Edit: The contest is now over. Congratulations to Becca and Andrew. Thanks to all who participated!

This month I’m doing an engagement contest! (click the image to go to the contest page)

If you don’t happen to be engaged at the moment, be sure to send this to your friends who are. Or, you could work on getting engaged this month sometime.  :-)

~ Jon

Love is beautiful.

God’s love is the most perfect love. God’s love manifested in his children is a beautiful thing to see. The love of God never fails. Ever.

When I can put away my own will and allow God’s love to rule the way I see things, that’s when I find life most beautiful.

~ Jon

I’ll be out of the office for the next week, so don’t get too offended if I don’t immediately answer phone calls or emails. I’m taking pictures at PCC (Pennsylvania Christian Camp) at the beautiful Blue Knob state park which resides in no mans land.

Digging through some older photos, here’s a few favorites from Chelsie & Johnny’s engagement session:

~ Jon

This summer has been much busier than I thought it would. I’m planning on getting into my blogging routine once I get back to civilization, but for the time being my leave of absence continues.

I’m currently manning a fireworks tent in Camp Hill. It’s a pretty crazy job but I’m hoping it will be worth it. This year we just get a percentage of the sales and so far it’s bean reaaaly slow. I stay here throughout the day and night…and it’s interesting (last year’s post). This is kinda like a jungle in the middle of the suburbs.

Also…

One idea that I hope can turn into something big: A Picture Is Worth

Apply this to Searcy, add loving people, add people from the street, add more big ideas. Great things can happen. Start thinking.  :-)

~ Jon

Here’s the music video: (quality of Eric Giboney, Bundy, and Collin)

Other music video entered in the Burksys: The Abigails (directed by Trent Posey)

Some cool band:

While I’m on the streak of bragging about how cool I am because I know some cool people, my article is on this other award-winner‘s dress.

And I guess I’ll throw in some pictures of my brother’s hair cutting event:

~ Jon :)

then…

Sure, this isn’t Christmas day, but it’s still fun to get snow.  Plus, the Yoder boarding house is now open, lots of people have been visiting, so it’s just been fun times.   Happy Friday.

~ Jon

The story: I met Trent first through living in the same dorm. We (along with a couple other guys) were hanging out at a freshman orientation (or equivalent) event, and we met Devon and a few other girls there. We all ditched the slideshow video that was going on and went to a coffee house close by. It was a good time; we played some games, talked, and hung out. At the end of the night, we all exchanged phone numbers in a true “hey let’s be friends!” fashion.

I’m sure our little friend group hung out a few more times after that, but a few weeks later, we heard of a 4 hour phone call into the wee hours of the morning. We then knew something was up. Soon enough Trent and Devon were official. The rest is history.

Over the years we’ve had many more good times. We’ve even dabbled in extreme music videos.

And now… they’re married!  How cool!  :)  Devon was incredibly calm before the ceremony which is unheard of and super cool.  The whole day was a blast to photograph.  This couple is tha bomb.  ;)

Take me home
To the place I belong
West Virginia, mountain momma
Take me home, country roads

~ Jon

Pictures.

(that’s how my attention span works most of the time. ;) )

My dad pouring over paperwork.

My Grandmama. She's an amazing woman. (sorry for making you nervous grandma! :))

My dad doing his chain saw thang.

Grandma wanted a tree limb down. My dad's first method was to (try to) use the force to bring it down.

Unfortunately, that didn't work, so he resorted to the lesser method, chainsaw, which promptly got stuck in the tree due to unforeseen evil, gravity.

So, this picture...

[non-related, photo talk] So the above picture is an HDR (high dynamic range).  My first one, actually.  HDR is where you take multiple pictures of different exposures to get a really dark picture, a normal picture, and a really light picture.  Then, on the computer, you combine them to include more detail (since it’s multiple pictures in one).

Many people love HDR pictures.  If you search google, you’ll soon find pictures like these, which tend to be way too overprocessed in my book.  A TON of people (even decent photographers) love the overprocessed, details popping out everywhere look, but I’m not one of them.  It makes me gag sometimes.  I’m not saying I don’t like the pictures that I linked above, but I just don’t like the fake plastic non-real look that the term HDR is affiliated with.  You can make HDR pictures that look realistic, and I like those, but the mobs seem to like the overprocessed HDR pictures more.

