Brad Peters Photography

Three years ago this month I took what was for me, a bold step of faith and entered into the industry of professional photography. It has been an exciting three years thus far, and I’ve been blessed with wonderful clients who’ve trusted me as I’ve grown my business! Thank you to all who’ve allowed me to shoot your portraits, your events, your weddings, your significant moments!

To celebrate, I’ve put together a “33% off for my 3rd Year” offer.  For the first three customers who respond to his posting and who book and shoot a portrait session by February 29, (senior, baby/child or family) you’ll receive a 33% discount off my normal session fees.  The discount  is good only for a standard 90 minute portrait session, limited to a location within 45 minute drive from Riverside and for only the first three folks who book.  It doesn’t apply to prints or image DVD’s.

So give me a call if you’ve been waiting or putting off those senior portraits or family time images!

Last July while vacationing in Washington DC, I woke for an early morning run. The mid-week streets were not yet crammed with commuters, and the memorials on the mall were equally absent of pedestrians and sightseers.

My run wandered by monuments of the past … each standing as present testimonies to national greatness and tragedy. I made a lap around the obelisk to Washington; over and around the tidal basin where Jefferson stood still beneath his immortal words that “all men are created equal”. The four rooms of FDR’s memorial were empty except the sound of rushing water. FDR sat in his chair and watched me go by, his carved countenance seeming to match the mood of the time in which he served.

Empty too were the steps that lead to Lincoln’s great memorial. They were bathed in the gold of a rising sun. I climbed them slowly, selfishly enjoying the solitude and the calm before a mid-summer DC day.

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In that my profession is photography, it would make sense that I might live by the creed, “A picture is worth a thousand words…” While I would agree that a great image can be worth a literaryK at minimum, (and I’m always on the hunt to find or shoot one of those), I’m not so tunnel-visioned that a good book (with or without pictures in it) can’t capture my imagination like a great photo can.

Reading was something my folks had to force upon me when I was a kid, and maybe the required nature of the reading back in those days robbed it of its joy. But adulthood has a way of sometimes reversing the trends of the past and digging into a good biography is like taking an excursion into the past or lives of others or to thoughts not like my own.

Here’s a list of the books that captured me this year.

Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy has me by the throat as I write. It’s a 550 page tome of the famed Lutheran theologian who challenged German Christians to live out their faith in spite of the persecution that came with Hitler and the Third Reich. Without doubt, it’s laying the biographical landscape behind Bonhoeffer’s theology of “cheap grace” and more than adequately explains the underpinning’s of Bonhoeffer’s most famous quote, “When God calls a man, He bids him come and die…”  Such a good biography and Metaxas has a pleasant style of writing — despite the copious details of Bonhoeffers life during the ’20′s, ’30s and ’40′s.

I have my sister to thank for tuning me in to the writings of Timothy Keller.  The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism  and Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes us Just by  Keller had my head spinning. Dr. Keller is an eloquent and intelligent defender of the faith, and his book on living justly has really challenged my assumptions of what it means to be a fol lower of Christ.  More importantly, the read has already brought change to not just my thinking, but also my action.  Generous Justice, by the way, was the first electronic book I’ve ever read.  The ipad format for digital reading is really pretty cool and I’ll download more works I’m sure.  Radical: Taking Back your Faith from the American Dream by David Platt was another challenging read that was the first book of 2011 for me. It has lingered in my thinking all year, kicking up the dust of past thoughts.  Coupled with Generous Justice I can sense God’s working in me, ripping off the facade of my “Americanized Christianity.”  A touch of history was added to the mental storm from one of my favorite historic periods, the Civil Rights Movement.  Charles Marsh’s work God’s Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights  chronicles the lives of six folks in the deep south during the sixties who sought social justice under the banner of the Gospel and underscored Keller’s theme that Christ shouldn’t just save us, but His redemption is meant as well to change us … and our community.

What Good is God? In Search of a Faith that Matters by Phillip Yancey. Goodness, you can’t go wrong on a Yancey read… the guy is not only a master with words, sentences and paragraphs, but his thoughtful analysis of the big issues of life is provocative. This is one of his finest works in my opinion.

Where Men Win Glory: The Odyessey of Pat Tillman by Jon Krakauer didn’t disappoint, as Krakauer can weave quite a story!  I first fell in love with his writing with Into thin Air and Under the Banner of Heaven.  He has mesmorizing prose and the ability to draw the reader on to the next page without effort.  While I had been patriotically stirred by Tillman’s story back in 2002-03, Krakauer’s telling of it dismantles the patriotism and the tale is a tragic one for sure.

The American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies in the Creation of the Republic by Joseph Ellis. I read this on the planes and trains of our summer vacation in New York and Washington DC.  A good discussion of several “stories” or events from the Revolutionary period to the early 19th Century that turned America in the direction it went.  A book I saw in the Smithsonian bookstore and gobbled up when I got home was Mightier than the Sword: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Battle for America. David Reynolds is a prolific author on the 19th Century and this book added much to my understanding not only of the mid-19th Century, but a host of themes in American life and how the famous book by Harriet Beecher Stowe wove them together.

Unbroken:  A WW2 Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption.  Yea, add me to the list of those who couldn’t put Laura Hillendbrand’s book down. Wow, what a story!

Last, but not least, I got through Edmund Morris’ Colonel Roosevelt.  It is the third volume on Morris’ epic trilogy of Theodore Roosevelt’s incredible life. Morris has a way of writing history as if you’re reading a novel.  A good, good, book … I was actually kind of sad when Roosevelt died, that’s how well Morris pulls the reader into his subject.

So it’s been a good year of challenging my mind, warding off the wolves of stagnation and apathy.  Here’s to 2012 and another stack of good reads!