Home for Christmas

It's great being home for Christmas!

Pearl and I turned our 12 hour drive to Georgia to be with family into 1500 photos, then made each photo about .002 seconds, and finished it off with some good music.

Enjoy!

And MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I'll be home for Christmas from Matt Parks on Vimeo.

dark beauty

It was midnight, it was cold, the snow was well over my knees and the wind singing in my ears had started to turn my head into a freezer box. It was not a hopeful sunrise, or a refreshing sunset, it was not the warm energy of midday, no it was night, cold, windy, lonely.

Yet I stood, I waited, I looked past the dark, the discomfort and in the midst of this moment beauty emerged.

The peace of a frozen lake and the warmth of a glowing home, the old hardness of a factory in front of the joyful youth of a ski hill, the white of snow in contrast to the dark of the sky.

Yes in the midst of this cold, windy, lonely night beauty was found.

And such is life.

May we be willing to embrace our nights, to stand just a little longer in the discomforts, and may our eyes look past the gray and dark and into the beauty that slowly comes into focus.

some thoughts

It's been one amazing of a year!

Here's a recap.

- A year ago we were merging our photography studio into Jeremy Hess' studio. The game plan was to do full-time photography, full-time grad school, and volunteer significantly at LCBC.

- In February LCBC invited me to come back on staff in a part-time support role instead of just volunteering. I originally started doing photography because I wanted to be able to be the owner of my time at a greater level so that I could be as involved as I desired with the church, I was really excited to join the team again!

- We booked lots and lots of weddings for 2010

- LCBC offered me a full-time role of overseeing the launch of the Lancaster City campus' Student ministry.

- Pearl and I talked and prayed a lot about this. Wrestled with lots of questions. We felt good about approaching Jeremy about me leaving the studio and going back to LCBC.

- Jeremy and I talked and prayed... we wrestled through more questions, we finally felt good about me moving back to the church and leaving the studio.

- I went full time with LCBC, I cried when I when back, I was so very happy to be back!

- We photographed all our booked weddings (for a total of 24 in 2010)

- Pearl and I still did full-time grad school

- We cut all extras out of our life when wedding season started, including blogging and other fun stuff.

- We launched Student ministry at the city campus, remodeled an old nasty office space into a sweet room, gathered amazing leaders, and started a wild adventure with some amazing students.

- We were really, really, really, busy! Like very unhealthy let's just fight for our sanity and marriage busy.

- We finished all the weddings, which were all wonderful and so much fun.

- We made it through our classes, with even ok grades in most.

- We're finally slowing down for the holidays (release deep sigh of relief here).

- I am loving being back at LCBC and with the student ministry team!

- We're looking forward to finishing our MDiv degrees this coming summer.

- We're looking forward to photographing only a few weddings and not totally stressing ourselves out in 2011 (we've already booked 4 and are hoping to do around 8)

- We're looking forward to seeing the Lancaster City campus turn 1 year old and to hear more stories of God changing lives and healing hearts.

- We had a really fun Student ministry team party last night

- I updated my blog and remembered how much I loved writing and processing here.

- I made a video of last night's party.

- I posted the video

- I'm now going to make myself lunch.

Enjoy!

Student Min Christmas Party 2010 from Matt Parks on Vimeo.

Marty McFly verse the Tower of Babel

I would normally feel like I need to apologize for not posting in so long. To feel shame in the fact that my poor little ol blog has sat unnoticed by me for so many long days. But no, I will not apologize. I will simply say my life has been full of the things I love as of late and with those loves filling my days I had to choose to let lesser loves pass by. So yes, this blog is a lesser love, yet still a love, just not as much a love as my wife, my friends, my rest and my sleep.

So apologize for loving the more important things in life, I will not.

But I will say the thoughts that fill my mind this morning. I’m doing the “100 day reading challenge” from the “you version” Bible app on my phone and today I was reading Genesis 11 - The story of the tower of Babel. For most of my life I read this story from a negative lens. The lens that God was insecure at what man could do when they came together, insecure that they might worship their own towers rather then him, insecure that they would just simply be too unified and forget him. So in his insecurity he gets ticked off and made them all start speaking different languages and then kicks them all around the world.

Yeah, that’s my insecure god lens interpretation.

But today I different question came up.

What if this was actually God seeing the lack of creativity in man, the lack of cultural expression, if as he saw the people coming together to unify and build this tower he also saw all the cultural beauty that now marks our planet disappearing. Kind of like how Marty McFly’s family in “back to the future” slowly disappeared as events in the passed were changing.

So was the Tower of Babel about God not wanting man to work together and build a tower or about him protecting the beautiful creativity we now have around our planet?

Thoughts?

Pearl's baby sister, Grace, married a great guy this past weekend, Tim. We had an absolute blast spending the week with the family getting ready for the wedding, Pearl being one of the bridesmaids, me photographing, getting to know Hope's new boyfriend (Hope is Pearl's other sister and we approve of her dating Caleb), and then getting to play my uncle role to some great nieces and nephews, so glad Lani and the kids were able to be a part of things. Tim and I also tromped around an old cemetery from the turn of the century (like 110 years ago, it was kind of creepy).