Pardon the mini rant.  All in all, HDR is kinda cool.  I might use it once in a while, but it isn’t something you’ll be seeing here very often.

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess. ~ Oscar Wilde

Peace and love,
~ Jon

A professional is someone that makes money for what they do…or something like that.

I would suggest staying away from calling yourself a professional in the photography world, as it could bring on a mindset that you are good enough, not requiring anymore learning or critique.  This is not a fact–but a mere thought into the situation.  I would not be ashamed to call myself a pro if I made my way from taking pictures, I’d just make sure to always learn and be open for improvement–not doing this is a good business model for failure.

So why all the pro talk?  I have officially been accepted as a Harding school photographer for the bison and the yearbook.  I’m definitely not about to start calling myself a pro (I haven’t been impressed by my own photography in a long time), but this is the first time that I’ll ever be paid to take pictures on a consistent basis–so that’s a step.

I’m excited for the challenge.  My goal for the year as a school photographer is to improve my eye for photography, come up with some creative portraiture, improve my lighting style, get thinking more outside the box, tell stories, and generally create some ‘stunna’ photographs.  ;)

This will probably also get me much more involved with campus events.  I already have been fairly involved with campus activities, but in the past I have been very choosy about doing things if they don’t sound awesome.  Now, I’ll probably be going to pretty much everything.  Hurray!

We’ll see where all this takes me…in the Fall.  :)  Tootles,

~ Jon

If you haven’t seen the movie, definitely see it.  Totally worth or it.

With Avatar still on my mind, I came across this video:

The following is my rendition of this tutorial–done on myself.  Most of the steps done are just copied from watching the video (many times, and in slow motion ;)).  Thanks Peter Ammentorp Lund.

Step 1: take a cool picture.

This was taken from a tripod, with 3 strobes–bounced off wall behind for fill, one from the side to create some drama (yeah, drama), and then one from behind and above me for some hair sparkle…blahblah.  Anyways, the lighting isn’t the point, so I’ll continue.  ;)

Step 2: edit some blemishes.

Here I just edited blemishes and took out the stenciled border that goes around the top of my room (top of the frame)–just because it annoyed me, not that it would be in the final crop anyway.

Normally I try not to edit any facial blemishes on the premises that I want to convey reality in my photography, and the best way to do that does not involve cloning. I don’t really have a problem with editing blemishes, and if someone is just having a bad day in this department, then I’ll fix ‘em up, but this isn’t part of my normalities (although making up words is).

However, for this picture, all the bets are off.  I am trying to create Jon Avatar Yoder, and right now, reality is something that I have no care in the world for…edit away!

Step 3: color it up!

Here I just added a few layers of color, and adjusted them to my liking…to look more Avatar-esque.

Step 4: tighten and black out.

I didn’t really want the rest of the frame, so I just painted in black all around.  I also made the picture more narrow, since I have a big head, and I just thought that I could look more like an Avatar-creature with a skinnier head.  It’s kinda hard to notice, but in this picture I also have some more retouching that wasn’t included in step 3 (such as, my lip was doing something weird, so I straightened it).  Oops.

Step 5: crop, texture.

Cropped it to the head, grabbed a leather texture from emtilt-resource on deviantart, the same one used in the video (yep, super original), and then copied/cloned/flipped it until I got the desired result.

Step 6: the eyes!

Here I added some crazy cool eyes from here.  Also removed some of my eyebrow on the right so that it wasn’t sticking out of the avatar image I got.

Step 7: rough up the face.

Here I added some black brush around the face, plus a few highlights, to add some ridges (aka roughness) for epicness.

I also lightened up the face a bit more.

Step 8: sparkles!

Now as a final touch, I added lots of white dots, mirrored them into darker white dots, a couple black dots, then made them glow.

I really like how it turned out.  :-)

Some full-size images (click for large):

First bearded avatar. :)

PTP colors. :)

~ Jon