From the archives. I keep going through my 17,000 pictures trying to weed out the ones I don’t need. For instance, the pictures below each had 5 to 10 similar shots that are not really worth keeping. My philosophy is to take the one or two best from any shoot, and dump the rest. No one is going to be all that interested in those photos anyway. After all, with 17,000 photos, who am I going to show them to?
Enjoy these few of my firstborn, Andy.
Copyright Timothy J. Hammons 2020.
In my last post, I mentioned that I had a purpose in bringing my camera to the Reformation Day celebration. The purpose was Revere. When I met him in church, and saw his eyes, my first thought was that I needed to get my camera. Reformation Day provided the excuse. He has the biggest eyes of any baby I think I have ever seen. His mother informed me that it runs in the family. Revere’s grandfather had the same big eyes.
I wasn’t sure how to get the best pictures of him, since he was either being held by his father or mother or someone else. As we were beginning to eat, I noticed that Revere was crawling around the couch, so I grabbed my camera and took a few shots. It wasn’t working, so I sat down on the couch to put my camera back in the camera bag. Revere immediately pulled himself up next to the couch and started moving toward me.
“Now’s my chance.” I started taking pictures, and he kept crawling my way, then up my legs, and into my lap. Apparently, he wanted to pull on someone’s beard.
Andy, my son, took the pictures of me with Revere.
Copyright Timothy J. Hammons 2020.
When I heard about the Reformation Day gathering, I immediately thought of taking my camera because I wanted to take pictures of one particular child (blog post to follow) who has rather large eyes.
I love taking pictures of toddlers and young children who don’t know me, because they are really suspicious of who I am, and they give some of the best facial expressions. See Penny, Cyrus, and Peter below:
All photos Copyright Timothy J. Hammons 2020.
Reformation Day is a small celebration among Protestants in the area of Christianity known as Reformed. Most of these Protestants follow the Biblical truths put forth by John Calvin, a contemporary of Martin Luther, and leader of the Reformation in Geneva. His main thesis, in what is called Calvinism, is the sovereignty of God in all things. This sovereignty emphasizes man’s inability to save himself, and God’s overwhelming grace in saving a people to Himself, through Jesus Christ. To the Calvinist, as it was for Paul, no one seeks God… there is none who does good (Romans 3:11-12). This emphasizes that those who are saved, are saved by God’s grace alone, in Christ alone.
These truths was part of what Martin Luther declared when he posted his theses on the Wittenberg Door on October 31, 1517. The actual 95 Theses was over the abuses of the Roman Catholic church and its popes. But his driving issue, and posted on the door prior to the 95 Theses, was over justification by faith alone in Christ alone. That doctrine is the heart of the gospel, and at the heart of those of us who are called Reformed.
All that Luther and Calvin worked for, was a reformation of the church. The Roman Catholic church of the day, taught that man could earn his salvation by doing good works and earning enough merit to work their way out of purgatory into heaven. But Paul showed this not to be the case (Ephesians 2:8-10). We are saved by faith in Christ, not our works. Amen and amen. For if our works are tainted with the least bit of sin, they are rejected by God. We need the works of another, one who was perfect: Jesus Christ.
It is for this reason we remember October 31, 1517 and call it Reformation Day. Our celebration is not a mandate of God, but something we do with thanksgiving that God worked through men like Luther and Calvin for the purity of the gospel.
The following pictures were taking at our Reformation gathering and feature Arthur, also known as “Bear.” More pics to follow in the coming days.
All photos Copyright Timothy J. Hammons 2020.
From the Denton Square.
As I’ve said before, the best children to take photos of, are those who look at you with distrust. Their eyes are amazing. Scarlett clearly doesn’t trust me.
Last week, my boys and I drove down to see my Dad, and stopped by my sister’s house on the way. My oldest, Andy, and her oldest, Madie, got their own special photo shoot. It’s the second of two photo shoots I’ve had with them. The first one was 11 years ago.
And now, from the family in Tennessee, the latest in Gangsta wear by Annaleise. Photos by Jesse.
This is a bonus edition…
The sun came out on Tuesday for the first time in a fortnight, so I grabbed my camera and headed to Bishop Park in Plano, TX. Meet Avery. I know absolutely nothing about her, other than the fact that she didn’t want me to take her picture. Her mother did. In the conflict of wills, her mother won, and so did we. Avery is truly a beautiful little girl.
As you can see from the last photo, I did get her to smile.
Again, from the archives. I took these photos in October 2011, when we made an unexpected stop at Palo Duro Canyon outside of Amarillo, TX. It really was a sweet surprise, both in the excitement me and the boys had climbing over rocks and things, as well as the color of the canyon itself. I will do a follow-up post with some of the color photos.
As you can tell, Andy was going through a posing-by-pointing stage. Not sure why he was doing that, he was just being a little boy.
(Special Edition) May I introduce the first three shots of her young life, entitled: Musings on a Crumb.
(For our Family Fridays edition). A view of my boy on a swing a few years back. He’s grown a bit taller since then.
Another one from the archives. Taken back on July 5, 2012. Many of the children were grumpy because they stayed up late the night before watching a fireworks display. We had to work to get them to smile, except for Joey. He was in a special Joey mood.
We all know how it goes: buy a child a present and they end up playing with the box. In this case, Annaleise was playing with the bucket used to bring her toys out to the cabin. It is cute enough just with that. But then, Annaleise adds the icing-on-the-cake cute.
Cute on top of cute. Really cute. And did I mention cute?
This one is from the archives, and was written by our youngest son, Joey. Thankfully, he added arrows to his message so we could follow it. (Photos take July 2015).
