographers that are going to be great for our industry. We need more honest, hard working people with great vision and passion. I guess every industry needs that.

 

I'm in the process of implementing some of the new ideas I picked up after an evening with Gary. I'm looking at this as a fresh start in a lot of ways. Gary's process is very simple and that is a beautiful thing in itself. I was glad to hear a number of the things I am already doing on his list - blogging (hey, I'm doing that now), collages, web slideshows, treating clients as friends and giving them the best treatment possible because they are friends, etc. I was also somewhat freed to go with my heart on some issues, like get rid of time limitations as part of the creative fees.

 

Now it is time to let some more creative ideas start to gel in my brain. That's going to sleep to dream....

 

What a Weekend!

This has been an exciting time for me lately. I've been busy with shoots all over the state and that's a very good thing. This past week I spent a couple of days in Gainesville photographing some of the beautiful women of Mary Kay. We had a make over party one night with portraits by the fireplace and then a formal banquet the next night. These ladies are very impressive. I have to say I came home excited and ready to take on the world after spending some time listening to them and their stories. I feel like my goals are too small after listening to them.

I also had the honor of being invited to show and tell at my neice's school. What an amazing place. I really fell in love with her school. My favorite part was at the end of the school day. After a short devotion time in the sanctuary all of the students stop with the principal or one of the faculty and they bless them each before they go out into the world. I had tears in my eyes. The whole world should be like that.

I ended the weekend with an exciting night at the monster truck show with my little guy. He's all about the trucks. We both had a blast. I love hanging out with him. He's the coolest!

Sheer Joy

I remember when I first started shooting weddings (my junior year of high school) and how all the photographers I knew talked about shooting weddings like they were a huge pressure cooker designed to deep fry photographers. They thought I was naive, maybe I was. Maybe I still am.

I really love doing this. What better job description can there be for a photographer and a believer. I get to share one of the most important days with people who are in love. I get to participate in creating memories that will last a lifetime and beyond. Grandchildren will look at my photographs as they hear the story of the day their parents' parents started their lives together.

I've been looking at some of my archive images and remembering so many different weddings lately. God has belssed me so abudantly with this profession, this gift. I consider what I do to be sheer joy.

Concert

Just a quick note. We had an awesome concert last night at my church. I just wanted to show off a little bit.

The band is

My Rocket Heart

. They are a great group of guys, just recently became big time rock stars with a record deal, but they still remember how much fun it is to rock a church gym! The neighbors all liked what they heard as well...

Also, here's the

slideshow

too!

Christmas Eve

Merry Christmas!

I'm not the most Christmas Oriented guy on the planet, but I really love the beauty that comes to the surface this time of year. There is something about the traditions of this time of year that really shine for me.

Have a great New Year

All Hiz,

Michael

Teacher of the Year

It's time to brag a little bit. My wife is pretty amazing. I've known this for years and I've been telling her on a regular basis. She's never really believed me. Well, today she had a big piece of confirmation to what I've been saying all along. This morning she was surprised in her class room as a finalist for our county's Teacher of the Year. It was a beautiful thing. On top of the honor that comes with this it was one of the only times we have been able to surprise her. That's a major bonus!