Here are a few of the sites I go to if I need some inspiration.  I do not control, nor can I vouch for everything on these sites. I have found them helpful and clean, and I hope they will be a help to you as well.

CreativeMYK.com - Free Christian graphics for download shared by artists around the world.

MinistryCSS.com – A gallery of CSS websites designed to inspire you.

Kuler.Adobe.com – Colors swatches by a community of people who love colors.

Blog.SpoonGraphics.co.uk – Tutorials and others helpful tips

SmashingMagazine.com – Another website with tutorials, tools, and tips

MiniAjax.com – Code and instructions on how to make your website more dynamic and a richer experience for your visitors

What are some of the websites you go to for inspiration, tutorials, and/or tips?

Michael Moyer

I have enjoyed every year that God has allowed me to go the mission field, but I must say, this was the greatest year yet. God really touched my heart this year. We visited churches, talked to amazing people, preached in public schools, stayed in a rural home in the mountains, and were heartbroken at the leper hospital.  If you would like to view pictures I took from the trip, visit the North Valley Baptist Church Philippines Missions Page. You can also watch the video we made for our Missions Conference entitled, Making a Difference. I pray these will help you to see, YOU can make a difference!

Here is some of the gear that I bring on the Missions Trip.

I have the awesome opportunity to go with our church on the annual missions trip.  I document the whole trip with pictures, a blog and video.  (Check out the Missions trip website – real content will be available on October 6)  It has been an annual trip for me, and I love it!  It is truly a highlight of my year.  I covet your prayers. During the trip, I will take thousands of photos, hours of video, work on daily blog posts for nvbc.org, and have the privilege to preach several times. (This year I’m supposed to preach to a small churches we support and a large public school.)

I have quite a bit of equipment I use to document the amazing work being done by our missionaries in the Philippines.  I’ve accumulated quite a bit of technology/tools in the past 5 years of going on this trip.  This is more or less my checklist for this year’s tech equipment.  I would love to hear what you use or any suggestions.  Also, follow the trip on the Missions Trip website. I would love to read your comments!  Here’s my list of tech equipment for this year’s trip:

1.  MacBook Pro (2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with Snow Leopard)

Aperture on MacBook Pro

• Apple Aperture - I love editing my RAW images with Aperture.  I love the fact I can quickly edit my photos in full screen.  Time is of an essence.  Many times in the back of a jeepney or truck I’ll be editing my photos.  Thank God for Aperture…I would really hate for you to see my images before I use Aperture on them.
• Adobe Photoshop – After Editing my photos in Aperture I save them as jpg.  I then run a script to convert them to the right size and write the xml for my Slideshow Pro photo gallery.  I also quickly edit a few other images to add to the blog page and the photo page.
• Adobe Dreamweaver – I actually do not use Wordpress (like this website) for the missions website.  I created it from scratch in Dreamweaver, since it will only document about 10 days of travel, this works out just fine.
• There are other programs I use along the trip, but the above software I use most frequently.

2.  Nikon D200 – The D200 is a phenomenal camera. It’s quick (5 frames per second), durable (magnesium alloy body), has a large viewfinder and is an overall great camera. (Here are some photos from last year – make sure and check out this year’s when they become available)

• Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 Lens – I take the majority of my photos with this lens.  This is a great lens for the price.  I love the shallow depth of field with this lens.  It is a great overall lens.
• Nikon 10.5mm f/2.8 DX Fisheye Lens – I won’t use this very often, but this is a great fisheye lens for large crowds or small rooms where I want to get everyone in the picture.  You should definitely be able to tell which photos are taken with this lens.
• Nikon 70-300mm f/4-5.6G – This is a decent lens, and I use it when I need to get closeups outside with plenty of light.

3.  Panasonic HVX-200 – I’ve really enjoyed shooting video with this beast.  It’s not compact at all, but takes great video.  At times, my back does not appreciate this camera.  I carry it in my backpack until I need to shoot video.  I try not to carry to much equipment out in the open.  Most of the time, I just have a camera out.  I’ve been using the Panasonic to take SD video (using MiniDV tapes) the past few years, and I thought I would finally be able to shoot some HD using my new P2 Cards.  However, I did not realize when I purchased the P2 Card that it doesn’t work with Snow Leopard.  So, I may once again be shooting in SD…oh, well.

• Sennheiser Evolution G2 100 Series Lapel Mic and Receiver – I use this to record audio for interviews.
• Panasonic P2 Card - I don’t want to talk about this.  I’m still a bit bitter that I just bought it and it doesn’t work with Snow Leopard!  Really though, my fault, I should have done the research before hand.

4.  Apple iPhone – This will keep me company on the long flight to and from the Philippines.  I’ve already preloaded it with games, music and video for the looong trip.

• Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones – Special thanks to Carl Harter, I will be in noise cancellation peace on the plane ride.  Carl has graciously lended me his headphones this year.  Good thing too, my Shure in-ear headphones that I usually bring were broken by one of my children during the course of this year….oops.

5.  Apple iPod - I have an old iPod nano for simply playing music, so I don’t use all my battery life of my phone.  This works out great when we are in the middle of nowhere and trying to sleep.  I’ve been able to sleep like a baby while roosters are crowing underneath the hut and people are laughing at us (they find Americans trying to sleep on the bamboo beds quite amusing, I think) thanks to the iPod nano and my Shure headset (may they rest-in-peace).

