New Article Posted - Taking Pictures During Liturgies

I posted a new article today concerning photography during liturgies such as Mass, Confirmation, a Wedding, etc. In it, I describe five basic things anyone taking pictures at a liturgy should do:

1. Turn off your flash.
2. Don't move around all over the place.
3. Turn off the camera's sound.
4. Turn off the 'focus assist' light.
5. Turn off the camera's LCD.

But most of all, a person wishing to take pictures during a liturgy should remember this golden rule: Thou Shalt Respect, and Not Distract, when Taking Pictures During Liturgies!

Read the article in its entirety here.

Two-Word Movie Review for Pirates of the Caribbean 3

Two words: utterly ridiculous.

No, I'm not talking about the fact that there are people coming back from the dead, undying monkeys, or other such characters. I'm talking simply about the plot. You see, I thought the writers for this film would brilliantly tie together the hundreds of loose ends from the second movie ('Dead Man's Chest'), adding a dose of action and fun, to create the best film of the summer. I thought wrong.

There were plenty of laugh-out-loud funny parts, and there was very little objectionable material in the movie... so I guess 'At World's End' has that going for it. The problem is that there is way too much in the plot that didn't make any sense at all—not even a tiny bit. And I feel robbed of a few more precious minutes of my life because I stayed until the end of the credits to see the boring and non-informative scene the producers decided to stick in there.

Do yourself a favor and wait until the DVD comes out, then watch it (or don't) for a couple bucks. See a different movie in the theaters; one that has some sort of story line. (Might I recommend Ratatouille or Spider Man 3?).

New Pictures - Wildlife with 70-300mm VR Lens

I posted new pictures today of some wildlife in the back yard. Included are shots of mourning doves, cardinals, squirrels, grackles, a robin, sparrows, and finches. Here's one of my favorites, titled "Oh Say Can You See"—look at the placement of the left paw...:

Some Crazy Bird Behavior - The Common Grackle

In my first attempt at posting flash video the the web, I'm putting up a rather strange clip I took using my Mom's PowerShot S3 IS of a 'common grackle' (kind of a fitting name for an annoying bird) making squawks while puffing up his feathers. I'm not too sure what prompts this behavior, but it seems that the grackles do it only when other grackles are around.

Move your mouse over the picture below and click the play button to see the video (you may hear my little sister's voice in the background...).

As Sam Gamgee said: "Well... I'm back."

I finally have settled down for a few days at home before I head back to the Seminary to begin the summer formation program, and I have a few minutes to write about the College's end-of-year silent retreat and where it was held.

Cardinal Glennon College Seminarians participate in a five-day silent retreat at the end of the year, to wrap things up and give a 'spiritual boost' (as it were) to the men as they enter their summer months. We go away from the Seminary to the King's House retreat center in Belleville, Illinois. The King's House has pretty good food, beautiful trails (including one for the outdoor way of the cross), and a quiet, natural atmosphere. Here's a picture of one of the views from the walking trails:

And if that's not enough, you get an even better view of some beautiful wildlife; a great variety of birds, many different woodland critters (squirrels, chipmunks, deer), and even a few interesting snakes and spiders. The natural setting is a great boon for spiritual contemplation and meditation, especially if one rises early and gets out on the trails before all the wildlife is scattered from the bustle of the lawn maintenance crew.

Here's a picture of a dandelion before it was cut down by a lawn mower (I love these little weeds, even though they seem to spread worse than a cold virus through a Seminary):

It's not all perfect at the King's House, though. I found silence and blindness (i.e. closing your eyes to avoid distractions) were sometimes necessary if one wanted to pray in the 'Brother Mel' chapel.

Even so, the chapel's not too bad if you can think about the fact that Jesus is still present, even behind the fish-ernacle and other 'works of art.' At least it's very quiet!

On Silence

In my opinion, everyone beyond a certain age should try to spend at least a weekend in a silent retreat. The first day isn't too bad, but on the second and third days, you can begin to gain many spiritual fruits from the sacrifice involved in not constantly talking to and gossiping with others you're around.

The silence creates an atmosphere of reflection and contemplation; a time when you can build your personal relationship with Jesus to a greater extent than if you were to simply adore the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament for an hour or two (that is not to say adoration is a bad thing!). I would suggest that anyone going on this kind of retreat center the day around Holy Mass, and try to find a retreat master who will lead the retreatants into a contemplative atmosphere, and not necessarily just meditative or reflective.

