William Petruzzo

As promised a few days ago, I’ve posted a selection of my photo coverage from The Call in Washington DC. It can be found on my professional website, along with an introduction to the album.

I spent the day today in Washington, DC. I was there expressly for the purpose of photographing the major event “The Call”.

The event called sought to gather thousands of young adults together for a day of mourning, fasting, repentance and prayer for the sake of our nation. The event also had an extremely heavy emphasis on abortion issues.

The event was hosted by folks from several churches, but most notably IHOP (International House of Prayer) in Kansas City and Morning Star down in North Carolina.

If you’re at all familiar with Morning Star or IHOP, you know they’re part of, what I call, the hyper-charismatic church. Not a criticism, just trying to get you into today’s environment a bit.

The crowd however was surprisingly diverse. There were folks there from what seemed to be nearly every denomination I can think of. Even the strange ones with dress codes.

Truthfully, I have mixed feelings about the event. I’m torn because of what seems clear to be questionable theology amongst the hosting organizations and much of their execution of the event. However, there were many on the Washington DC mall that were genuinely interceding and fasting on behalf of our nation and the unborn. So, in that respect, I’m encouraged.

I won’t go into the specifics of my theological questions. I’m just not sure how important it is.

Keep an eye on my professional website over the next couple days. I’ll be posting an introduction to the photographs from today as well as a large number of them.

Hey, I folks, I know I posted about this a couple weeks ago, but I wanted to use today’s post to just hand a reminder to anyone who might’ve missed it.

I redesigned my website! The new Petruzzo.com is bigger, more informative and most importantly, it has lots more pictures. I hope you all will check it out, and let me know what you think!

I would also like to direct your attention to the right. There is a new widget that you might’ve missed. It’s titled “Latest from Petruzzo.com”. That is a feed of all the most recent articles and photographs added to my professional website. I would love your feedback and support!

For a photographer, light and shadows are everything. Without light, there would be no color. Without shadows there would be no definition. When the light is dull and flat, the shadows appear smooth and barely noticeable. Subtle. Nearly invisible.

This is the most desirable type of light. It’s easy and it looks good.

In the brightness of direct light, especially sunlight, shadows become crisp. They become dark. They define the features of whatever they appear on. They are harsh. They are unattractive. In most circumstances, the photographer hates them. If he is to capture his subject “well” and flatteringly, he will likely try eliminate them.

This tango with the shadows—how much like every day is it? How much like every life is it?

In the direct sunlight of true righteousness, even a subtle blemish casts shadows, dark, sharp and unattractive. They mar what they fall on. In such light, the subject is uncomfortable, squinting to see. And the camera, it captures every hideous ridge and outcropping of the subjects deformed features.

But in a life that is dull, lacking of the direct rays of the Son, the blemishes are hidden from sight. The deformities are hidden from view. The problems are construed, even into being something attractive. The subject goes on, unaware of their condition. Comfortable with the smooth gradient of light across their faces that goes from light to dark between features.

They are never the worst, nor could they ever be the best, but they always look good. They are satisfied with the illusion and the comfort that rides in tandem.

But God is a photographer and he always shoots his photographs with direct lighting and no blemish is ever obscured. But God, the brilliant photographer that he is, always shoots the faithful with a fill light. And for them, no shadow is ever seen. Brilliant.

After about two months of long days and (seemingly) endless tweaking and troubleshooting, I’ve finally finished new website! I have to admit, I love Wordpress & Zenphoto who provided such an excellent platform to build my website on!

I kept a familiar layout, but upgraded to a formal status with khaki colors! I also added a ton of new information. I now have a section for regular updates which I’ll use for introducing new albums and images. I also have a more robust section for pricing, as well as a fairly comprehensive FAQ section, answering a lot of questions people might have.

I’ve also tweaked the way that images display, making navigation easier, and hopefully accessible from lower screen resolutions.

All in all, I’m pleased with the new website. I hope you’ll take a few minutes to check it out and maybe drop me some feedback!

I just got home from a long day of wedding photography. A family friend hired me last minute to photograph their daughter’s wedding. The family is devoutly catholic with a very large extended family which makes for a unique shooting experience from start to finish. This wedding only hosted about 350 guests, but the last one I shot for them hosted about 700. Needless to say, it’s always a learning experience, but also an enjoyable one.

To add to everything else, the ceremony and reception are both a good two hours from my base of operations (i.e., my bedroom). Phew. Regardless, I’m grateful for work.

I’ve been driving for four hours today, and on my feet and in my camera the rest of the day, so I’m beat. But I did want to share a brief thought. When I got home, I decided to dig a tad and see what words of wisdom our deceased puritan brothers might have concerning marriage; considering that I spent all day at a wedding and all. What I found was Thomas Bridges’ exhortation to godly men to seek diligently for women of spiritual beauty and riches. Enjoy!

