05.14.10 - African Safari!

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. But if you EVER get the chance to go on Safari DO IT! It's CRAZY how close you get to the animals. I rented a 100-400mm lens from lensprotogo for this trip. Masai Mara was a nice treat at the end of this trip.

Here's a video I took with my iphone of how close some of the elephants were.

The overcast weather was nice, I feel like it gave the photos a different feel than typical safari pictures.

I'd love your comments :)

JIM baker

p.s I THINK this will be the last Africa blog... I went and showed my grandma all of the africa pics last nite realized I overlooked some photos. I think I'll go back through the safari ones and post a few from time to time. Thanks for journeying with me!

05.03.10 - more photos of Okinda Kids

Meet Daniel Samson. He is 14 and in grade 7. He enjoys playing keyboard and playing football and wants to be a submariner.

This is Samuel Moseti. He is 12 and in grade 7. He enjoys drama and singing and wants to be a pilot.

This is George Ouma. He's 14 and in grade 7. He likes playing football and singing and wants to be a psychologist.

This is Austine Ndiege. He's 12 and also in grade 7. He enjoys music and wants to be a lawyer.

When I came back to shoot some more of the students there was not enough light in the location I was using before so I went outside and had the students stand against a wall, which is what you see above.

Here's a pic of Jess amongst a crowd of kids organizing them as I shot. All I did was turn around from where I was shooting and snapped this photo.

At one time while I was taking the pictures I smelt sewage and wasn't sure what was going on. Then I looked down and a couple of feet from where I was standing and raw sewage was in a small ravine. Remember that I was already sick while I was taking these photos. Then out of no where my eyes started burning and tears were just streaming out of my eyes and snot out of my nose. It got so bad that I couldn't see and had to run back to my room and wipe my eyes and blow my nose.

Click here to see video of Jess and I in action taking photos of the kids on the last day in Migori.

This is the last post about Okinda Kids. The next and final post about Africa will be about the Safari we went on. And I guess I MIGHT put some pictures from that trip... would you like that?

JIM baker

05.02.10 - orphans

Maureen Akinyi is 6 and in the nursery. She enjoys singing and her future dream is to pray for people.

Eliavona Aoko is 4. She is in the baby class and enjoys playing and hopes to help people in the future.

Both of these girls were brought to the compound that we were staying in while we in Migori, Kenya. A lady brought them both with death certificates for their parents saying that she could no longer take care of them. John and Pamela Okinda had JUST opened their own personal home for orphans and in a matter of weeks they had 14 orphans living with them.

JIM baker

04.25.10 - Okinda kids portraits and stories

This is Brighton Majwango. He's 7 and in the 1st grade. He likes singing and skipping and he dreams to be a pilot someday. It was probably Brighton's first time ever seeing a plane when we flew in.


This is Sharon Awuor. She is 11 and in the 7th grade. She likes to travel and play with friends. She wants to be an attorney when she grows up.


This is Wilfrida Moraa. She's 8 and in the second grade. She likes watching and wants to be a doctor.


This is Arnold Onyango. He's 8 years old and is in the first grade. He likes matching items and also wants to be a pilot.

Do me a favor. Take a minute to pray for these kids as you look at these pictures. Pray for them by name. Pray and ask God if you are suppose to help them in any way.

I struggled putting these pictures up here for everyone to see. I don't want it just to be some "nice picture" that we look at for 5 seconds and then disregard. These are real lives, with real dreams.

+ + + + +

From a photography standpoint... I saw this wall and wanted it as the background for the portraits. I went there early afternoon and the sun light was diffused shining in from a window to my right. I had the students step out about a foot or so from the wall.

There wasn't a TON of light, so I cranked my ISO up to 1600 to get a decent shutter speed hand held. I zoomed my 24-105 lens in around about 100mm and fired off 3 horizontal and 3 vertical pics. I focused in on their eyes. I choose f/4 to keep my shutter speed up and a shallow DOF to blur the background. Still a lot of these were pretty low for hand holding... 1/80th of a second or so. Relying pretty heavily on my IS.

