Knowing Your Equipment

In the late seventies and throughout the 1980’s I had a fairly thriving side business photographing weddings and taking outdoor portraits.  I was always captivated by the effects that lighting had on the pictures and carried a set of reflectors that I utilized as much as possible because I preferred natural lighting to artificial means.  During those shooting sessions my wife was like my right arm!  She was a very capable assistant who had an eye for just the right pose!  She would do everything from holding the reflectors steady at the right angles, help to pose the subjects and assist in keeping things orderly and the atmosphere relaxed, especially when photographing the formal pictures following a wedding service at the altar, while all the guests were impatiently waiting for the new bride and groom to appear!

During this time I also had a contract with the Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa to shoot pictures for their section of the paper that the Arch Diocese of San Francisco published.  One of the many events I covered was the ordination of the new priests coming into the Diocese.  Most of these ceremonies were held at St Eugene’s Cathedral in Santa Rosa.  It is a large church with a balcony in the very back of the sanctuary.  One of my favorite shots was taken from the balcony so that the congregation as well as the clergy on the altar would be visible.  The difficult part though, was the ability to properly light the distance from the balcony to the altar.  If I used the natural lighting I would have had to employ a timed exposure and some of the subjects would be blurred due to their actions during the long exposure.  The resulting picture would also not be bright enough for newspaper reproduction.

In my repertoire of tools I had a Rollei E36RE professional strobe.  This piece of equipment was a fairly large hand held flash.  Photographer’s jokingly referred to this type of flash as a “Potato Masher” due to its shape and size!  But this flash was one of my most important pieces of equipment.  I tended to use it to help balance out the lighting in almost any shot, both inside or outside!  This flash was just what I needed to cover the entire church with accurate and bright lighting to cover the entire church at St Eugene’s.  The only downside was that its bright flash would capture everyone’s attention, so I could not use it very often during a service!

I was reminded of my old flash (which I still have… in fact I have two!) this morning as I read from Hebrews 1:3 where the writer informs us that “His Son (Jesus) is the reflection of God’s glory…” (God’s Word ©)  In fact it was Strong’s definition of the term “reflection” or “brightness” as used in the King James Version that sent me down memory lane!  The word means “off flash, or effulgence (a flood of light, great luster)”

The brightness of the reflection of God that is emitted from Jesus is like the brightness of my powerful old flash.  The flash was computer controlled and automatically calculated the amount of light that the subject needed in order to perfectly illuminate it.  Jesus in His love, also has the ability to control the output of His radiance in order to best illuminate the understanding of the one He is reaching out to.  And the way that He reaches out to the world today is through people like you and me!

I think the computer function that controlled my flash is like the working of the Holy Spirit in us!  He is the one who will tell us just what the one that we are reaching out to in love needs to hear!  I also believe that following His directions takes a knowledge of God’s Word and experience just as it took knowledge of my photography equipment mixed with a practical, working understanding in order to get the best possible results in my photos.

For instance, my flash always had a little trouble calculating the right amount of light for facial close-ups or for a bride’s white wedding dress!  I discovered a simple solution to soften the amount of light by covering the lens of the flash with a thin cotton handkerchief! This little trick was all that was needed to enhance the subject’s skin tones or to bring out the detail in a wedding dress.

It is little things like that example of the handkerchief enhancing the final results of my photographic efforts that can make all the difference in the results of one’s efforts when we are ministering the love of God to those in need.  The light of God’s love and of His understanding is a powerful force in our world today!  It is the source of life for all of us!  And I want to make sure that I am very capable, knowledgeable and experienced enough to rightly use it for His glory.  How about you?  Have a great day!  Stay in tune to His Word and keep asking yourself… “What am I expecting today?”