This blog has been way too inactive the last while. I’ve been trying to decide whether I want to bother trying to keep it up or not. I guess I’ll leave it for now, but I sure won’t promise any regular posts. I’m discovering how busy life can be to regularly work 11-12 hour days, have something going in the evenings half the week, and then taking trips every weekend. I haven’t been here in KS for a complete weekend for a month now. Oh well, I’m enjoying the trips I’m taking, so…

Right now I’m on my way to PA for the wedding of Jonathon Yoder and Joanne Beiler. I think they are a very cool couple and I’m quite tickled to be able to be at their wedding. I’m also looking forward to hanging out with friends this weekend.

So anyways… About a month ago I shot some pictures of my uncle Lee’s family. Portraits of each of the children, then also a family picture. I enjoyed shooting children. It was very challenging.

Here goes…

Allison

Audric

Cameron

Audric & Cameron

The whole family

– Aaron

This evening I was working on editing some more pictures that I took around a month ago at Suchitoto. These two little boys were playing in a park that we were resting in.

On this picture I used a photoshop action that I found online. I forget what site it was.

- Aaron

While at Suchitoto Sandra and I had some fun photographing some of our great companions; Molly and Susanna. They were both great. We tried to get some pictures of Sandra, but she was fairly uncooperative.

At the present I don’t feel like saying just a whole lot about these pictures. That is because I’m tired right now. Photographing beautiful young women was a new experience for me, but I enjoyed it. I would appreciate hearing opinions and critiques about the pictures.

Molly

Sandra

Susanna

- Aaron

I like taking pictures of flowers. Thus, back when we went to Suchitoto I took several pictures of flowers. I’m glad God made flowers.

I have a very strong fondness for this b/w picture. I can’t exactly put my finger on why exactly it is that I personally like it, but anyways…

This weekend has been very busy, due to the wedding of John and Heidi. The wedding was very nice. The singing was fabulous; it felt like I got invited to a free concert. At the reception I got to sit at the same table as Eugene Friesen, EJ and Ben Beachy, and part of the time Hans and Benji Mast. It was a very good table to sit at.

Last evening there was volleyball for all the local and visiting youth. There was around 12 teams playing on two courts, which meant that there was more time spent sitting then playing. After the vball a bunch of us guys went over to the Shetler’s house to hang out. We at some snacks, drank some coke and coffee, and then after awhile started listening to good inspiring music. We kept listening to one group after another; Celtic Women, Celtic Thunder, Josh Groban, U2, King’s Singers,  Trans Siberian Orchestra, and I figure  a few others that I’ve forgotten. The group kept diminishing until it was just the three Shelter guys, Eugene, and myself. It was an awesome time! The only bad part about the evening/night was that I didn’t leave till after 3:30am, so I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep.

This week for me will probably consist of working till Thursday, then on Friday going down to Arkansas for the weekend. I’m looking forward to seeing everybody there again. O, and btw, last Monday I started working for Pleasantview Home Improvements. They do siding, guttering, doors, and windows. I’m on one of the siding crews. So far I’m enjoying it. They do mostly metal siding. I’m learning that metal siding is much harder to put on then vinal siding.

Anyways,

Goodnight,

- Aaron

Well, about a week ago I edited a few a pictures that I took about two weeks ago in the town of Suchitoto, uploaded them, and then never got around to posting them. So…. here are a few of the pictures. Hopefully I’ll get around to posting more pictures before too long. Life has been busy in the past week. I worked over 47 hours at my new job, and had stuff going about every evening. So anyways….

- Aaron

For awhile now I’ve been thinking I should get some fresh and new pictures taken of myself. I’m not really sure why I need pictures of myself; I know how I look. So anyways, nearly two weeks ago I was over at Loncho’s for the evening and got the talented Miss Sandra Ramos to photograph me to the best of her abilities. I think she did a pretty good job, considering the subject she had to work with.

For these first two pictures, we were outside using mostly natural lighting with some fill flash.

