2012 Year in Review: March

This isn't the best photo I made in March, but it is certainly the most special!

Me and Tom Tran at The Bean

Tom Tran is a photographer I met on Google+, just one of many with whom I have become online friends. But Tom is different in that he is the only one of all the photographers I've met online that I have now also met IRL (in real life)!

For the past couple of years, I have been going to Chicago a couple of times per year to get my "city fix." These trips are schedule around performances by Lyric Opera of Chicago and include at least one meal at a nice restaurant, perhaps a visit to an art museum, and photography.

In March 2012, having been on Google+ a few months and met Tom, he and I planned to meet and "photowalk" The Loop together on a Saturday afternoon. What a great time we had! From the beginning, it was as if we had known each other much longer.

We met at The Bean in Millenium Park, a famous Chicago landmark. You can see a bit of it over Tom's right shoulder. The real name of this highly-polished steel sculpture by Anish Kapoor is "Cloud Gate," but everyone calls it "The Bean" because of its shape.

We walked north to the Chicago River, where I took a photo that won a 3rd Place ribbon at Art With a View in Monroe in November of this year. We wandered around The Loop and photographed some of Chicago's interesting architecture. We stopped and talked over lunch.

Tom's story is amazing. He and his family escaped from Vietnam a few years after the war had ended. They were among the many who left at great personal risk via an over-crowded, too-small boat to head out across the South China Sea! But they made it, spent two years in a refugee camp in the Phillippines, and eventually came to the U.S.

And if Tom looks a bit familiar, it is because he played a prominent role in the movie, Good Morning, Vietnam!

I'm looking forward to photowalking with Tom and other Chicago photographers when I go back in March of this year.

    

2012 Year in Review: February

February in Louisiana means tulip trees (Japanese Magnolia) spring into bloom, and what show offs they are with their regal purple trimming!

The photo below swims to the top of my memories of February 2012 for two reasons. First, I took it in Georgetown, having gone there to pay a speeding ticket. Everyone who lives in northeastern Louisiana and goes regularly to Camp Hardtner or Pineville-Alexandria--in other words, most of us Episcopalians--knows the drill. I was on my way to some church function, don't remember what, when I crested the hill approaching Georgetown with my mind on other things. Bam! I was toast.

You Had Me at "Hello"

So I went to Georgetown not in the best mood and not feeling particularly gracious toward the place. But I allowed extra time and after paying the ticket, went exploring with my camera. I encountered a friendly resident who welcomed me to the community. I drove through the town and discovered a lovely recreation area on the east side, where I photographed beautiful grasses, reeds and reflections in the lake. I found a rusting disc abandoned in a yard and added some photos to my #ruralruins project. (I love photographing old people and things. Hmmm. Not sure what that's about!)

And I found a yard with a small tulip tree full of bursting blooms in easy reach of me and my extension tubes. I made a number of images, but the one above became an immediate success on Google+, and that's the second reason it is featured here. It shot quickly to the top of my "Google+ Timeline," a feature that tracks the popularity of your posts, and stayed there for a long time.

When I posted this image again as my February #bestof2012, it again shot up to near the top on my G+ timeline. Indeed, I am considering submitting it as my "best of the year" to a wonderful project on Google+ called PlusOneCollection.

PlusOneCollection is headed by Russian photographer Ivan Makarov. For the second year in a row, he is soliciting "best of the year" photos from the international community of photographers on G+. These photos will be collected into a book published in at least two forms: 1) An eBook that will contain all images submitted, and 2) A hardcover print book that contains the best of the best selected by a jury from among the G+ photographer community.

I had an image in last year's eBook, but I did not make it into the print book, so here's hoping for this year! I would be so proud!

But here's the best part. All of the proceeds from the sale of the book go to a charity. This year's charity is The Giving Lens, a nonprofit funded primarily by photographers. The money will put digital camera in the hands of Masai children and teach them how to use the cameras to tell their own stories. I love it!

So...., I forgave Georgetown for the speeding ticket that took me there, and I am overdue for a return trip to see what else the community has to offer this photographer!

And, BTW, on G+ among the photographer community, all of the petty divisions of race and nationality and so forth do not exist.

A Latin Experience

                                                         
Note: This is first in a series about my trip to the Dominican Republic in late May 2011.

In late May of this year, I went to the Dominican Republic for 10 days to participate in “Latin Experience,” an educational opportunity organized by the Association for Episcopal Deacons (AED).

Port cranes framed by the balcony of Alcazar de Colon in Santo Domingo.

                      
Although Latin Experience was designed by deacons for deacons, the group of ten that gathered at the Bishop Kellogg Conference Center in San Pedro de Macoris included one bishop and three people still in training for the diaconate. We were from all over the country, California to Maine, plus one was from Canada. Nevertheless, we all had a most amazing experience in the Dominican Republic and came home changed by it. 
                                  

Orchids on the streets of Santo Domingo.

The Latin Experience consisted of three distinct parts. We spent the first several days at the Bishop Kellogg Conference Center in San Pedro de Macoris on the southern shore of the Dominican Republic. There we worshiped and ate together and learned a great deal about the people, culture and history of our church in the DR from various presenters, ranging from Bishop Julio Holguin to Dominican deacons and several U.S. missionaries to the DR.

At the conclusion of our “classroom time,” we spent several days traveling by van to visit Episcopal ministries in San Pedro and the surrounding villages and rural areas. Our eyes were opened to both the poverty of many people and their incredible spirit and spirituality. As Bishop Holguin had told us, the Dominican people see from the heart.

Our third day of travel began in the countryside and ended at Diocesan headquarters in capital city Santo Domingo. The next day, we were picked up by Dominican deacons to spend two days living with them and their families and participating in their ministries. I went to Barrio Las Minas on the east side of Santo Domingo to stay with the family of deacon-in-training Elsa Lopez and serve at her home parish, La Sagrada Familia.

Of course, I quickly turned into the official photographer of the trip. Many of my photos are already posted on the AED Website, but stay tuned. I’ll include some right here with each edition of this series.
                 

On Life, Music and Blogging

"Dr. K, why not call your blog 'Coming to Terms'!"
 
We were talking about music, specifically, the difference in sentiment and attitude between Country and Soul. Both are musics of lament, I said. Both deal with hard times, disappointment, loss. But Country, I argued, is a music of resignation. It is a fatalistic lament.

I put it on the blackboard: Country -- resignation. Soul -- ?? Then I turned to the class and said, I can't think of a single word that expresses the sentiment and attitude of Soul. It accepts hard times, disappointment, loss, but not in a resigned or fatalistic way. It resists. It's about...

And as my voice trailed off, a student--I don't even know which one--said, "It's about coming to terms with things." Yes, I said, very good. And as I turned to write "coming to terms with" next to Soul, the student named John said, "Dr. K. why not call your blog 'Coming to Terms'?"

So here it is: The Rev. Dr. K's observations of life and humankind in all of our glory and pathos, heroism and hubris, capacity for humanity and proclivity to inhumanity. These observations will be both visual and verbal, for I'm a photographer as well as a writer. They will be both humanist and spiritual, both secular and religious, for I am both a teacher of communication at a university and a Deacon in the Episcopal Church.

Although I am a fierce proponent of the separation of church and state and do not proselytize while teaching at a public institution, I am also not a split personality. I can and do compartmentalize as necessary, yet a thread of continuity runs through the whole. This blog will be an opportunity for me to construct that thread of continuity more purposefully and explicitly.

I hope a few folks out there--friends, critics and not yet either--will want to come along.