The Men of Bound4LIFE

I was going through some old photo sessions to find a classy, yet hopeful and inspirational photo of my good friend Ian Kelly for his blogger bio on moraloutcry.com. I stumbled upon a series of photos I took of Matt, Ian, and Craig in downtown Charlotte, NC. These are the men of Bound4LIFE.

Fear The Beard

This is Matt Lockett. He's the director of Bound4LIFE. You can stalk him on his blog, this twitter, or on facebook... if you dare.

You see, I took a series of photos for myself, and my two friends Ian and Craig (known to our 2 year-old as Neat and Durg, respectively) for a new online venture you shall hear about shortly. Matt saw those photos and wanted something "just as cool, if not cooler".

I think this is pretty much the sweetest profile picture ever. And it's a sample of what I can do with less than 30 minutes of your time. Check out my current rates at my web site.

With Our Mexican Combined...

This is my friend Stacie. She recently gave me permission to blog nice things about her and something about how rad it is to be part Mexican, and how everyone should try it sometime.

I'm part Mexican too, so whenever one of our racist friends wants to be rude, Stacie and I can team up using our combined Mexican blood and defend our heritage. We never do though. Because we're too lazy.

But seriously, Stacie is not lazy. She is actively standing up for what she believes in. She's has a crazy sense of humor, and a contagious laugh. Oh, and if you're not careful, her mom will stalk you on the internet.* In fact, I probably shouldn't talk about it, chances are she's reading this right now.

This was shot on the same day as Matt Lockett's "Popeye Forearms" portrait. I only used one light for this one though.

*please refrain from any "Stacie's mom" jokes and "Your mom is online" jokes in the comments. Except for Statie's mom, she's allowed.

Under Siege

This is Matt Lockett, director of Bound4LIFE, praying in front of The Supreme Court building on Friday, July 17th, 2009. Follow him on twitter (@mattlockett) or the beard will do something terrible.

Shot with two Nikon SB-28 hot-shoe flashes on an overcast day. One flash was high and camera-right, at 1/2 power, shot through my home-made "lysol grid snoot" and the other was bare-bulb at 1/8 power laying on the ground angled up 45 degrees. All fired with Pocket Wizards and snapped through the 24mm with the d200 for 1/250th of a second at f/16.

It's hard to not only battle the sun, but also the crowds of tourists always streaming in and out of the court. What you don't see in this photo is the family right behind Matt's head. Of course, the beard is a force to be reckoned with anyway, and usually eclipses whatever is near.

YooSung

YooSung is crazy awesome. You have no idea until you actually meet him. Add a fauxhawk/mullet and a passion for prayer and the unborn, and you get the epitome of the Justice House of Prayer intern. Musical abilities and a sense of humor don't hurt YooSung's personality either. Follow him on Twitter: @yoosung

As part of the internship with JHOPDC, YooSung joins the other interns every day for prayer at the Supreme Court. With red tape covering their mouths and the word "LIFE" written on it, they pray for the ending of abortion, righteous judges, and mercy for America. The tape symbolizes the silence of the unborn, and how they can't speak up for themselves. YooSung, in his silence, is speaking for them. Praying in front of the court is part of Bound4LIFE and message of LIFE they promote. They call it a "Silent Siege".

There was construction at the court, but I like the line the crane creates.

This was shot with my "Lysol Grid Snoot" on a very overcast day. It's an old Lysol wipes container with a hole cut in the bottom in order to create a nice narrow beam of light coming off my little Nikon SB-28 hot-shoe flash. I strap a 20 degree grid to the front of it to give the light a nice feathered edge. I also had a second SB-28 flash laying on the ground, shooting up at a 45 degree angle at low power to balance it all out.

Bound4LIFE Wants You

This is a shot I can file away with other happy mistakes.

I was on assignment for Bound4LIFE, taking shots of them praying in front of the Supreme Court in DC during a 40-day intensive last year, and snagged this shot of my very good friend Ian Kelly. Ian is a gentleman of high standards and deep convictions in whom I put a generous amount of trust. His character, candor, charm, and wit make him a brilliant speaker, writer, and thought-provoker. Follow him on twitter.

I highly encourage you to check out the Bound4LIFE blog, and all the exciting stuff that is going on this year.

Right now, I'm working a lot with Bound4LIFE and JHOPDC while I'm in Northern Virginia. I love these people, and especially what they stand for and fight so hard to see accomplished. Tomorrow I'm going to their headquarters on Capitol Hill to shoot some lifestyle photos of the internship there and of the weekly prayer "rumble" they host in the basement of a condo just blocks from the capitol building.

Why Are You Moving?

This is a photo of Bound4LIFE director, and prayer intercessor, Matt Lockett in JHOP DC, and it has a lot to do with why we're moving.

Why are we moving? The biggest reason is that our house is an un-inspired, poorly-constructed, suburban nightmare, and I'm not even talking about the people inside. However, the people inside are making the living environment unstable, and thusly, unsafe, so I am making the decision to remove my family from that situation, for their protection and sanity.

But we're not stopping there. No, we're not only moving out of our house, we're making plans to move out of the state.

Merely weeks after finally wrapping up the last bit of paperwork tying us to Virginia, we have decided to move to... Virginia. Or rather, the Virginia side of the Washington DC metro area.

Why are we moving to DC? Well, logically it makes sense if we want to be closer to family and friends from years past and to get out of suburbia, but our reasons are based on more than merely logic.