After that we got my flashes and umbrella out and I tried to coach Sandra through her first time with off-camera flash.

It then started raining, so we moved inside. The garage doors worked as a suitable backdrop. Susanna and Cecilia did a great job of holding the lights.

We had a problem with the one flash not going off, and so finally I went to check it, and here low and behold the wireless trigger was turned off. Turning that on made things work a lot better, but that flash still had issues firing. I think I need to change the battery in my trigger.

So anyways… I’d like to thank Sandra for the great job she did, and for the fact that she is letting me put them on my blog. It was a different experience being the one being photographed, instead of being the one behind the camera like usual. I think I learned some stuff through the experience.

- Aaron

Last night I was looking through some of Caleb’s pictures, and I decided to do some more editing to the one. Changed it to b/w, and did a few other edits. I like this version a lot better than the old one.

- Aaron

My good friend Caleb Mast came and spent last Sunday and Monday with me. After I took a nice three hour Sunday afternoon nap, we went outside and I tried to take some portraits of him. I was fairly happy with the way they turned out. I discovered that tin is an interesting background to work with, and gives a neat look. We tried various locations, and messed around a lot with the flashes.

Anyways…

Most of the pictures were taken with the main light being an off-camera flash through an umbrella, and a few of them had a back light through a mini soft-box. On the last picture the main light was a bare flash at camera left, shot through a plant, and I used the umbrella light at slight camera right as fill.

A fun evening…

- Aaron

These pictures were taken one evening in KS. Around our KS house there is lots of old machinery sitting around. I get enjoyment out of taking pictures of old rusty things.

- Aaron

Here is a photo of the house that we are living in currently. Actually, I’m not living there, but the rest of my family is. Actually, my sister Andrea is at Faith Builders, but the rest of my family is living in the above abode. It’s a nice little house. Nothing fancy; nothing extra special, but very serviceable. It has an air-conditioner, which is a very good thing. Another very cool thing about the house is that it has a garbage chewer-upper (I love technical terms) in the sink. Its great fun to use!

I’m currently fairly busy. Yesterday was relaxing though. Caleb Mast was here for Sunday night, so Monday morning we slept in, then mowed the whole lawn here, after which we rested, ate dinner, rested some more, then headed over to the deaf school where we mowed a bunch more lawn. I was about worn out after all that mowing. O well, at least I earned my supper.

On another note. On a whim I stopped in a eye-doctor place today and got an eye exam done, and discovered that I should get glasses. My eyes aren’t bad, but they aren’t perfect. So, I guess now I’m one of Those People that are afflicted by imperfect eyesight.

Other plans for this week are to hopefully get a dentist appointment made and taken care of, do various “work” related things, and work up lots of energy for a photoshoot that some of us are planning to do Friday afternoon. Sandra got the idea around and now we’re trying to see how many people we can get to go with us.

BTW, talking about pictures. Here is another one of the house. I was out and about one evening at sunset taking various photos, and took this picture. Nothing fancy, but I like it.

It is getting late-ish, so, goodnight.

- Aaron

Back a few weeks ago was July 4th. I was in the states. In the states some rich people set off fireworks. The poor people go and watch them. This year I watched some fireworks with two good friends, namely Tim and Jared beside me with their cameras. Together we had a great time trying to take some nice pictures. I don’t know if the pictures are any good, but we did have a good time, and I guess that’s all that matters.

Have a good ‘un,

- Aaron

One thing that Andrea really wanted to do while she was still here was to go to Apaneca and do the canopy tour that is found out there. There are 14 cables that go back and forth and down a nice biggish mountain, and so if you have the courage and $30, you can go and have a really good time. Last Tuesday Arlynn, Andrea and I went, and we had a GREAT time.

There are 14 cables that go from tree to tree, or mountain to mountain. The short cables are 10-15 meters long, and the longest one is 280 meters long, with 125 meters of air underneath.

Here I am, on one of the longer runs.

Here is a map of the different cable runs.