Grace and Tim were married on top of Mount Brockway overlooking the mighty Lake Superior.

It was a great week, and one highlight of many was that Pearl and I celebrated our fifth anniversary together, 5 DELIGHTFUL amazing years!


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Ashley and Curtis are MARRIED!

Ashley and Curtis are two extremely sweet people. Pearl and I had a blast capturing their special day last week, and were thrilled at what a cool day it was.

Here are a couple of things about their day that we loved:

- the weather was simply amazing! It was one of the nicest spring days of the year so far.

- Curtis had a way to make us and everyone else laugh. He has a spunk and humor to him that make smiles creep on your face without you even noticing.

- They had the coolest, funniest, wildest dancing kids you could ask to be at your wedding. Seriously these guys could go on the road as party entertainment.

- Gram (aka Curtis’s Grandma) was the best senior dancer I’ve ever seen. She really knows how to “get down with her bad self” and one can see where Curtis gets his spunk from.

- Ashley’s eyes are amazing! She’s a gorgeous girl, who simply looked fabulous. Plus she was super sweet all day.

- And there are about another hundred things I could write but I’ll stop it there and let these pictures speak for themselves.

Ashley and Curtis, thank you again for inviting Pearl and I to celebrate with you on your special day. You guys are a special couple and I wish you the best in your new marriage.

Sincerely,

Matt

Love is in the air...

Walking around Lancaster City with a landscape architect and school teacher makes for some amazing conversation. Chris could share on the style of the streets, the shape of courtyards, and how the history of Rome can be seen throughout our city. At the same time, Kelly enlightened me on the use of imagery and pictures to help students who are born with speaking disabilities learn how to connect words with objects. I felt like my IQ increased just by being around them! Well, these two intellectual ones are also in love and we are looking forward to their “Black Friday” wedding this coming fall. Here are a couple my favorite images from our stroll around the city, and I look forward to sharing some more pictures of them come November. Chris and Kelly, thanks for waking up early to hang out last week and may the rest of your wedding plans go amazing! Looking forwarding to seeing you in a couple of short months.

Sincerely, Matt

27 silly moments in the spirit of turning 27 today

I’m turning 27 today, so I guess I should start acting like an adult now, but on second thought I think I'll keep putting that off for a couple of more years.

So to celebrate refusing to grow up, here’s 27 of my more youthful, silly, stupid moments. Some from back in the day, others from yesterday.

1 – Sleeping in a hotel parking lots because I refused to pay for a room

2- Peeing in my room’s air vent because walking across the hall way was just too far to go to the bathroom.

3- Throwing all my sisters rings in the swimming pool because she made me mad and I couldn’t express my feelings in words.

4- Mooning… a lot of people, in a lot of different places, why? Because who doesn’t want to see my butt?

5 – Putting a baseball through my dad’s store window because to me it was a hockey puck (the ball that is, not the window) and the cane I was using as a hockey stick gave me just a little too much “lift”

6 – Putting battery operated Christmas lights in my 74 Volkswagen beetle because I love Christmas so much I wanted to celebrate it even more.

7 – Having the cops called on me for cutting doughnuts in the church parking lot, in my Gold beetle, all because I wanted to show my friends how powerful my 4 cylinder was. (ps. I drove home before the cops arrived and my friends totally lied and said they didn’t know who drove a gold beetle, They were the best Church friends a guy could ask for.)

8 – going on a moped ride with a group of complete strangers through the backwoods of Thailand to a refuge camp. Why? Because the main guy was our cook at the village we were staying in and I thought he was a good guy.

9 – Jumping off a 50 foot cliff somewhere in Jamaica, Because I couldn’t be called a chicken.

10 – Lingering in the cafeteria in college for an awkwardly long time, because I was hoping Pearl would come to dinner and I would “happen” to still be there.

11 – Having to get our small pick up truck pulled out of a muddy cornfield by a farmer and his tractor because Pearl and I thought we could “make it through”

12 – Sitting on the middle of a frozen lake in a pop up tent, with the world’s largest ice drill, a thermos of coffee, tiny fishing pole, and a frozen butt, because my wife wanted to show me what living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan was like.

13 – Almost shooting my parents with a loaded crossbow, because I thought they were burglars and I had to protect my sister from what she thought was “a big hairy man at our door” (she never said if she was referring to mom or dad, I think she’ll take that secret to the grave)

14 – I wrecked (leaving a good bent) on Mom, Dad, and Grandpa’s cars, because I was convinced I really knew how to drive by the time I was 14

15 – I placed a 4 by 3 foot cross made from tree limbs at the end of our country driveway that looked like a bad tombstone, because Hank, the stray dog I befriended a week before, had needed a respectable grave marker.

16 – The refrigerator in the house I grew up in now has a BB size dent because I felt like seeing what my BB gun would do to it.

