It’s just after 2 am and I am awake. I had gone to bed just fine and slept for several hours. My wife woke me and then I just could not get back to sleep. I tried taking a long hot shower. However, my mind was filled with thoughts of Easter.

Several months back our lead pastor had come up with a very creative idea for this year’s Good Friday & Easter services. Initially the ideas all worked just fine in my quick planning and we were on our way to what could be a very engaging service. We enlisted an artist in the church to help get the idea rolling and to take care of the artistic element. I was excited.

We scheduled a meeting of the minds to flesh out these great ideas. Prior to this meeting I spent time thinking through the logistics and a few key elements failed in my layout. I had drawn out the elements in scale, and the key stage element we based this plan around is several feet to tall for the venue we were going to be at. Because our Worship Center only seats 700, and we don’t want to do 8 services, we rent the local performing arts center that seats 2400 and only do 2 services. The theaters proscenium height was 25′ 11″. Since we must do IMAG in this room we are flying a 12′x20′ screen. This encroached into the vertical space we needed for the other element, which also needed to be centered.

I came up with measurements on a smaller version we could build that resolved the problems. No one, including myself, was as excited for this new solution as we were for the original one, but it worked. Planning continued. The artist and video editor started working on their details, the Worship Pastor started laying out the services, and I went back to the other details of doing a large off-site event.

That meeting was several weeks back. My mind was not at peace with the new plan, even though, logistically it resolved our problems. On The day before this long sleepless night began, our Worship Pastor had emailed out his idea for the music that would be the audio background to our special service element. It was a great selection.

But I was not at peace. This is what kept me up this long night. The message we are sharing is far larger than my compromise was. In a 2400 seat auditorium this element simply lacked the punch and impact that we all knew we wanted. The music was outstanding, the artist’s plans were fantastic, and in my mind I could see great promise for great lighting to bring it all home. But that element was still just… small.

For the next several hours I sketched, listened to the music we selected, prayed, closed my eyes to visualize, and repeated those steps several times. I went back to bed, then, ran back downstairs to my computer, then back to bed. It was on my third attempt to sleep that I believe God was finished building anticipation and revealed the solution to me. I sprang up from my bed, back down to my computer and fired off emails to our Worship Pastor and the Technical Director at the Theater.

The following morning (just a few hours later) I went through the idea with the venue TD and he agreed it would work well, and even he liked the idea. The solution was actually quite elegant and will be uncomplicated to initiate during the service, which will help it in being executed successfully.

I had given up on a better plan than my compromise. I moved on, and let the ball drop and sit on “ok”. I am thankful that God had better plans for His services. He poked and prodded me until I got it. I had not prayed about the solution until this long night, I just powered through and “fixed” the problem to make it work.

My advice to myself, and you: Pray! If I had prayed, spent time thinking outside the box, and had not given up so easily I may have had a full nights rest!

Wyatt Johnston serves as the Tech.Arts Director at Fellowship Bible Church in Topeka, KS. Since age 11 he has been behind the scenes serving the technical needs of church, broadcast, and theater productions. Married to Jeanine, they have 2 children, David and Sarah. Wyatt enjoys amateur photography, target shooting with his bride, and playing with his children. Wyatt can be reached at wyattjohnston.com, me@wyattjohnston.com, or @wyattjohnston on twitter.

I caught myself lost in my own pictures. Each image rushed back memories of how I shot it, where, and why. I then knew I missed the daily shooting. I am not going to say I will shoot everyday, but, I want to be that person again – capturing everyday moments.

I still have my camera with me, everyday. I carry this silly heavy backpack with 5 lenses and a D7000 plus my iPad and Laptop – ALL THE TIME. Why the heck am I not shooting?

Anyway, in October I was loading my sound rig into a church for a funeral for a very good friend of mine’s grandmother. They needed sound reinforcement to support the small band that would be leading worship in the service. While loading in a US Air Force Boeing E-3 Sentry was coming in on approach to FOE (Forbes Airport, in Topeka). I almost ignored it and continued to unload, but after some arguing of “Why not” I grabbed my camera, tossed on my 1973 Nikon 400mm lens and fired.

USAF Boeing E-3 Sentry AWACS Landing. Nikon D7000 | 400mm | f/11 | 1/400′s | ISO 200

And in another incident of almost missed pictures, here are my children playing in the fall leaves while I was unloading sound gear from my van. Once again, I almost did not take the time to shoot these pictures. Here is what less than 10 minutes of my time yielded.