After we were done we went back to the office, where they gave us pan dulce and sold us coffee. It was starting to rain, and its cool up there in the mountains, so coffee was very ideal right then. I bought a t-shirt there, to add to my already very large stack of shirts that I have acquired at the various places that I’ve visited.

It’s now time for me to get to work. I’m going to take the van over to Aguilares to get Samuel Amaya to do some welding on it.

- Aaron

Here are a few pictures that I took last Tuesday. Andrea and Arlynn and I took off and went to some canopy tours, and then went to Juayúa to see the waterfalls at Chorros de la Calera. We were able to spend more time at some falls that were really crowded the last time I was down there. We were the only ones there this time. It was nice and empty and quiet. Gorgeous scenery.

BTW these pictures were taken with a Canon 1Ds, and my 28-105mm lens. The camera is Caleb Masts, and so I borrowed it from him for awhile. It’s a fun camera to use; nice and big and heavy. Its a full frame camera, and so it gives me a lot wider field of view then with my Rebel XT. Its noisier then my camera though.

- Aaron

- Aaron

Well, the main news that I have to talk about right now is that our family is moving to the states on July 1st. This decision hasn’t been easy to make, and the reasons for it are numerous. If you want to find out more about why this move is happening, then please send me an email and I will be happy to explain in fuller detail.

So anyways… things have been somewhat crazier than normal around here in the past few days. Much packing is being done, and there is still much packing to do. Having to pack everything into 50 pound suitcases really complicates things. Fortunately, there are numerous visitors to El Salvador this month, and so it won’t be a big problem to get these suitcases up to the US. My Grandpa Gingerich’s are also planning on coming down to help with stuff. They had bought tickets to come later this year, so changed their tickets to be able to come help us with this move.

Our plans are to live in Kansas. We have a house in Arkansas, but my Grandpa Mast’s are living in it right now, so due to that, and a few other reasons we have decided to live in Kansas for the time being. We will probably move to AR toward the end of the year. We have found a furnished house that we will be able to live in for very cheap rent, which is a good thing.

My plans right now are to go up with the rest of the family, help get settled in, and then a week later come back down to El Salvador to train somebody else in to do the Lamp and Light Bible course work that I have been doing for the past year. I figure it will be interesting to have to take care of myself for a few weeks, but hopefully I will be able to manage. I’m glad that I’ll have more time to do stuff with friends before I leave for good.

A few evenings ago we took the family picture that is at the top of this post. We are planning to hand it out to friends and neighbors. It is going to be hard to leave this place, and this country. This has been my home for the past 8.5 years. However, I want to look forward to the future. It currently looks somewhat scary, but I’m sure God will help us get through it alright.

Here is a brief rundown of how the next few weeks look like. Sun, the 21st, grandpa Gingerich’s come. The next day, Mon, a group from Mountain View Nursing Home come, and they will be doing some building projects at the Lamp and Light house, and so I will be somewhat involved with that throughout the week. Mon. afternoon, Andrea and Arlynn will bus over to Guatemala to then fly to the states Tuesday morning. That week is probably going to be fairly busy with work, packing, etc, etc. Saturday, the 27th, all the youth that want to are planning to climb the volcano Izalco. I’d like to go. I’ve climbed it eight times already. On July 1st, I fly to KS on a morning flight. Mom and Dad leave on a noon flight. 50 minutes after Mom and Dad leave then Grandpa’s will fly out. For some reason with my round trip ticket it was considerably cheaper for me to go on the morning flight instead of the same one that Mom and Dad went on.

I suppose I should mention some technical details about our family picture. I used my 50mm prime lens, set to an aperture of 2.8. The shutter speed was 1/200s, at ISO 100. At camera right I used an off camera flash with a 1/4 CTO gel, shooting through my homemade umbrella. I experimented  a bit until stuff looked “about right,” and then shot numerous frames while experimenting with various poses.

I am now tired, and ready for bed. Goodnight!