“If thou art a man of holiness, thou must look more for a portion of grace in thy wife, than for a portion of gold with a wife; thou must look more for righteousness than riches; more after piety than money; more after the inheritance she hath in heaven, than the inheritance she hath on earth; more at her being new born, than at her being high born.”

I suppose presumably, in Bridges day it wouldn’t be uncommon for a man to seek his spouse based on her father’s bank account. But his words remain applicable—even if we’re not talking about monetary wealth any more.

Amen, Bridges.

I think going into the city is a little like throwing up. When I was growing up, when I got sick I’d do just about anything to keep from throwing up. I mean, lay perfectly motionless for hours if necessary. I hated so completely the feeling of throwing up. All the muscles in your stomach tensing up and your throat trying to force stuff up that may or may not be there. Frankly, it’s disgusting. I still hate it; although I’m better at feigning a cool temper about it now.

I just returned from driving into the city. I hate the city; I hate the idea of going there. Well today, there was no choice. For some reason, Penn Camera thought that the best place for there rental facility was inside the city, and today it just so happened that I needed to rent something. So, begrudgingly, I got into my car and started out. Interestingly enough, I found that the traffic spots that usually cause hang ups seemed strangely clear. That was nice, I thought to myself, “perhaps I judged too soon.” That was before it took me thirty-five minutes to find a parking space.

I finally found a parking space about ten blocks away that I’m still not even sure was a parking spot. Of course by that time though I was so happy to have found something I accepted the circumstances cheerfully. I squeezed into the spot, climbed out of the car, threw on some tunes via the ipod and started out on my way. Now, it’s completely possible that the feelings that followed were really only in contrast to the boiling rage and frustration that’d consumed me the past thirty-five minutes or maybe the entrancing melodies of Anathallo, but there was a bizarre sense of peace walking down the city street with all of my new stranger friends. Ten blocks went by in no time, and after I’d made my rental there was even a hint of, “Bill, maybe you should find some coffee shop and just hang out for a while.” That voice though, I’m pretty convinced, was just my brain trying to convince me not to rejoin the gigantic metal ant-farm.

Well, appealing to the very least of my expectations, retreating from the city was quite painless. And that’s when it hit me, this incredible spiritual truth that I derived from this adventure. No, I’m just kidding. As I was driving out, I thought to myself that there must be some spiritual lesson that I can learn from all this so that I can write my blog for the day. It didn’t come. But you know what, that’s okay.

            When I was about ten-ish my family took an eight week cross country vacation in an RV. It was exciting for me, but somewhat devastating for my oldest sister who just so happened to turn eighteen while we were on the road. I have what feels like a bottomless goodie bag of exciting, funny or humiliating stories from that trip. I’m not going to tell any of them right now. There is an insignificant story, however, sparked by the surfacing of a roll of film that I would like to share.

             You see, because of my father’s job, he wasn’t able to join us for the first half of the trip. That meant it was just my mother, two sisters and me on the road for about a month before he showed up. My dad is a planner he’s the kind of guy who spends fifteen or twenty minutes planning out his rout to the grocery store. So keeping this in mind, he knew we would want to take pictures of all the things the trip would bring us to (not to mention spending a ridiculous amount of money on it; he wanted proof it ever happened). So, in all of the planning, a small detail was to keep the RV stocked with about two and a half tons of disposable cameras so that at any moment, we wouldn’t have to reach more than three feet to put our hand on one.

            For me, who grew up around my dad always taking pictures, it was like the heavens shown open and revealed my destiny. I woke up, accidentally, very early on one of the first few days of our trip. I believe we were in the Carolinas somewhere, probably at a RV park, or maybe just bumming hospitality off a liquor store or something. Outside it was gray and rainy and probably pretty cold. There were seagulls all over the place on the beach nearby. My ten year old delusion was, “this is my chance! National Geographic, here I come!” I supposed I would capture, perhaps, the rare mating habits of the western common seagull, never before seen by human eyes. Yes, and right here in the parking lot; and of course, all with this fantastic disposable Kodak camera.

A few weeks later, when a batch of cameras was dropped off to be developed (we always ordered doubles), my mother was handed a stack of about sixty-four mystery photographs of seagulls and the flagrantly boring Carolina coast at 6:30 am. A self portrait of myself in the stack eventually gave me away.

So the point? The point was really to give a back story and reason for sharing these, the first ever (known) photographs taken by me:

Sorry they couldn’t be bigger; but you get the idea.

This link was posted on Challies.com; it was too good not to share. Check it out: http://dailyrumors.blogspot.com/2007/11/15-brilliantly-timed-sports-photos.html

My favorite is the basketball player licking the other basketball players armpit. Priceless! I’ll write some more, important things later today. Until then, enjoy!