17 - I once took a friends camera into a public bathroom to “surprise her with pictures of a bruise on my upper inner thigh” when a stranger walked in on me, He didn’t stay around long enough to realize what I was and wasn’t taking a picture of. I was hoping it might be able to help me out.

18 – I once dumped an entire cage full of gerbil poop into our bathtub, which clogged the drain, cause I thought that would be the fastest way to clean the tank.

19 – I once bicycled across town during a Tornado watch and hail, cause I could have sworn those warnings weren’t really going to happen.

20 – I once flipped an entire rack of “clothes” at Victoria secrets cause I thought that was the best place to hide while shopping with my mom and sister.

21 – During a family trip to a local park, I ditched my family to hang out with an African American Church group having a picnic, cause they had better food and I had never talked with a Black man before, but I forgot to tell my parents where I was going, they seemed really excited when they finally found me.

22 – I once rubber banded our sinks water sprayer on, then asked mom for a cup of water…. Only to watch her get sprayed. I laughed really hard, but mom somehow missed that joke.

23 – Speaking of torturing my mom, I once loudly proclaimed in the middle of a department store that the smell we all were noticing was because of her, which wasn’t true, but she was still red in the face, truth be told someone had broken a bottle of “deer pee”

24 – My best friend and I drug down the road a $400 weed eater across town, cause we each thought the other had tied it.

25 – When I dad opened his drug store I told all my friends mom’s I hoped their families got very sick, I just wanted them to see my Dad’s new place.

26 – speaking of Dad and the store, we once were checking in on one our elderly clients to find that she had fallen and was needing assistance, I offered to go get a rope out of the car, tie it to her ceiling fan, and Hoist her up. Dad said that was a creative idea, but maybe not the best, the client didn’t appreciate me referring to her as needing a rope and a “hoisting” to pick up.

27 – I recently played a children’s balloon popping game online until 4 am knowing I had a full days work and graduate classes the next day, cause I was convinced I should be able to bet it.

I’ve had a fun life, have a great life and I’m so thankful for the amazing people who are a part of it.

Cheese, lots & lots of cheese

So last Monday I, was asked to so something I’ve never done before. I was invited by S. Clyde Weaver to their newest store on Lititz Pike (next to the CVS and the Golden triangle) to photograph the largest wheel of cheese I have ever lad my eyes on. They had given me a heads up that they would have a cheese display set up so they could have a staff photo taken around for some up coming marketing they are doing. For whatever reason all I could picture in my head was a dinky little plastic tray with tiny little blocks of yellow, white and speckled cheese neatly nestled on it. Well, all I’ve got to say is they totally blew my expectations out of the water, they had every kind of cheese known to man on hand, as well as some of the best looking meat cuts I’ve lad my eyes one, and did I mention I’m a huge fan of cheese and they had lots of cheese. But the piece that won my heart was the 200 pound massive block that held centered stage in arrangement. It was beautiful I say, simple beautiful.

After I mastered my appetite we got to work and created some fun images of their staff and leadership, as well as some glorious looking cheese.

I give them two thumbs up, and look forward to moving some of these cheeses from a photograph to my fridge.

Happy Monday!

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Rings, warehouses, & parking garages

Hey Guys and Gals, Matt here. I love meeting brides and grooms, I love hearing their stories and finding out what makes them uniquely them. I love hearing how they met, how they feel in love, and how the big question was popped… the art of sharing our lives with each other is a beautiful thing.

I meet Shawn and Lisa a couple of weeks ago here in our studio. He is a web developer, she is a nurse. They fell in love and this summer they will celebrate their love and become Mr. and Mrs. Groupe.

Here’s a couple of images from our short time together. We walked around an old warehouse downtown, then to a couple of their favorite places in the city.

We then wrapped it all up with a nice delightful chai from a local coffee house and some fun conversations about life.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Babies, Engagements, and friends... gotta love all three.

I love my friends, and I guess that’s a good thing if they want to stay friends for long. One thing I love doing is taking pictures of my friends; to celebrate their life with them not only in friendship but with my camera. This past week I had two friends ask me to help capture the unique seasons of life they are now in.

The first was the Atkinson’s. Paul and Whitney are two amazing people who have literally traveled the world over trying to make it a better place. They enter a room with great stories as well as great hearts. They will shortly move from being a family of 2 to a family of 3, and they wanted to remember the excitement and joy of this special moment in life.

James and Kalyn are two friends who live in the city. They have culture and style that I’m secretly envious of, and talents that make most of the world turn their head to notice (James is an unbelievable musician). Well, Kalyn succeeded in what many others tried to do and stole this musician’s heart and this summer will make him her husband. They are both great people and it was simply a blast capturing their engagement photos and we look forward to photographing their wedding this summer.

PS - in case you're wondering about the Jeremy Hess Photographers logo, this is my first blog under the new studio. So just in case you missed the announcement Pearl St Photography merged with Jeremy at the first of the year, and it's been a wonderful experience so far.