As most of you know, photography has more or less become my life. For the past nine months, I have immersed myself in photography, video production and visual arts. I live, eat and breathe photography. It has definitely become my passion, and I have seen my skills develop and results improve significantly. Looking ahead, I think it is safe to bet that photography will be a significant part of all I do.

Which is why this is so hard.

My other major passion is a program called Quest. Quest and I grew up together, you might say; God has used my experiences in running the program to mature me and develop me in unbelievable ways, and at the same time, I have infused a great deal of myself—my values, goals and burdens—into the Quest program. Quest definitely is my heartthrob. It is difficult, extremely so, but rewarding. I see guys lives get changed; I see sons renewing their relationship with their parents, I see young men embracing a passion for God.

But it has a cost.

I’ve had to give up things in the past for Quest: My sleep, my summers, fun with friends when they are home from college, time with brothers and family, trips out west—all those great things one can do in June and July and August.

This year, I’m having to give up photography. Not the taking of photos—I will definitely be doing that—but the lifestyle of living behind the lens, capturing the moment, drifting behind the scenes and always being everywhere while being seen nowhere. Its hard. I am struggling with laying down my camera, shutting off my photography RSS feeds, putting away my camera bag.

The venerable Jay Maisel said there were two ways to get inspired and revive your photography: Setting the camera down, or taking a trip. I guess I’ll be doing a bit both, and I hope it will revive my photography, not kill it. I hope I can pick up the camera this fall with a renewed sense of vision and creativity.

I started this post hoping to come up with something exciting and dramatic and interesting; I wanted to end with a challenge to come to Quest and “lay down” your hobbies for a few weeks. I guess this post ended up being a bit bluer; anyhow, you should still come to Quest. Maybe you’ll come away with a renewed vision.

As promised, an explanation of how I photographed in the rain and kept my camera, at least, dry. This was born out of desperation. For starters, spare gear (a small MiniDV camcorder, my SB-600 and a lens) were all in ziploc bags inside my lumbar pack. This kept them all waterproof. For the camera itself, I took my lightweight Gore-Tex jacket and put the camera inside. I stuck my right arm through the left sleeve, allowing me to grab the camera with my right hand. I then stuck the camera’s lens through the right sleeve, securing the watertight elastic wrist closure around the front of the lens hood. I was able to shoot by positioning the viewfinder just poking out of the neck hole in the jacket. This worked well.

When it came to actually shooting, I was careful to keep the camera tilted somewhat down; this cut down on the amount of water on the lens. I was able to zoom the lens with my left hand through the jacket; there was enough slack in the sleeve to be able to twist it. The D200, like most of Nikon’s high end cameras, have amazing UIs because almost all of the controls can be adjusted with the right thumb while shooting. While actively shooting, all of the controls I need provide either tactile feedback (where I can feel the setting by the position of the control) or display in the viewfinder. The whole jacket ensemble looked dorky but it kept things dry in an absolute deluge. Here are a couple photos I took with this getup on: (click to zoom in).