Nikon D7000 | Tamron 18-270 Zoom at 55mm | f/5.6 | 1/125′s | ISO 110 | Flash Used.

In closing – I am almost always ready to shoot – but I have missed too many moments out of pure laziness.

I knew he would have a blast putting it up, but was not expecting how excited he really was.

I cannot wait until the day he fully understands the reason Christmas is celebrated. Not Santa, Not Gifts, but to remember the birth of our savior and to use Christmas as a reminder that we are children of God, and he is worthy of our Praise. We should not be bowing at the feet of spoiled consumerism. I should add, this does not mean I am anti-capitalist, just looking to keep life simple, and keep God the focus of this season.

Jeanine and I want to leave a Godly legacy with our children. To do that, we need to keep in mind the wake we leave behind us.

Blessings to you this season.

Nikon D7000 | Nikon 35mm Prime Lens | f/1.8 | 1/200 | No flash.

I have big plans to do more blog updating, and I am going to do better. By nature, I am not disciplined enough to share when I learn something new – however, I am constantly looking at everyone elses blogs and tweets when I need solutions to my problems and challenges that they may have encountered. So… I will – I will share more on here.

What prompted this post was some work I recently helped with at a local church. Myself and some members of our FBC Tech.Arts team joined me to help another church in town tune and re-aim their speakers in their worship center. A year or so back this church hired a company to upgrade their audio system.

From a design standpoint it was simply the wrong solution for the style and room of this church, but that is not what this post is about. This post is about safety. I admit to letting some things slide, for example, I (gulp) plug extension cords into power strips from time to time. This is a minor issue, and I have a very close idea to the current we are pulling and believe that it is safe.

Where do I really make a stand? Hanging overhead. Rigging speakers, projectors, TV’s, lights etc MUST BE DONE SAFELY. As you can imagine, what we found at the church we were helping was unsafe. It was not the churches fault, they hired “professionals” who designed the system and installed these speakers.

I am not a rigger. Repeat. I am not a rigger. I defer to the professionals usually, and when I don’t, I research the heck out of the correct rigging from the manufacturer of the devices and speak to the building engineers to ensure the load is safe. Over engineer everything, think through every detail – LIVES depend on it. There are some very simple things that many churches (and bars) do wrong.

What was so bad at this church? (the load is a 70lb speaker cabinet, 2 hang points with a pull-back chain)
a) they used bent-over eyebolt lags screwed into 2×6 roof beam.
- these can slowly bend open over time and drop the load to the floor. (in this case, onto the pastor)
- the lags can weaken and pull the wood grains out.
- proper would use welded or forged eye bolts with nuts, washers, and locking nuts.

b) un-rated carabiners used to connect the chains.
- these have 2 failure points, the pin and the latch. In this case, they actually has started to bend and warped already.
- we replaced these with 800lb rated locking chain links. better would have been shackles, but we had none available.

Other common issues with rigging are

- Hanging speakers or other items not designed for it. Most commonly cheap pole-mounted speakers made from a MDF or particle board. What generally happens is the bent-over eye bolt lags are screwed into the speaker cabinet. As above the eyebolt can open, but what is more likely to happen is the cabinet failing under its own weight. The wood will fall apart and the speaker will fall. I see this a lot. I have actually seen this failure when the top piece of particle board separated from the rest of the speaker cabinet, dropping it to the ground. No one was under it at the time thankfully.

- No safety cable on lighting. Just use the dang safety cables. I am guilty of this one, and there is no excuse.

- Split chain links – seriously, these cheap junky chain links used to hang 2lb decorative lights cannot hang your big wooden cross or speakers.

- No locking washers, double nuts, or locking nuts. Always use some method to keep your nuts from coming loose. It adds almost no cost but can save injury or death.

As I said – I am not a rigger. If you don’t know – hire someone (with experience and insurance) to get the job done right. Don’t chance this stuff guys.

Some more great information can be found here: http://svconline.com/how/features/avinstall_stage_rigging/

Thanks. Rant. End.

Owning firearms & being a father means care must be observed to protect my family, the days of having a loaded weapon in my night stand are long over. I now have a digital safe that I keep my gun in, away from my children. My wife knows the combination and how to safely use the firearms, and will protect our family if we had an intruder in our home.

I had wanted for many years to purchase a smaller, compact firearm that would be safe & small enough for concealed carrying. I did look around town and did some research on what to purchase, I landed on a Smith & Wesson Bodyguard .380 sub-compact.

