New Year = Do Over

Hi, everyone. If you follow this blog you can see that the Manual DSLR project has been neglected over the past several months. While I did a lot of photography and blogging in 2010, it was much tougher to do so in 2011. A number of factors contributed to this, but the two biggest factors were this:

We closed one business and opened another, which means that we totally changed our business structure, but not much else changed. We still do the same thing, but we now operate as a corporation instead of a sole proprietorship. On April 14, 2011 Kennamer Media Group, Inc. was incorporated. We are currently working on a number of projects that will release in 2012. If you want to check out what we are about, visit our website at www.kennamermediagroup.com.  

At just before 7 am on April 27, 2011 our home phone rang. It was the county's Code Red service, which warns you if there is a weather emergency in your specific area. We had heard the day before that we might have some storms that day, but nobody could have predicted what happened. That first call was for a tornado warning. Though we did not know if until days later, a small tornado passed (in the air) at the end of our street and then touched down about a half a mile past our house. We lost a few trees, one of which landed on our son's car. It was parked just outside of the garage and the tree barely missed the house. Trees were down on our (dead end) street so we used our chainsaw to clear the street and then went back to our house to cut the tree off Cody's car. But that was only the beginning of what would be a very rough day. By the time the day was over, our county had been hit by 6 tornadoes and 33 people were killed. The largest tornado was an EF5 which varied from 1/2 to 1 mile wide and cut a path of destruction for 28 miles.

This is one of the sheds we built for tornado victims.

We have done some disaster relief work before. We were in Biloxi, MS three weeks after Katrina hit and went back to help with relief work later on; we also helped with flood relief in Iowa. But it is different when it is your community and your neighbors who are devastated. Through our church and our denomination's Mission to North America Disaster Response organization, we put together a team of people from our church that would organize work and host teams from out of town to help with the recovery work. In the months since the storm, 29 teams have stayed at our church and worked in the community doing debris clean up, chainsaw work, and construction. We had teams visit from as far away as Delaware, Maryland, and Iowa. We even had a group from Delaware that we had met when we were in Iowa to come work with us twice for three weeks at a time. This experience has been a great blessing and we met dozens of great people, but it took a great deal of time.

So photography has been on the back burner this year. Phase two of the Manual DSLR project did not quite get off the ground. But a new year is a great time to start fresh and that is my plan. Look for posts on lighting and manual flash during 2012. 

My other photography related activity is writing iPhone and iPad app reviews for www.currentphotographer.com. Since late 2010 I have been writing a weekly review of an app or accessory for the iPhone or iPad. If you have suggestions about apps to review, let me know. 

If you are unfamiliar with Current Photographer, check it out. There is a wealth of information regarding the art and business of photography. And be sure to check out my app reviews: http://currentphotographer.com/contributors/mike-kennamer/. 

Don't you love do-overs? Sometimes we need them.

Please feel free to interact as I reembark on this journey. 

All the best...

Mike