- Aaron

Last Saturday we as a family went to the town of Juayúa for lunch and most of the afternoon. This town is up in the mountains, and is near the falls that I photographed a few months ago. Every Saturday they have a food festival. They close off several streets, set up a bunch of stands and have a good old jolly time. The food that they sell is really good. I got a plate with steak, pork, ribs, plus rice and beans, some vegetables, and tortillas. The food stands are set up around one side of the park, and then around the rest of the park there are vendors selling “touristy” stuff. It was a good relaxing afternoon. Loncho’s family came and joined us then toward the last.

Here is a painter that was working on the sidewalk.

This little guy cheesed real big at me — and then wanted to see the picture.

There was live entertainment. This guy was definitely the best dressed one.

And as for the food, it was prepared fresh. I didn’t wander around too much sampling from different stalls. They did a good job of convincing me at the first place that I went to that I wanted to eat their food.

While we were eating Andrea bought a scarf from this girl.

This old man was sitting close to us. He was fun to watch. He kept throwing bits of food to his dog. Once, an older lady walked past and started scolding him about something. The two of them were really going back and forth for awhile, and then another old man came along and the two guys sat and cackled at the old lady for awhile. I wish I could have understood what the story was…

This cute little girl was selling orchids. Mom wanted to buy some, but orchids don’t grow very good here where we live, so…

Andrea, and her scarf that she got from the Indian girl.

We were all sitting around trying to decide what to do and where to go. I think the general decision ended up being just staying there and sitting and resting. Sitting is good!

Arlynn. We were looking at a table of wire creations. The guy was/is an artist with wire. He has some amazing stuff!

We were walking back to the van to leave when I saw these guys serenading whoever was in the little shack.

Its 10:45pm, and that means that I should really be getting to bed. Good night.

- Aaron

The week before last Arlynn and I went to the ocean with a bunch of guys. Caleb Mast’s cousin was down to visit, so Caleb wanted to go, and needed a ride, and then it ended up that several other guys were around visiting right over that time, so we had a decent sized group. I got sunburnt pretty bad and hurt for a few days, but that’s all past now.

Anyways, here are several random landscapish photos.

This next one isn’t exactly landscape. I guess I could classify it as a wildlife photo.

And last, but not least, is my with my good old boat that is still sitting out there on the beach. The Chentia. I’ve taken a lot of pictures of that old boat in the past few years. BTW, I took the picture at around 2:00 pm. I like photoshop! All the important stuff  was done in-camera though.

I worked about seven hours today at grading tests. Arlynn helped me, and we got a lot done. I figure I will be able to finish the stack of tests tomorrow without too much trouble.

The electricity was off for an hour or so this afternoon/evening. It had rained real nice, and then when it was about done raining the electricity went off. I sat out on the porch and read till time for supper, then during supper it came back one. That was the fourth time in two weeks that its been off.

Good night,

- Aaron

I was sitting here for about an hour now working on a nice long boring post with lots of stories and pictures that I took while the spanish class was here. Unfortunantly, Firefox choose to freeze up on me and shut down and so I lost some work. I did open up my keylogger program and was able to see the stuff that I wrote, but since it saves all keystrokes, including the delete key (my favorite), it makes recovering anything usefull as dificult as retyping everything. So, I will just put the pictures back in, and let them speak for themselves.

The great ride on the back of Abel’s truck.

Jared, the awesome skateboarder in flip-flops. David was a great voice-activated lightstand.

Here are a few pictures from the day shopping in downtown San Salvador.

Jared, Jacob and I went into an Catholic cathedral and looked around some. It was nice and peaceful in there. 50 feet away on the street, there was caos; people hollering, trying to sell stuff, but yet inside it was all quiet.

That evening we went to eat pupusas up at Los Planes, where there is a nice lookout of San Salvador. This was the first time that I was up there with a camera and a tripod.

I figured I should stick in a picture of Tim. He got into some amazing places with his determination and crutches.

Last Monday we climbed the volcano Izalco. I had a hard time of it for some reason. I guess I’m getting old. Emily, the youngest in the group, did pretty good, although she did get tired out.