To safely carry & operate a firearm, you need to use it and be very comfortable with it. In the last week to learn the weapon, I took some great opportunities to shoot at the range and at friends land. My wife even got in on the action at the our local indoor gun club. I have put 500 rounds through the little handgun, it has performed beyond my expectation.

In honor of 500 rounds, here it is:

Shot with: Nikon D7000 / 50mm / f/1.8 / ISO 250 / Shutter 1/80's / Flash Used, bounce right.

This post is just some free-hand panoramas I shot while there, they turned out well so I decided to share. I have several other facility pictures, drop me a note if your interested. These were all shot using my Tamron 18-270 PZD Lens at 18mm on a Nikon D7000. The stitching was done by Hugin software, a great & powerful cross-platform panorama picture creating tool. You can click on each for a larger version, but even the larger versions are only 1920 pixels wide, otherwise they are 30MB each as JPG’s. Shoot me a message if you want the largest versions.

#1 – Standing in the last row, center house. 5 shots.

#2 – Standing against the edge of the stage looking into the house. Center. 5 shots. 

#3 – 3-shot panorama of the outdoor patio / baptism area.

This post is going to be my top 10, in my humble opinion. Obviously I attend to find tools and resources applicable to my job in my church. You will notice almost no IMAG products, because, we don’t use or need IMAG. These are items or companies that stuck in my brain mostly because they solve an issue I have, or I just loved it.

#1 – DPA – d:fine // more info // Headworn Microphone

So you love the sound of the favorite 4066 or 4088 DPA capsule but the two-ear design, well, is awkward? You love your Countryman E6, but it keeps floating away from your pastors face? This new mic from DPA makes me very happy. Our lead pastor consistently struggles with a mic that won’t stay in place. I have fiddled, molded, re molded his mic so many times. It is a constant worry I live with – it’s is sad that a mic could be so distracting and challenging.  As you may imagine, I was overcome with joy when I tried this new DPA mic on. I held right to my ear, without pressure, and would NOT move. I looked silly as I bopped my head to and fro trying to get it to budge. Simple, Clean, and Easy. Also nice is how modular it is.  The ear mount, boom, and cable are all separable, so a piece gets broke, or you want to switch to a beige instead of black boom, no problem. Great work to the design team on this one, they nailed it. These are looking to start shipping soon. Price in the $650 range would be my best guess, but I really am not sure.

#2 – Elite Core –  PM-16 // more info // Personal Monitor Mixers

I bumped into Jeff Pavelec from Stark Raving Solutions on the floor and asked the ‘see anything amazing’ type of question. He asked if I had seen this Elite Core PM-16. I engaged the puzzled look and said “What?” I had never heard of Elite Core, but made an assumption that it was another silly expensive product trying to play in the land of Roland’s M-48 & My Mix personal mixers. I told Jeff, I want a 16 channel product priced between HearBack (yech) and Avioms. He stood up and led me to their booth. It is that product. FINALLY! It addresses some ever present concerns with Aviom A) The plastic body that tends to crack when it tips over, and B) The headphone amplifier that just lacks the presence and power many musicians would prefer. The casing is steel with dial guards to help even more. The knobs are smooth and have a nice resistance level to them. It offers the simplest method I have seen for personal mixing. 16 volume knobs, 16 pan knobs, an on-board ambience mic, basic 3 band EQ, a single nob compressor/limiter, and a master volume. Simple. You do lose the mix-saving ability, but at a better price and easier use, I think the trade of is worth it. This is a NEW company, but they have a solid, US made, product. The input option is one – a 16 channel analog input 1RU device. It outputs to a POE network switch then drops to the mixers from there. No limit to the number of mixers, but like Aviom, if you daisy chain, you need to add a power supply to the 2nd unit. These will probably find their way into our Youth venue very soon. I did not see enough of a reason to ditch our existing Aviom system, but, unless the saving option is a ‘must have’, I cannot see every buying another Aviom rig.

#3 – German Light Products – Impression Spot One // more info // Led Moving Head

I love LED’s, and it has been awesome to see the advances of LED technology grow so fast. This fixture impressed me in several ways. Main great feature – truly high output LED moving head spot with real moving head options. This unit serves up a mean 400 watt LED light source that competes with the light output of over 1k discharge fixtures. It does a daylight white that is even and clean, edge to edge. No shadowing or color rainbows at the edge. It handles the hard orange-yellow spectrum beautifully. 2 full featured gobo wheels plus an effect wheel. You can layer the gobos and effects, and toss in any color that this pristine RGB chip can mix. 20,000 hour light-source expected life, quite and cool chassis, and low power draw for great output. This will land in the $10k range, making it comparable with like-output full featured units from other groups. They said the RGB ship is manufactured by a projector company, which may help explain the excellent color mixing engine in this baby.

