Vision

To the degree that we try to partake of the world, we diminish our brightness.   - Bill Gothard

I’m going to share my current method of recording the audio for church sermons and special events that I currently employ as one of the audio/tech guys for our church.

For sound amplification, we currently use a wired microphone on a stand, hooked up to a powered mixer with a built in amplifier. Basic 12″ speakers are wired directly to the amplifier. That takes care of the “live” sound.

Recording the sound turned out to be a little trickier. For years, we recorded with a line level feed directly to a 20+ year old audio tape recorder. When it came time to switch to a digital work flow, I did a little research to find the best solution. Recording direct to CD was one option, but what if the message went over 80 minutes? A line running to the sound card on my laptop was another option, but that could prove to be a little too complicated for my liking. I ended up going for the Olympus LS-10, a digital voice recorder that records at 24bit/96khz direct to either the 2GB of built in memory, or an optional SD card. The bonus with this recording unit is that it also has directional stereo recording with the built-in electret-condenser microphone which is great for recording live singing or family sharing times.

For standard sermon audio recordings I

1. use a line level direct connection to the mixer
2. copy the resultant digital .wav file to my laptop
3. down sample to a mono .wav file from the LS-10’s stereo file
4. record to audio cd and label it for lending out
5. “rip” the cd with iTunes (gets better quality sound with a very low bitrate for some reason) to .mp3 for the podcast
6. enter all the meta data for the ID3 tags and upload to the website

That’s it. There are a few steps that I haven’t mentioned related to podcasting, but wanted to focus on the recording aspect, mostly. So, what methods does your church use for recording sermons?

Firefox is trying to create a world record of the most software downloads in 24hrs with their release of Firefox 3. I’ve been using Firefox almost exclusively (except for testing sites I design, since 2005). Join the crowd by clicking the graphic.

I read this today: “We are all just plagiarists of a real artist, and her name is Mother Nature”.

It needs modification, I think: “We are all just plagiarists of a real artist, and His Name is God”.

Inspired by others who have taken some amazing HDR or High Dynamic Range Imaging photographs, I’ve decided to jump in and try my hand at this. Below are some photos I shot this morning. Comments and critical analysis are welcome.

Telephone Pole

St. Andrew’s Orthodox Church - Arlington, WA

St. Andrew’s Orthodox Church - Arlington, WA

Bridge on Highway 530 - Arlington, WA

Bridge on Highway 530 - Arlington, WA

Blogs and other social read/write media are great for staying in touch across the miles.  But don’t forget to interact with those closest to you, you know, the people you see every day, like your family and/or church group. This picture from a business e-newsletter I received today sparked these thoughts. So, now I’m going to go wish one of those amazing people in my life, my mom, a wonderful Mother’s Day, in person!

An encouraging bumper sticker I saw today.

I found this picture of an older gentleman taken during the 1890’s over on Virginia Tech’s image archive website. The person himself has no meaning to me, however I was just struck with “something” about this photograph. Full length portraiture is not as common nowadays. Our family has a similar looking image of my great-uncle as a young man. So stoic, quiet, peaceful and meditative. Maybe I’ll try to recreate something like this on my next portrait shoot.

I went for a walk today and came across this sign.

I figured some shots from 4 years ago down in Colorado would be good to use in testing out the Simple-Viewer photo gallery plugin.