Happy New Year Everyone!! I hope that you are having a wonderful start to your 2006! Do you have a New Year's Resolution? Mine is to make more conscious efforts to do things for other people. I want to be the kind of guy that is known for my frequent selfless acts of kindness. Life is so much more fulfilling when your agenda each day is to make someone else's day better. When I go to sleep at night I want to have pictures of people's smiles popping into my head from the things I did that day to make them happy.

I am so thankful for how God has blessed my family and my business in 2005. The more we rely on God, the more blessings he trusts us with. He wants to spoil us without spoiling us if you know what I mean. If you want to maximize God's blessing in your life this year, you have to prove to God that his blessings will not make you big-headed, selfish, distant, or corrupt. Money is the root to all sorts of evil and God does not want to lose us to our own greed. The key to maximizing God's blessing in our lives is to become more and more generous, loving, compassionate, and selfless with each blessing. This is not an easy task! Every dollar you make will bring to mind all of the toys it could buy. It's best to make a policy to give first before spending anything. It's the same concept behind saving your money, only with giving you have eternal rewards. I would much rather store up my treasures in heaven that spend them here on Earth. But don't get me wrong, I still like nice things as you can tell by my last post. I think God wants us to have nice things as long as those nice things are not the driving force behind our work. God wants to be the driving force behind everything we do. He has a purpose for every one of us and it's up to us to let go of our own ambitions and give it all to Him. If you are faithful with the little things, you will get more.

It's hard to write this stuff, because my worst fear is looking like a hypocrite. I think many people are turned off by Christians because of hypocrisy. I think by writing something like this, it creates accountability for me because I'm now responsible for walking the talk!

I pray God's richest blessing on you all! Remember... He is our provider and we should trust him. If you're struggling financially, physically, or emotionally... Seek God (I've found this works best on my knees) and He will deliver you!

The photo above was from a recent wedding. The bride and groom (Julia and Chris) decided to have photos taken together before the ceremony. I like to make sure they are all alone when they first see each other and capture their surprise and emotion. Isn't it a great job we wedding photographers have?!! I will post a new portfolio piece on my website soon of this beautiful wedding so keep an eye out for it!

It was taken with my D2x, 70-200mm AF-S VR lens zoomed to 75mm, set manually to F2.8 at 1/250 sec, 250iso, RAW+JPG medium-fine, available light, no flash.

P.S. I'm leaving tomorrow for a snowboarding trip to Big White, B.C. to spend time with my wife on the slopes and to hang with some great friends and awesome wedding photographers - Gary Fong, David Jay, David Beckstead, and Amy Nave. I think a few more people are coming up, but I'm not sure who is going to make it. And don't worry.. I'll wear my helmet :)