We bought a bunch of water bottles and gatorade to take along. It ended up that not as many did the hike as originally planned, and it was cool and overcast, so we had a lot of water left over.

The hike back up Cerro Verde was very nice, if you stopped to enjoy the view. I choose to stop often, and rest, and just live in the present, and not thinking about the rest of the hike before me yet.

The living room here at home was nearly always full of people.

The last evening that they were here we went to Pizza Hut. Dad got the Pizza Hut people to sing an ‘early Happy Birthday’ for Andrea.

Here is the whole group.

And their luggage.

And lastly, here is Jared dressed like a….something…

Anyways, I’ll probably put these pictures, and a lot more, on facebook. I’ll post the link here if I ever get that done.

- Aaron

I wrote the following paragraph nearly two weeks ago. A lot has happened since then. I forget what the deal was that I forgot to post this back then when I wrote it.

BTW, while I’m on the subject of “older stuff,” here is a picture that I took toward the end of March of last year.

I’m sitting at the bus station here in Santa Ana, waiting for the bus to come. Arlynn and I are bussing over to Guatemala this afternoon to meet my good sister Andrea, and here spanish class that is coming to visit. I’m getting quite excited about having Andrea around again; it will be great to have our whole family here together at home. The last we were all together was August of last year, and that was after being in the states for about six weeks. Dad is coming home tomorrow. It hasn’t been too bad having him gone, but I’m ready to have him back anyways. It sounds like he is sleeping much better now that he has the CPAP machine. We’re pretty excited too about having Andrea’s spanish class here. This trip of theirs has been talked about for months now, and its hard to believe that its actually going to happen now. I’m predicting that we will have a good time. So yeah, Arlynn and I are bussing over to Guatemala city this afternoon, meeting the group at the airport, will spend the night at the mission there in Guate. city, and then tomorrow morning we will bus back here to ES. Its been a good amount of work to get ready. I had to round up a bunch of bedding stuff. Foams, sheets, pillows, and stuff like that for 19 people. Well anyways, that is what I’m up to right now. I’ll probably not be able to post this until I get to Guatemala.

- Aaron

Due to a bunch of different reasons, I’m sitting at home by myself right now. All the rest of my family is scattered all over the place. Arlynn is at the deaf school in Aguilares, Andrea is (of course) in KS, and Mom and Dad are also in KS.

Arlynn has been in Aguilares all week. They were/are needing some more help there, and he is good at learning sign language, and also needed something to do to keep him out of trouble, so he is over there to see what he can do to help with stuff. I’m going to go over sometime before too long to bring him back for the weekend.

Mom and Dad flew up to the states yesterday morning. Daddy has been very tired for the last while, and sleeps a lot, but even with all the sleeping he does, he never gets rested up. Dr. Jana Nisly is suspecting that he has sleep apnea, so they went up to the states to see a doctor up there about it, and he will probably be set up with a CPAP (whatever that is) to help him sleep better. They had an appointment with the doctor today, so I’m hoping I’ll hear more tonight about whats going to to be happening with that.

I’ve been managing pretty well here by myself. So far I haven’t starved at least. Mom didn’t have much time to fix a bunch of food for me, so the fridge is pretty empty. I can fix eggs in several ways though, so I don’t think I’ll go hungry.

Anyways…

Here is a picture I took back in January, when I was Guatemala for Byron and Karen’s wedding.

Have a good ‘un everybody,

– Aaron

Last week I finally tore apart my old non-working desktop computer. It had been sitting around for over a year, while I occasionally robbed parts off of it. I decided it was time to go through it and decide what was worth keeping, and then throw the rest away.

The processor is one of the parts that I decided needs to be thrown away. It has two bent pins, and I don’t think its worth the effort to try to straighten it back up. It is/was an AMD 64 3000 processor. A 64 bit CPU running at 2 ghz, with a 512kb L2 cache. Quite a good little processor in its day, but its day is now past. My current laptop can run circles around it.