6.  Apple Airport Express – I use this to create a wireless network in my hotel room so I’m not chained to one area.  This is both good and bad.  Bad, because sometimes I fall asleep trying to work on the comfort of my bed.  If I don’t update the website one day,  you know why.  If possible, I may try to broadcast a live video of the Iloilo Baptist Church with Dr. Rick Martin.  I don’t know if it’s going to be possible, but I’m going to try and create a wireless network to do this.

7.  Flip Mino – This year will be the first time I’ve brought this.  I will use it to shoot video when I don’t have time or the energy to get the Panasonic out of my backpack.

8.  There is a lot of other random things like external hard drives, extra batteries for the laptop, camera, and video camera.  Also, because we break up into 2 groups at times, I will also be bringing a Nikon D100 and a Canon XL1 for the other group.

Well, I hope I didn’t bore you too much with this list.  If nothing else, I have a checklist of what to bring! I once again ask for your prayers, please follow the Philippines Missions Trip online and let me know what you think!

Michael Moyer

View the screencast on your iPhone.

Photoshop actions save a great deal of time, if you have multiple images to work on.  This screencast shows you how to create a Photoshop action of an image reflection.  It also explains how to run the action on a whole folder of images using Batch in Photoshop.  You can create a Photoshop action for anything that you have to do repeatedly. For instance, if you need to resize multiple photos, or if you have hundreds of photos that you want to make black and white, actions are the way to go.   I would suggest watching this in full screen to see the details of this tutorial.  Please let me know if you have any questions.

Michael Moyer

Create a realistic bordered photo effect using this Photoshop action.  Watch the screencast and download the action.

Download the Photoshop action here. You will need to unzip the action, then follow the screencast. I would recommend watching the screencast in HD for better viewing.

Watch the screencast on your iPhone.

Michael Moyer

The idea behind this blog is to help people involved in the media ministry of their churches. This post however could be a help to anyone on the go. Due to the nature of my job, I find it hard to accomplish everything during normal business hours.  Some of my most productive hours are long after others have gone to bed.  Because of this, I need tools that help me to work from home as much as possible.  Here are 3 of the tools that I use often to work on the go and at home.  All these are supported on both a mac and a pc.

1.  Logmein.com

Logmein is an incredibly valuable tool for me.  Almost every day of my life, after my kids go to bed I work a bit from home.  And almost every day of my life, I need something from my computer at work.  Logmein enables me to log into my computer at work via the internet.  When you log in, you see your computer as if you are sitting in front of it.  For the most part, it is very fast.  I usually don’t do much work through logmein, but I do email myself files or put files in my dropbox (#2 below)  I love it, because I have complete access to my computer and all my files anywhere I have access to the internet.

Computers I control remotely

Screen shot of my laptop at home controlling my desktop computer at work

2.  Dropbox

Dropbox is another extremely useful free tool. Dropbox creates a folder on your computers that stays synced via the internet.  If I want to work on something at home.  I just drop the file in my dropbox folder and when I open my laptop at home, it automatically updates my laptop with that file.  It is very simple to use.  Just put the files you need in the dropbox folder.  Dropbox also makes it easy to share files with people. (For instance, here’s a picture I took of the California Coast) I don’t have to host the files I want to share, just drop it in the drop box.  There are many other cool features you can check out online like file backups and shared folders (we use this in the office when we are working on a project together).  You can get 2GB free.

3.  Delicious Bookmarks

I am constantly on the look out for ways to help us do more for the cause of Christ and do things better and more effectively.  Because of this, I bookmark many sites that help me accomplish the above.  I have been using Delicious to bookmark web pages for years.  If there is an web page I want to bookmark, I use delicious.  When I want to bookmark a site, I simply “tag” the page.  I assign tags (like keywords) that help me find the page later on.  For instance, if I was to bookmark the How to Live Stream Your Church Service blog, I may choose to tag it with the keywords, “blog”, “tutorial”, “streaming”, “internet”, and “video”. That way when I search my tags for “streaming” and “video” I can easily find it.  Because delicious is internet based, you can access your bookmarks anywhere.  I don’t use the social aspect of delicious, just a way to store all my bookmarks.

Delicious screen shot

I hope that this post was a help.  Please feel free to comment and share anything that you use as well.

Michael Moyer

Why Start a Blog?

• I’m not the greatest writer.
• I don’t really like to write (I would much rather design something).
• I’m not sure I have anything people would want to read.

Soooo…..why start a blog?

Well, I wanted to learn something new, so last night I decided to install a blog on my website. It really didn’t take long (thanks to great documentation from Wordpress).

The more I thought about it, the more I thought, “I may actually be able to write some things that could be helpful to others like me.” For instance, we get many phone calls and emails at North Valley Baptist Church from people wanting to start a live streaming video ministry at their church. They all want the same information. Instead of emailing all of them, I can simply point them to this website. I think there may be other things that may be a help to others, and I will post them here.

I am not going to state how often I’m going to post, because I’m not sure how this will turn out. Please let me know, what you think. If you would like me to write about anything…or if you would like to write something about Media in the church to post here, comment below. I’m looking forward to hearing your comments. Thanks!

Michael Moyer