A picture for each eye - really! At a distance of about 2ft from your monitor, cross your eyes until you see three images - the center image will appear in 3D. It's called stereoscopy (or stereo photography) and it's been around for years.

You're probably more familiar with the 3D images you have to wear those funky red and green glasses to view. This is the same principle. Each eye is receiving it's own perspective of the image (a picture for each eye), thus conveying the original 3D environment in which the image was captured.

This isn't great. I was just reading about it and went out and snapped a dozen pictures before it got too dark just to see how easy it was. As with everything, it's easy to do - but doing it well is a different story!

"Is your glass half empty or half full?" It's an aphorism we commonly use to describe one's outlook as optimistic or pessimistic. Call me extremely pessimistic, but I don't think the glass is enough, be it half-empty or half-full. But in this case, it has nothing to do with outlook - it's all about perspective!

In photography, it's generally accepted that one should spend their pennies on better glass (lenses) rather than on a better body (we're talking about cameras now...), as glass affects the quality of the final image more than the camera. Dare I say, I disagree? Okay, not really. If I had to choose one or the other, I'd go with quality glass over an expensive body (still speaking of cameras here). But why choose one over the other? Why not have your cake and eat it too? (a platitude I've never understood - after all, if the cake is yours, aren't you supposed to eat it?)

A little over a week ago, I got to play around with a 5D. It's a $2000 Canon camera body. What makes it special is that, instead of the standard APS-C sensor that most D-SLRs have, this baby has a full-frame CMOS sensor! APS-C sensors are cheaper and smaller so they're used more frequently, but they ...blah blah blah... Basically that means that you can get really great-looking wide-angle pictures from a 5D - and I love wide-angle!

I put Yamil's 17-40mm f/4 L lens on the 5D and fell in love. Just looking through the viewfinder gets my heart racing! You can get everything in a room in one shot! Here's some pics:

Glass will only get you so far. There comes a time when you just gotta get a full-frame camera. Fortunately, at $2K, the 5D is the cheapest full-frame on the market - I should be able to afford one in about 3 or 4 years!

In the mean time, I'll just have to keep stitching multiple photos - not quite the same, but still cool:

Well, tonight was the last meeting of the crusade. It hardly seems like we should be done. This series has been one of the most interesting and different meetings I've been a part of. We began the first weekend of this month. Instead of the regular, grueling 6-nights-a-week schedule, we met only three nights per week, preaching twice each night. We also divided the preaching between Jeffrey, Jay, and myself. So as of tonight, we've only had 12 meetings with 24 sessions divided among three speakers (I didn't preach nearly as many messages as Jeffrey and Jay).

The drawbacks are that the messages have to be very succinct. We said two sessions, 45 minutes each, with a 15 minute intercession. But once you go through all the prelims, that's about 30 minutes per sermon. I'm still not convinced that it's reasonable to try and cover a topic like the mark of the beast or the state of the dead in 30 minutes. Not only is it a lot for those attending to assimilate, it's difficult to do it justice in such a short amount of time.

We've had two baptisms, and we're working with 6-8 more candidates that we'll continue studying with during the follow-up stage. In spite of the challenges we've faced, the change has been really good. I'm totally sold on the double-sessions. I'm not so sure about the multiple speakers...

I'm going to write a little more now that the meetings are done. I've gotta write about the Sun Run. But right now I'm just rambling, so I should go to bed...

P.S. I was going to upload a picture, but it's not working right now.

Vancouver Sun Run

Tomorrow is the Vancouver Sun Run. I'm in it. It's 10K. I've never run 10K in my life. I have to be up at 6AM - what am I still doing up?

I'm sitting here, waiting for my hair to dry. I didn't really need a shower, but I took one because I wanted an excuse to stay up a little longer and write a blog. It's been too long since I've really written anything worthy of note. "I've been busy", to use the proverbial excuse. I've been doing all the regular media stuff, plus meetings, plus some preaching, plus visitation, plus fixing anything that breaks, plus going to weddings... About the wedding thing...

Jesse and Annie's wedding was the first of my pier's weddings I've attended. I really wanted to go to Luke and Audrey's wedding, but I just didn't have the money - and I had to shoot a wedding in CO the same weekend. Now I've been to lots of my parent's friend's weddings, but never one of my own friends who was my age. It really made me think about the future. Surprisingly, I'd say it made it even harder for me to imagine getting married. I think there's just too many mountains to climb for me to think about marriage right now. People say, "oh, but it's so much more fun to climb them together". I don't know - I'm a lot more content than I thought I'd be. I'll come to that bridge someday, and when I do, I'll cross it then. I was really happy for Jesse and Annie - I still am.

I watched the wedding photographer very closely - I learned a lot... Jordan, Jesse's younger brother, wrote a song that he sang - it was really cool. He also preached a sermon and had a prayer. I feel like that kid's my own brother - I was so proud of him. He's grown so much in the past year, and he's such a man of God. Oh that there were more young men with that kind of commitment to the Lord. I look forward to seeing how the Lord uses him.

I'll post some pictures after I get a chance to edit them. Until then, here's another picture I snapped at Mission College on Monday with my 24-105mm:

Here's a 100% crop of the image - I love this lens!

Went to a wedding this weekend. Juicy details to follow...

Well, I was going to blog today, but I decided not to because nobody would believe anything I say since it's April fools. Now, in my defense, I must say that nothing I would say today would be any less believable than anything I would say on any other day...

I can at least show you a picture:

Anyway, happy April First.