This isn’t the only time it had bent pins. One time I was cleaning my case out, and I decided to get thorough, so I pulled the heatsink off so I could clean all the dust out of it. For some reason, the processor came out too. That was not good. The CPU is locked into the socket, and it was forced out with being released, and about half a dozen pins in the one corner got bent. I think the thermal paste “glued” it to the heat sink. I really didn’t want to buy a new processor, so I got a magnifying glass, a tweezers, and a small pliers, and got to work. I actually managed to straighten the pins up, and it kept on working for a long time after that.

So anyways… I took some pictures of it. It has been awhile since I got my camera out and shot anything; I felt a bit rusty.

For the above picture I used a flash with a CTO (color temperature orange) gel, and a snoot, on it. The two bent pins are right in the front corner For this next picture I used the snooted-orange-gelled flash from the one side, and then had a CTB (color temperature blue) gel on a flash with a small softbox up above.

By the way, the processor measures 4×4 cm. I bought it in December of 2004, and paid $148.00 for it. Most of the components of that computer are still in use. The hard drive, CD drives, and monitor are all in Dad’s computer. I was 16 when I built that computer. It was a great machine for me back then. I learned a lot from it.

Goodnight,

- Aaron

Over the past several years, Dad has talked several times about recording a CD by himself. Last month he finally got around to doing something about it. He’s done 14 songs so far.

He is using my computer to do the recording. I’ve been doing the mixing/editing for him. Here is a screenshot that I took while I was working on the one song.

Here is a sample of a few of the songs.

- Aaron

Good evening. I have three pictures that I wanted to post tonight. Nothing new. I’ve been to lazy this week to go out and actually take any good pictures. All three pictures are b/w. I’m in a b/w mood tonight I guess.

This first one I took a few weeks ago when I walked along some railroad tracks with Caleb and Arlynn. The picture isn’t any good, so I converted to black and white, and now I can call it art. Ok, I guess that’s not a good excuse for posting a crummy pictures. But o well, I still like the picture.

Last year, around September I think, I had stopped by one of our neighbors houses to take some pictures of their new baby. The baby ended up crying and fussing, and so I didn’t take any pictures of him, but I took a few pictures around the house.

Here’s The Dog.

and The Catholic Symbol.

Today was a sort of slow lazy day. I slept in, studied some for the Sunday school lesson for tomorrow, drove over to Aguilares to drop some stuff off, and helped Arlynn mow lawn. Well, I say I helped him. We mowed about the same amount of grass, so I’m not sure who helped who.

I want to go to bed early tonight. I’m sleepy, and tomorrow is a big-ish day. Communion is in the evening, so that service will be longer than normal.

Have a good night,

- Aaron

This afternoon after I was done working I picked up my camera and went outside to relax a bit and take some pictures. After a shot a few random pictures of nothing in particular, I came back in, and noticed a vase on the kitchen counter with a single orange rose in it. The last few times that I’ve taken pictures of flowers I went at it with a flash or two, or stuck it in my light box, so this time I decided to take it outside and see what kind of picture I can take with just available light.

Once I got the pictures on the computer and got started, then I guess I got inspired or something.  I do like this picture, but its definitely not my usual style. I guess into that category of “art.” It has a very different look than the original scene, but is also somewhat aesthetically pleasing.

I guess I should pat myself on the back for posting three times in one day. I don’t know why I don’t spread my postings out a bit. Actually, I do know why. The internet wasn’t working good last week, and it made posting difficult. Today it has actually worked good all day.

Goodnight,

- Aaron

In the past few weeks the work on the road has been progressing, and they have actually been getting some paving done. Last Tuesday they were working on paving the stretch in front of our house, so I went out and took some pictures.

They are doing a pretty good job, overall, but of course they are just a bit too slow. O well. They have everything paved five km out of Tacachico, and now they’ve moved the equipment to the Santa Ana end and are coming this way. At the rate they are working right now it will take about another two to three months before they are done paving.

On another note. I’m about done with my work for today. That is good!

- Aaron