The students were brought down in their classes by grade. Jess was handed a stack of sheets by the teachers with the students information on it. Name, age, grade, hobbies and dreams.

Jess called the students names and they came over to me to have their picture taken. After I took the pictures I told Jess what number the pictures were on the cf card and she wrote it down next to the students name. Jess was such a huge help, organizing the kids, letting the kids know who was on deck so the whole process went quickly.

Most of the students were very shy. When I asked them to smile they got embarrassed, sometimes their fellow classmates would playfully harass them which allowed me to get some pretty authentic expressions.

I had to continually ask the group of students to back up away from me. They were trying to see the display on the back of my camera and they would push in and start pushing me.

No fancy lighting set up... just good soft natural light. I tried to be fast, spending less than 30 seconds with each kid. Not my usual portrait technique but its a whole different ball game when you know you have to do 300 of these.

I wanted to shoot well enough and get good enough exposures that I didn't have to come back and edit all of these pictures. Sorting through and picking the best picture out of 6 (x 300) was enough for me. If any post production was done I might have bumped the exposures up just a tad in Lightroom in the quick develop module.

Questions? Comments?

I hope this blog post blessed you and brought a smile to your face. I can't help but look through these portraits and smile. :)

JIM baker

04.20.10 - the main reason I went to Africa...

This is Larisa Adoyo Ongeri. She is 14 and in the 8th grade. Larisa likes playing football, signing and reading storybooks One day she hopes to be a lawyer.

Larisa was the first of almost 300 portraits that I took while I was in Kenya.

If you're interested in sponsoring a student for $35 a month please contact Anne VanHouten.

Taken with the Canon 5d Mark II
24-105 f4 L IS USM
ISO 1600 - 67mm - f/4.0 - 1/60sec

I saw this wall near the entrance of one of the buildings when we went on our tour of the grounds. I took this picture of Arielle and knew that this would be the background for the portraits. Window light is coming in from the right.

I'll write more soon showing more portraits and talking about what was going on as I shot the portraits.

JIM baker

04.10.10 - Africa (peanut butter time)

Remember when we went to the Nakumatt and bought all of that food? We picked up enough peanut butter and bread for each kid to have a peanut butter sandwich. Many of them had never tasted peanut butter before so we decided to treat them. They really seemed to enjoy it!

This was the only thing that I got out of bed to do on this day, otherwise I was trying to sleep off the sickness.

The next Africa post will be about the main reason I went there.

In the mean time, I got bored of the blog and changed the layout again.

Leave some comments.

JIM baker

p.s New header pic from the engagement shoot by Pranee Loffer.

03.23.10 - mo loco attack

breakfast at U TOP IT Kailua Kona Hawaii

I don't know why but I've been thinking about Hawaii A LOT latley. Here's a hawaiian breakfast from a restaurant in town. It's called the mo loco attack.

It's made up of a pan crepe, fried rice, hamburger patty, egg, brown gravy with a side of spam and kona coffee too.

I've been real busy this week, but I'll try and get another Africa blog up this week.

In the mean time check out Seth and Jamie's blog. They are doing an awesome job of keeping us updated on their Kenya trip. They stayed in the same place we did when we got into Kenya. Jamie is a third grade teacher and is recording vlogs to keep her class updated!

Aloha!
JIM baker

03.16.10 - as promised another Africa blog SUNDAY morning

Sunday morning, Brian and Devo introduce themselves and are interpreted into Swahili to the congregation of over 600 people.

Worship was loud and joyful. Click here to see a video of some of the kids dancing.

Bishop John brings one of the students forward whose parents were killed in the election violence.

Second time preaching a sermon and I preached to a church of 600 in Kenya. I brought a simple message of God's love for them and their authority as sons and daughters of Christ. I also encouraged them to dream big dreams because we were all reaping the fruit of John Okinda's big dream.

Brian blows bubbles with some of the kids after the service.

Heather and Arielle are asked by the students to sing the US National Anthem... the students respond by singing theirs. Click here to hear them sing it.

