About

Planned updates have been delayed

Just a note of apology to all who have visited my site and found unfinished pages with overdue planned update dates. It has been a busy summer, life happens, and priorities get switched around! I am back on track now, so please continue to check back for updates. Much more to come!

–MHP 2016_0831

New Sunrises and Sunsets images pages!

Today, I published new images pages for Sunrises and Sunsets. (They are new, because the old, non-mobile-friendly site did not have them.) The images on these pages are accessible also via the season images pages; I intend now to replicate access to an image from every page that applies to it.

Sunrises and sunsets are dear to my heart. I have always felt great joy, warmth, and awe when I have had opportunities during my life to just stand there and enjoy them, but growing up near Chicago meant those opportunities came rarely—mainly when I went on vacation to someplace like the Grand Canyon. Living in Northern Norway opened my eyes, so to speak, as much of the nature is yet untamed, has no telephone or power lines crossing it, and is legally available to the public to traverse via hiking, skiing, etc. My appreciation for sunrises and sunsets grew exponentially once I began to experience the Polar Night—when the sun drops below the horizon for two whole months during the winter—and the return of the sun at its end. Some of the most amazing sunrises and sunsets occur during the days and weeks just before and just after the Polar Night, as is shown in the images in these new pages.

I have also created songs and videos about sunrises and sunsets, and I intend to publish (or re-publish, in some cases) these when I redo the Music page and begin to fill out the new Videos page.

I hope you enjoy these new pages! And I hope you join with me in praising the Master Artist, who paints this earth with such amazing beauty!

–MHP 2016_0630

The Winter images page is now redone!

Just published the redo of the Winter page and its sub-pages!

I grew up near Chicago. Here, I learned to equate winter with wind chills, heating bills, snow shoveling, road salt, car rust, and multi-vehicle accidents, as well as hockey stars, outdoor skating, Christmas concerts, world-class musicals and plays, and New Year’s Eve fireworks from Navy Pier.

While living in Norway, I learned that winter has yet another side, one filled with wonder:

– Northern Lights in undulating ripples, rivers, waterfalls, and sky-filling mosaics;

– Quasi-sunrises and -sunsets that last for several hours, with the sun never rising above the horizon but still filling the sky with color, from pastels to and through firecolors;

– Blå time, or “Blue Hour,” a daytime period in which the lack of sun paints the sky and everything under it—including people, animals, trees, land, water, you name it—a delicate, pastel, somewhat nostalgic shade of medium blue;

– Skiing and sledding on mountains, without entrance fees or even having to ask permission;

– Ice fishing, as both a family and a formal public school activity;

– New Year’s Eve fireworks that a normal person can legally shoot off at home;

– Neighborhood and community get-togethers, where people talk, sing, dance, eat Norwegian waffles and other traditional foods, and enjoy heating up by a stoked wood stove;

– Christmas concerts, featuring traditional favorites sung by both choirs and audiences through the years;

– Music that equates light with the Lord and speaks of how, just as at the solstice the darkness begins to turn towards the light, so Christ leads us out of spiritual darkness into His Light;

– A Christmas Day where people go to church instead of opening presents (they open them the night before and even dress in their Sunday Best to do so);

– and so much more.

Of course, a North-Norwegian winter also brings:

– Snow measured in meters (i.e., yards) rather than inches;

– A required-by-law change to winter-tread tires to handle snowy, slushy, and icy roads that are not always plowed and that seem to enjoy sending unprepared vehicles into the ditch;

– The Polar Night, wherein the sun does not rise above the horizon for two months, sending some people into light therapy facilities just to maintain their sanity;

– and other such trials.

But the people are hardy; like Chicagoans, they have learned to deal with it, and by engaging in culture, community, and tradition, and by “charging up” their emotional batteries during the 24-hour-sun summer months, for the most part they get through it.

The winter images I have published show some of the natural wonder that fills a Northern Norwegian winter. My personal photo collection lacks publish-quality Northern Lights images, so I also provide a couple of links to external sites with great Northern Lights images and information.

Enjoy!

–MHP 2016_0617

The Autumn images page is now redone!

Finally finished the redo of the Autumn page and its sub-pages! It has taken longer than expected because I have been working on some YouTube videos. I will eventually integrate those into this site, but in the meantime you can check out the videos by searching for the MHP777 YouTube channel!

