Tonight we went to Kensington’s Christmas service. For those that don’t know, Kensington is the church that Cheridy and I have attended for about 7 years. Every year they do a spectacular Christmas service. This year there were 22 services spread out over the three campuses with well over 25,000 people in attendance. It is such a blessing to be a part of this church and to witness the arts being used to serve God. It is also a blessing to be a part of the Kensington Community. This year the church did a drive called Christmas Care to raise money for causes such as faminine relief in Kenya, aids medicine for an orphanage in Brazil, and MANY others including the one near and dear to our hearts - feeding a community in eSikhawini, South Africa which is where Cheridy and I visited earlier this year. Anyway, just in the last few weeks, Kensington attenders have given over $170,000 to support these causes. God is moving and we’re so thankful to be a part of Kensington to see all these things happening!
Here are a few pictures that we took from the service this evening.:

We live in the city of Sterling Heights and every year they have an annual Christmas celebration. There was music, animals, carraige rides, and of course…Santa Claus!

This is a photo of the Upton House which is historical house right by City Hall.

Mayor Richard Notte just before giving Santa Claus the key to the city.

Santa gets the key.

There was a steady crowd around the bonfire to keep warm.

Horses pull a carraige around Dodge Park.

An inflatable snowman is one of many decorations.

Earlier today we did a photo shoot with Madhavi. She liked the more serious look, but she had an amazing smile, and the smile pics are the ones that turned out to be my favorite.

A couple days ago, I had the chance to visit a fellow artist named Robin Remick. Robin does some amazing abstract paintings that have some really cool textures and other 3-D details. Her paintings are quite large. The first two images below are 4′x4′ paintings and then the second two images show some of the texture and detail in some of her other work. Robin had me take some photos of her images that she could use on her website. If you like her work, she can be reached at robinre883@aol.com.

Last night we shot some pictures at the Scleroderma Foundation’s “Dinner, Dancing, and Diamonds” Gala event. There were some dance instructors from Arthur Murray Dance School in Royal Oak. Here are a few pictures:

This evening we went to downtown Detroit to the Roostertail Club where City Mission was having their annual fundraising gala. They had a super hero theme “ordinary people doing extraordinary things” which is a perfect description for what happens at City Mission. For those that don’t know about City Mission, they do amazing things for their community. From their website:

Our mission is to break the cycle of generational poverty by meeting the educational, physical and spiritual needs of families in the Brightmoor community, through loving, mentoring relationships that make life-change possible.

We have structured City Mission around four foundational “pillars” we believe will make transformation in the Brightmoor community possible. The four pillars are Education, Leadership, Family and Community.

Anyway, tonight as the event started we got to see an incredible sunset over the city. The event itself was a packed house and they had lots of items available for their silent auction along with a live auction and we can only hope/pray that they reached their financial goals for this evening.
Cheridy and I took some pictures there just to provide them with a little bit of documentation of their event. We also donated a portrait shoot for their silent auction and will be interested to see who the winning bidder is.

A few more pics can be viewed here.

We had an interesting project this morning. We were shooting some fairly abstract photos of 1st graders for their class to use at an auction/fundraiser. There were 20 kids and it was really “different” trying to come up with pictures that were abstract/generic which didn’t show faces.

Just posted a link to see one of our photo mosaics. I used a nifty little tool called Zoomify to make it so you can zoom in/out of the image using the plus and minus keys on the image. Here’s a link to the zoomable image:

http://www.arisingimages.com/wedding/jobs/rutledge/mosaic/index.htm

and here’s a tiny preview image:

Our chuch (Kensington) just opened a new campus on the east side of town near M-59 and Gratiot at the Armstrong Performing Arts Center. We were expecting a lot of people but there were a LOOOTTTT of people which was awesome!!! For anyone that wants to learn more about Kensington, check out kensingtonchurch.org.

This weekend we were up at the Tice cottage again to hang out. Ndumi Mafu was also up there and he’s planning on moving back to South Africa within the next year to start a Christian radio ministry among other things. We wanted to do some pics for Ndumi before he left so while we were at the cottage we took some time to go around and shoot some pics. Here are some of my favorites:

Saturday night we were driving home from a wedding and we stopped to view the detroit skyline and take some night photos and while we were out there, a fireworks display kicked off in front of cobo hall and we had quite a view!!

Tonight, our church (Kensington Community Church) held baptisms for about 160 people at Stony Creek Metro Park. Cheridy and I went and took photos for them. It was a beautiful sunny evening and we got to witness the baptisms in the lake at sunset which was really cool. While we were at it, we tried grabbing a few artistic shots as well.