#4 – Littlite – LW-12-LED // more info // Utility Light

I love utility. What is more utility than a light? We own many of Littlite’s LED gooseneck lights around FBC, with a 3 postion switch of OFF, RED, WHITE+RED. No dimming options to speak of. I know this sounds petty, but I want a dimming version! Now they make one. It took a little modifying of the base  to get the new custom-made dimmer to fit, but they got it done. It starts at off, fades in the 3 RED LEDs, and once those are full up, it adds the white LED’s until you have the perfect brightness. The new base also has a standard detachable DC barrel, so no permanent pig tail.

#5 – Ashly Audio – PEMA // more info // DSP + Amplifier

So far the products in my Top 10 have been ones I would practically use. This is one that does not fit my needs, but it would fit many smaller churches, funeral homes, chapel, and other small-venue needs perfectly. This 2 Rack-Unit 25 pound class D amplifier is far more than it appears. It packs up to 8 250 watt outputs with a full on-board DSP. Not a wimpy baby DSP, a full feature Protea DSP. Automixing, Tele-Paging Ducking, 70v options, Delays, Compression, 8 on-board mic preamps, auto feedback surpression and more. In 2RU. 25 pounds. Network Enabled. They even have the Decora-Style wall plate with presets to run the DSP. All of this, not kidding, less than $3000. Small church this could run mains, monitor mixes, foyer, nursery, a recording output, and something else.

Thats it for tonight, I have other thoughts to share, but will attack that enroute back to Topeka tomorrow. The next post will talk about great products from Teradek, ETC, RSC, DB Technologies, Danley Sound Labs, and Nexo.

Ron Daniel

If you attend FBC in Topeka, you should by now know the song “Never Once” from Matt Redman. We introduced it on October 8th, these were the first services following the passing of one of our long time volunteers, Ron Daniel. Ron’s death was unexpected, but his death on earth was a celebration in Heaven. We are left on earth short one amazing servant, humble guy. Ron’s wanted people to know about this God we love, working many weekends every month serving in our Mountain kids program as a Tech.Arts volunteer to ensure those kids knew about the God that loved them. This still left his wife, Susan, and family missing Ron’s presence here on earth.

Never once did we ever walk alone
Never once did you leave us on our own
You are faithful, God, You are faithful.

Scars and struggles on the way but with joy our hearts can say
Never once did we ever walk alone, carried by Your constant grace
Held within Your perfect peace, Never once, No, we never walk alone

This image was one I shot last year on my Nikon D40. He was hanging out at the Tech booth just having a conversation when I snapped this one. Our Tech.Arts team will be forever made better because of his involvement with us.

Grow

Our Worship & Tech.Arts teams gather several times per year to fellowship, look at the vision for the future, and to learn together. This Grow on October 9th was great. We had a majority of our teams there. Erik & Sarah Oldberg spent time downloading their recent experience attending the Hillsong worship conference in Sydney, Australia.

Fall Harvest Moon

I had the opportunity to run sound for our Youth on October 12th, as I was leaving the building this amazing moon jumped out at me. The weather was beautiful with a fair wind that was moving the clouds quickly between myself and the moon. It made for an evening of changing moon landscapes.

Spoken

In Topeka, Fellowship Bible Church and Topeka Bible Church have a great partnership with Trash Mountain Project. Trash Mountain is uniquely equipped to serve communities around trash dumps throughout the world. This event was a fund raising banquet for the group. Our Tech.Arts team worked hard Sunday afternoon to transform our stage for this event.

Pumpkin Patch

My sons daycare/preschool does a field trip about every other week. I was able to take a day off week ago Friday so my wife & I were able to join them. Our son David had a blast climbing the mounds of hay, “driving” his train car, and picking out a pumpkin.

I arrived at the parking lot arguing with my self, ultimately, my inner shutterbug wins. I depart for a site I have taken many pictures, the Kansas River boat access in Topeka just west of the Governors mansion.

Below is one of my favorite shots from that September 8th morning. Below that is a video montage I shot as well.

Kansas River at Topeka. || Nikon D7000 | F/16 | 1/160's | ISO 400 | 62mm ||

Video Montage