The Essence of Christmas A freezing, snowy night + an old, rickety piano + an ancient, homely building = a cozy, fantastic picture! This is what went running through my head as I passed through the deserted Staff Center meeting room at the IBLP Headquarters in Hinsdale, Illinois, that late, wintery night in mid-December 2009. [...]

Morning Light One could hardly have asked for a more marvelous Christmas morning! It was probably the earliest I had ever awoke for a Christmas Day, but what did that matter? On vacation with the family in Sanibel Florida in 2009, we were blessed to follow whatever schedule we pleased. And being in-landers from West [...]

First Morning Light It isn’t every morning that the sky is scattered with gold-lined clouds broken by colorful rays of warm sunlight. I was at the Northwoods Conference Center in the Ottawa National Forest for almost an entire week and this was the only sunrise of it’s rank in splendor. The hardest part of taking [...]

Falls in the Forest Of all the pictures in the 2012 Calendar, this one is by far my favorite! I had been on the lookout for an image like this for years, and yet I didn’t even see it when I first stumbled upon it. It all started on May 22 of this year when [...]

A Restful Afternoon The afternoon was gloriously peaceful as I strolled along with my family down a country lane after a short hike to a quaint, yet picturesque little waterfall in the valley. We were visiting friends in Canada near Peterborough, Ontario. Down by the waterfall, the dense forest of northern conifers and hardwoods lent [...]

Cold of Snow When West Virginia gets snow, it usually doesn’t stick around unless it’s January or February, the coldest part of the year in the Appalachians. And when it comes, it transforms the dull, brown landscape into an incredibly beautiful winter wonderland. I remember taking this picture back in 2007. It hadn’t been snowing [...]

Bridge Over the Ice January 21, 2011 was a bitter cold evening. As I recall, the temperature hovered around 10 degrees. It was fairly clear, the moon was full and a nice blanket of snow covered the ground, so I ventured directly from my office into the cold with camera, tripod, and shutter release in [...]

Sunday evening, my hosts for my stay in Los Angeles took me to a small beach in Malibu, California to watch the sun go down. It was a very relaxing, reflective time and I only took a few pictures. There wasn’t much to take pictures of anyway, but the bright green moss growing on this [...]

I must not let a very singular event pass by without having it highlighted on my blog: the marriage Joshua and Lisa Wilkes! My family has been very good friends with the Wilkes Team for many years and with the Butlers for, well, ever since Lisa came into the picture. I was honored to have [...]

I very much felt like murmuring as I stumbled my way through the darkness. Unlike the magical peninsula of a few days ago, the island I now traversed was covered in impenetrable stands of young pines, impassable bogs of mud, and incredibly abundant piles of dead trees. After fighting my way through the mess for [...]