Cardinal Glennon College Seminary - Class of 2007 Graduation

Last night, I, along with four brother college seminarians, graduated from the Cardinal Glennon College Seminary (part of Kenrick-Glennon), and I have posted pictures (graciously taken by Stephen Mirarchi—thanks, Stephen!) from the event.

The Archbishop was at the graduation, along with many priests who were inspirational to our vocational discernment, including our diocesan vocation director, parish priests, spirital directors, and formation advisors. All of our class are going on to pursue a vocation to the priesthood; one of our members will be heading off to Conception Abbey to discern as a Benedictine (no hard feelings, though!).

The rest of us will be continuing on to the Kenrick School of Theology, and we'll be assigned to help at the Vocations Office, then at parishes in the Archdiocese during the summer months (I'm looking forward to both of these roles!).

More HDR Pictures - At Night

Last night I walked around outside the Seminary (it was a beautiful night, with a slight breeze), and took some pictures using my D40 on a tripod to make some HDR pictures (HDR = take a few pictures with different exposures, then combine them to make a picture with a seemingly higher dynamic range - where highlights aren't blown out...). There are some areas of the Seminary which look beautiful with this method, and I'll show you those pictures here. All these pictures were taken in the RAW format at ISO 400, and converted to HDR images, then tone-mapped in Photomatix Pro.

Here's a picture of the whole Seminary building from the back baseball field. It was very dark, and I took 5 pictures, one which exposed for the bright building lights at about 1/10 sec., up to a 30 sec. exposure to expose for the darkest areas of the image:

The next picture, from the Marian grotto on the east side of the Seminary grounds, is made from four exposures, from 1 sec. to 25 sec.:

Here's a picture of the Seminary tower lit up at night, along with some eerie dark clouds in the sky behind it (4 exposures, from 1/60 sec. to 15 sec.):

And, finally, a picture of the St. Vincent De Paul statue in the courtyard - this one was quite hard to get, as the only lights in the courtyard are from either those little dim blue lights around the statue, or from the sky (very little light comes from the student rooms...). This picture was made from 4 exposures, from 1 sec. to 30 sec.:

I love how that last picture looks like it was taken during the day, when in fact, it was taken during a very dark night (the moon was not even out). That goes to show one of the strong points of HDR imaging. I always try to make my HDR pictures look 'real,' though - I've seen many people take HDR pictures and make them look like some sort of pastel-colored design rather than like a photograph.

Just Installed Adobe CS3 Web Premium!

Today I installed Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium on my iBook (to help in my production of the Seminary website, this website, and Vocations videos, among other tasks), and I can't believe how many awesome features I was missing out on with my now-antiquated copy of CS1 from many years back (well... two years ago, I guess—that's way back for me).

It seems to me that Dreamweaver (used to be owned by Macromedia, until Adobe bought them out and created a nice monopoly on web production software) was designed for web designers much more so than my old locking-up-every-hour companion Adobe GoLive (now discontinued). And the quick selection tool in Photoshop is almost worth half the price of CS3 (for me, at least)! I've only tried these two programs so far, but I hope to also learn a little bit about Flash, so I can do some spiffy video stuff and maybe a Flash tour of the Seminary (for the Seminary's new website, coming this Fall!).

The only thing that could make CS3 better for me is if I were running it on a newer computer. Things take time (and plenty of it!) on my iBook, with its measly 933MHz G4, and half a gig of RAM (not to mention only a tiny portion of the hard drive for use as a scratch disk...). Ah, well, we can all dream, can't we?

Some Dr. Seuss Memories... Having to Do with Computers

I received the following in my email yesterday:

"Why Computers Sometimes Crash! (by Dr. Seuss)

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port, and the bus is interrupted at a very last resort, and the access of the memory makes your floppy disk abort, then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.

If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash, and the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash, and your data is corrupted cause the index doesn't hash, then your situation's hopeless and your system's gonna crash!

If the label on the cable on the table at your house, says the network is connected to the button on your mouse, but your packets want to tunnel to another protocol, that's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall......

And your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss, so your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse; then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang, 'cuz sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang.

When the copy on your floppy's getting sloppy in the disk, and the macro code instructions is causing unnecessary risk, then you'll have to flash the memory and you'll want to RAM your ROM, and then quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your Mom!

Well, that certainly clears things up for me. How about you?"

Moved PriestieBoyz.com, Added Some Information

Remember the Priestie Boyz? Well, I just finished moving all their web stuff from my old .Mac server to a newer, better server, and I also added all the song lyrics and some other cool stuff to the site. I hope you'll buy one of their CDs (if you haven't already), or just pick it up on iTunes!