A little over two years ago, Heather and I traveled from our home-town of Chesapeake, Virginia to Fort Mill, South Carolina to give Heather's younger sisters a ride back to their internship with TheCause. Katie and Melody Crane, my beautiful sisters-in-law, were in the middle of a prayer intercession internship with Chuck Mervin and Lou Engle. After their Thanksgiving break, we brought the Crane sisters back to the base in Fort Mill, and within moments both Heather and I decided, separately, that we wanted to move there. We didn't fall in love with the location, the ease of life there, or even the cheap gas prices, and we certainly didn't fall in love with the weather, we fell in love with the people that made up the movement. That movement was made up of a band of ruffians who wanted little else but to see America revived, and they were willing to pour everything they had into that cause through fasting, prayer, worship, and activism. We fell in love with the Justice House of Prayer.

After living here for over two years, helping to mobilize 70,000 people in a stadium, traveling across the country driving a box-truck, and changing addresses 3 times, we may have missed the train. Or at least we didn't catch the same one everyone else left on. The movement is alive and well, it's just moved to different places in the country. San Francisco, Boston, San Diego, New York City, and DC, are the cities which harbor this motley crew of prayer warriors now.

We got comfortable here in Fort Mill, and maybe a little lazy. I found a job at MorningStar doing what I love to do, and we had a baby. Cool story Hansel, all good stuff, but we started feeling more and more dissatisfied with our situation, and the lack of healthy community that rallied around a central cause that we had grown to love so much.

Now, with the fresh mergence of Bound4LIFE and JHOP in Washington DC, we have once again, like the Millennium Falcon to the Death Star, become drawn to that which we wish to live and die for. Justice in America.

Oh, and that Star Wars reference? It reminds me of another little blog I contribute to: http://fanmade.org

Dual Band

This photo was taken while shooting the Facedown40 event at the Supreme Court with Bound4LIFE. I have recently had the pleasure of being a guest contributing author at the Bound4LIFE Blog, talking about the benefits and methods of social networking as it pertains to social justice issues.

One of the things that Bound4LIFE has created on their website is a social network that revolves around their "Life Bands". The Life Band (pictured above), is a simple red wrist band that has the word "LIFE" written in it, and is worn by those who have made a covenant to "Pray, Vote, and Obey". It is an outward symbol that reflects the inward desire to see Abortion ended, and righteousness returned in the hearts of our nation's leaders.

If you spot a Life Band in the wild, you can participate in "Gotcha!", the Bound4LIFE social experiment. Take a picture of said Life Band with your cellphone, email it to gotcha@bound4life.com, include your location in the subject line, and your photo will appear on the Bound4LIFE Gotcha! Map.

Debt and Taxes

The next president of the United States of America, will be sworn in tomorrow, but looking at the price tag of this little get-together, you would think he was getting crowned as King of America.

The estimated cost of the party surrounding the 90 second actual "swearing" part is rapidly approaching $150 Million. There are people that are spending $50,000 on front-row seats that were all in a tizzy about the cost of President G. W. Bush's inauguration that totaled a little over $42 Million.

Sure, 42 Million dollars is a lot of money. Shoot, right now, 10 dollars is a lot of money for me.

How much is $160 Million dollars exactly? I feel like I've been brain-washed when it comes to that much money. I hear these huge amounts thrown around all the time on the news, but it's just such a staggering number, I can't really wrap my head around it.

I wouldn't mind someone spending that much money on something that they believed in, but I have a problem with it if it's MY money they are spending.

I'm about to file taxes, and I expect a fairly large return this year. I made a steady amount of money, had a kid, and claimed zero when I could have claimed 3. But, I'm still paying a lot of money to the government. Not only April 15th, but every time I buy diapers or milk. If that money is going toward keeping our borders safe, then I am happy to pay it. If those tax dollars are funding medical research that will keep my family healthy, great, I support that. Even if I don't directly support what the money is going toward, but it helps the greater good (the greater good), such as wars and political campaigns, I'm even cool with that. Bottom line, I pay taxes, and I'm proud to support my country through it. But, if we are going to be spending $160,000,000 of mine, and my children's money to throw a party for a man who just said that we are in the worst economic crisis of our lifetime, um, I'll pass. If I only could.

Despite the clear and obvious corruption in our government, I am American, and I am proud to support my country's leaders. But I know I'll be paying for it later.

Choices, Choices...

My wife Heather was telling me about her younger brother Jerry's experience in his public speaking class lately. He apparently commented on a fellow student's speech about being "pro-choice", and then immediately found that he was the only one in the class, teacher included, who was pro-life.

That got me thinking about the whole argument over abortion, and the "right" to choose, or the "right" to life. Being pro-life doesn't mean I am against choice, on the contrary, I love having choices, but I understand consequences and responsibilities. I can get pretty fired up over this whole banking/auto industry bailout, and that is something that is affecting everyone right now. Those CEOs made choices along the way, that they probably shouldn't have made, and that lead to the downfall of the financial kingdom. The consequences of their actions and decisions affect a greater number of people than just their company. Likewise, the "consequences" of sex is pregnancy. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't, but it's still a choice that has clear, and natural consequences. Once the choice for consensual sex is made, that's where I stop being pro-choice.

Now, some people will rebuttal that previous statement with the "what about rape and incest?" question. Why would someone even ask that question? Are they trying to get me to say that I support the killing of any baby? I don't see the motivation. To that, I simply say this: "How dare you try to justify the killing of innocent people."

We are talking about life and death. Yes, the consequences of rape and incest sometimes result in a pregnancy, but why should the baby have to pay for the crime of someone else?