Autumn is one of my favorite times of year. The air is cool enough for a light jacket, and it's just the right temperature to share the warmth while walking hand-in-hand with someone you love. The trees and foliage turn color and bring firecolor beauty to the world, leaving us with pleasant memories as winter approaches and instilling in us the desire to see all those amazing colors again next year. While living in Norway, I was blessed to see such color-changing awesomeness across forests and mountains largely untouched by telephone wires and power cables. There are also very few mountain paths that are marked by signs, guideposts, or railings, and Norwegian law keeps access to these mountains open so that hikers can go wherever they wish without having to pay a fee. It is truly an amazing experience to hike in the mountains of Northern Norway during autumn; one can immerse onself in the majestic artistry of God and feel a love for the earth without restriction or prohibition or commercial influence. Raw nature is the host, and the people who live there are visitors.

If you have not lived in or visited Norway, I hope you put it on your bucket list. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the photos I have published on this site!

–MHP 2016_0607

The Summer images page is now redone!

Today I finished the mobile-friendly redo of the Summer images page and all of its sub-pages. Like the Spring images page (and like all of the other images pages to come), each image gets its own display page and includes image date, time, camera, ID, title, location, description, and Creative Commons sharing info, as well as a button for downloading various sizes, Facebook Like and Share buttons, and an area where visitors can leave comments.

Some of my most treasured memories come from summertime in Norway. I especially enjoyed hiking late at night to see the Midnight Sun from on top of a mountain; for me (and for many North-Norwegians in general), soaking in as much of the sun as possible during the summer was a way to recharge the internal sunlight batteries against the polar winter, when the sun would drop below the horizon for two long months. It was also fun to fish in the fjord, play Frisbee on the school playground, sing in concerts at the local church, grill on the beach, play board and card games at home, and engage in other activities with my family, and with the community at large, at or around midnight. Of course, the seagulls also seemed to think it was fun to stay up late (or get up early), as it was a regular occurrence to wake up at two or three in the morning to the raucous sounds of seagull parties. But all in all, it was good. :-)

I hope you enjoy the photos! Once I am finished redoing the entire site, I intend to put up more.

–MHP 2016_0510

Welcome to my site, now redesigned!

I launched MHP777.com in 2010 while living in Norway, as a way to share some of the photos I took there, some of the music I have created throughout my life, and links to some of the Web resources that have touched my heart. I have recently expanded that vision to include videos, Adobe Behance projects, recordings of some of my music, and photos I have taken outside of Norway.

My goal has always been to offer something uplifting to a world where change, uncertainty, discouragement, and contention all too often overshadow stability, faith, hope, and charity. The apostle Paul described charity as a love that suffers long and is kind; rejoices in the truth; bears, believes, hopes, and endures all things; and never fails. (See 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 KJV.) Rich Mullins, in his song Creed, sang, “I believe what I believe is what makes me what I am.” I echo that sentiment: I believe in Jesus Christ, who made Paul who he was, and who continually works on me to make me who I am, and I believe that the best way to make this world a better place and to inject it with more faith and hope is for us all to fill it with the charity that Paul describes, a love that can overcome uncertainty, discouragement, and contention and can help us handle change for the better.

The first edition of this site had wide pages and a fair amount of content but no way to resize itself for different screen widths. The site is now fully responsive across all pages. In addition, each photo and music item now gets its own page, including a Disqus comments section and Facebook “Like” and “Share” buttons. Since visitor comments get saved, the site now has Terms of Use and Privacy Policy pages which apply to all visitors. A new Contact page allows visitors to send feedback or request permission for commercial uses of my content. All page visits and communications across the site are now protected by 256-bit SSL encryption. All photos (but not graphics, such as the MHP777 logo) are now licensed as Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0, and I have therefore removed the copyright watermarks from each such photo. Some pages now sport banners that cross-fade photos relevant to the page in view. There are other additional tweaks, but the skinny is that I have redesigned the site.

So, why go through the time-consuming process of creating a custom site at all, when other sites such as Flickr and Facebook already exist for sharing such stuff? As Sinatra sang, “I did it my way!” For example, Flickr and Facebook are great for general photo-sharing, but I wish to share original resolutions (larger than 2000x2000), max JPG quality (at all resolutions), and embedded photo details (at all resolutions) such as a long description, photo id, site URL, and CC copyright info. Furthermore, I wish to share my content in a context where I can include scripture verses, original poems, and/or related thoughts and links, and in a layout of my own design. Perhaps most of all, I wish to host my content where I know that I can add, remove, reorder, or otherwise manipulate it as I wish.

Completing the site update will take a few weeks. Currently, I have redone only the Spring photos page, with its respective sub-pages. I intend to redo one or two main menu pages, with their respective sub-pages, each week. Please check back regularly for updates!

–MHP 2016_0429