Jess serves some of the female leaders in the church cookies. I will let Jess write a blurb about what she experienced here and post it soon.

While Jess and Anne were talking to the female leaders, Brian, Dave and I were talking to the pastors.

I was utterly humbled by this group of pastors. When I asked them to articulate their struggles as pastors someone stood up and said that their main struggles were as follows...

1. Our congregations are made up or orphans and widows 2. They have not eaten and do not have money for food 3. They do not have clean water

The group was so hopeful and I reminded them that without the supernatural intervention of God nothing would change. If Jesus could turn water into wine and He said that we would do greater things then maybe we need to be using our authority to be turning dirty water into clean water. A bold thing to say but it flew out of my mouth.

The group really wanted ownership of what they were doing and were not just looking for handouts. They were so grateful for the things that we were assisting them with but desperately wanted to become self sustaining. We were handed a micro-finance proposal.

While we were there we were able to buy them 3 acres of land with a river running through it which will start them in agriculture so that they can be self sustaining.

During this pastors meeting is when I first started to feel sick... I left this meeting to go to the bathroom and it was all down hill from there...

I'll post more soon and promise to leave all of the graphic sick stories out of it.

Take some time after reading this to pray for the pastors and church in Kenya.

JIM baker

P.S - leave COMMENTS!

03.02.2010 - more about AFRICA!!

Anne our team leader giving Bishop John a laptop that many people from Praise Fellowship helped buy him! He just kept saying "praise God, praise God" over and over again.

Before every meal someone would pour HOT water for us so we could wash our hands. There was only one source of running water on the grounds.

A shot of one of our meals. Rice, mango, french fries and chicken. African chicken is TOUGH.

We were given a tour of the grounds. This is one of the student dorm rooms. The dorm rooms held 10-12 kids.

Oh the joy of digital photography. Dave shows some of the kids a picture he just took of them.

The only source of clean running water. A well that is overused every day.

A student sits alone in a classroom to study. Bishop John's school has some of the highest test scores in the nation.

We went to the NAKUMATT which is similar to a Costco or a Sam's Club. It was about an hour drive to get here but everything was much cheaper in price compared to the local markets.

Brian piles up loaves of bread for a special treat of peanut butter sandwiches for the students. (Pictures coming soon!)

Each student got a bar of soap, a roll of toilet paper, and a bar of laundry soap. We spent around $1,000 USD on food and supplies. I asked Bishop John how long what we bought would last. He looked at me and said it would last about 3-4 days. Food is not cheaper in Africa. And when you feed 300+ people a day it gets expensive FAST.

JIM baker

02.15.10 - Okay finally a BIT more about Africa and some pictures

The Africa team and some of the staff gathers at Praise Fellowship on Wednesday Jan 27th to pray and say goodbye to family.

A shot from the window of one of our 3 flights. Which I don't remember.

Brian Adelgren getting his Kenyan phone set up in the Nairobi Airport.

Jess, Arielle, and Heather waiting patiently as our driver pulls up to take us to the AIM Mayfield Guest House.

The guys room complete with mosquito nets. Make sure you use those!

The dinner they served us at the guest house. It tasted more Mexican than African.

I'm going to try to go through the trip day by day with pictures and captions so you can get a feel for the trip a little better. We had 3 flights. Buffalo to Newark. Newark to London/Heathrow. And then London Heathrow to Nairobi.

The Newark to London flight was on a newer 777 and had individual touch screen tvs in the back of the headrests. Jess loves movies and long flights so she stayed up the whole flight and watched movies. I snoozed a bit and watched one movie. On this flight they served us chicken tikka massalla. I was pretty stokked about that.

The travel wasn't bad at all. Rick told me to avoid caffeine on the flights and drink tons of water and get up from time to time and move around and sleep when I could. Staying hydrated on the flights made them a lot more enjoyable. We arrived at the Mayfield Guest House in the dark. A few of us ate some dinner and showered and went to bed.

I'll write more about the day after this one tomorrow!

JIM baker