raphaels

Well, it's time for an update.

2012-01-27T22:51:00.000-08:00

The last time I posted was a while back, and a lot has happened since then.

I met a wonderful girl.
I graduated from my master's with a 4.0
I was accepted into medical school.
I bought a Rolleiflex 2.8E
I bought a Leica M8.2
I finished my first semester of year one classes at said med school.

Now, I am here, and it is currently 2am. Sitting with nothing but the sound of my tingling radiator.
I am supposed to be up early tomorrow for an early morning study session.

This passed winter, I realized will be the last time I will be free to do what I want. I now have to start preparing for internships, doctor shadowing, and studying for Step 1 exam.

My focus has been leaning towards cancer. I really want to help the terminally ill who suffer from such a threatening disease. I have chosen toward Radiation Oncology. If not that, then surgical oncology. I just think I don't feel prepared as I should, and it's hard to make such drastic life decisions at this time.

And in terms of future endeavors, I was talking with my girlfriend tonight on life as a doctor once I pay off those loans; that I want to only live by normal means, and spend the rest of my income on funding missionaries and printing Bibles. It's a far off plan, but I think it is something I hold pretty close to. I just hope that integrity is still there when I am finished, because it is quite a sacrificing goal.

Anyway, that is mostly what has happened in the past year I have been absent. Check back later for any more updates, and I apologize in advance if they happen to fall few and far between.

Arax 60 MLU + Sonnar 180mm f2.8 + Biometar 80mm f2.8

2010-11-06T05:10:00.000-07:00

uppercut on the rooftop

caterine bokeh

loneliness on the pier

west village portrait

2010-02-21T01:50:00.000-08:00

I honestly have no idea what to write about. I feel like I should be writing, though, because I haven't really talked about anything going in my life lately.

I've spent the last several days working on my essays for medical school. It's challenging at times, because I try to align myself to their requirements. At the same time, I have to speak about myself, making me appear comely to the staff that reviews it. Selling yourself is usually the term given to it.

I feel a major lacking in my requirements in extracurricular activities. While I have been on many a volunteer job, I am worried it will fall below a lot of what other people have on their applications. I wish I had the opportunity to do exciting things that build an impressive resume. At the same time, I don't want to make my application look more grandiose than it actually is. It might become even worse, where it starts to become a lie. And that's the last thing I'd want.

Here's something I miss. My apartment.

2010-01-15T00:33:00.000-08:00

so many things going on lately. hard to keep up. here's an older picture of me.

more medium format

2009-12-30T00:01:00.000-08:00

more images taken on the Exakta 66 Mod II:

i liked the depth of field in this shot.

what a nice smile :D

blue chairs

2009-12-25T07:10:00.000-08:00

my brother is in town from LA. i feel good to have him here until the end of the year. so far we've just been hanging at my favorite spots around town. i want to mention that yesterday confirmed that i really don't like tapioca beads in my tea.

today is Christmas and it feels weird to me. I don't have a tree up or anything at my house. It's mainly because we just stopped caring about putting it up and saw no need. It's family that matters.

but yes, i've been listening to weezer christmas on repeat. today will be spent bumming until noon, and then we head to a Christmas party.

last year this time, i remember something very painful that happened to me. and i still can't believe it's been a year. if you're reading this, i hope you're doing okay. and i hope your boyfriend is treating you well.

latest set

2009-12-25T06:57:00.001-08:00

here are two images from the latest set with nina again. don't know why, but i keep using this girl.

Exakta 66 Mod 2, fuji pro400H - Medium Format

2009-12-06T06:29:00.001-08:00

got some film developed today, and found this image i took of nina:

2009-11-27T10:21:00.000-08:00

i still have a crush on this girl after all these years.

2009-11-22T14:57:00.000-08:00

my friend alisica needed some photos done for her comp card. her agency needed more to go on, so i managed to take a few friday afternoon with her:

2009-11-18T23:34:00.000-08:00

Lately I've been dreading these late nights. I don't know when or where I screwed with my Circadian Rhythms, but now my sleeping schedule is all outta whack. Well, no matter, the late nights are the most peaceful.

I must attribute them to me flourishing the most. Here are some old images from one night, where I just felt like doing something different. At 3am I went on campus with my camera and tripod and just took long exposure shots. I don't know what I was thinking. Images shot on film.

this one actually landed me on the front page of the UCF website:

Marissa sent me a box set of I Love Lucy episodes in the mail. I guess I'll go watch them now. :]

2009-11-17T18:35:00.000-08:00

tried on the new shirt:

In more recent news as of earlier this night, i've been getting a good amount of calls and emails regarding paid photo work. Whether they be promotional images for their cd, portraits for their websites, or simple glamour modeling shots. This should be an interesting week ahead.

Eventful day

2009-11-17T17:38:00.001-08:00

So today I went to see one of my cousins. She is currently a doctor of cardiology up north in Boston. The main reason for my trip was because she mentioned a way to get me in under her wing and do research for her lab. I jumped at the thought, because it would give me valuable experience needed to get into medical school. Not only that, but I would also have a trip up to her place in Chicago. I'm looking to do this around summer time '10. In short, I'm excited right now to try and get this started. I need to apply for certain grants beforehand.

anyway, after an inspirational speech from my cousin about the possibilities of making my resume look good, i got a chance to go with her to the convention where she was presenting her research on using mammalian stem cells to recreate heart valves in valve-deficient infants. that topic alone strikes up my interest.

She heads back up to boston tomorrow, so I'll be sure to maintain contact about this opportunity. She also graduated from one of the med schools I'm applying to! And she said she knows people there and can write me a letter of recommendation if I do well under her research. Hot dang, doodle!

To top off an already bangin day, I finally get my fortysixty shirt in the mail:

my next purchase will probably be the white one, but for now i stuck with black.

L lens lust

2009-11-17T00:26:00.000-08:00

i'm pretty sure this might be my next purchase.

price tag ~~1,760~~ sorry, make that 1,840 smackaroos. I have no idea if I should get it.

Recent Photographing

2009-11-16T22:47:00.000-08:00

2009-07-29T12:36:00.000-07:00

Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man — living in the sky — who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ‘til the end of time … But He loves you!
-George Carlin

Now, I'm going to try and be as understanding as possible. I tend to get into an argument with a lot of people who believe this kind of thing because I try to show them how ignorant their side is, just as much as they point out how ignorant a lot of Christians can be.

George Carlin, a comedic entertainer, very open about his atheistic beliefs. He makes this statement, and many people, without really doing any type of research except for their own subjective observations and things they've gathered from popular culture with very unreliable sources, have passed it on proclaiming it as profound.

In the least, it isn't. Now before any people start accusing me of being narrow-minded or anything, and a Bible basher, I want to make some things clear: If you're going to accuse Christian beliefs, what is the best defense to check and balance what you're saying as true? Go to the source. So in this case, the Bible is clear as a reputable defense against such attacks. Let's move on.

Taking apart the first segment:

"Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man — living in the sky — who watches everything you do, every minute of every day."

This is in fact partially true. Christianity teaches that God is invisible. He is omnipresent and omniscient, meaning He knows every single thing you do and His own glory and presence is what sustains every living thing on this planet, and sustains every single planetary orbit in this universe. In Luke 12 verse 7, it states He even knows the number of hairs on your head. However, God is not a mere man. He isn't man. In fact in Genesis, it's made clear that man and God are totally separate from each other. God the Father is God. There wasn't anything that made Him, and apart from Him nothing was made as the book of John states. Okay, now on to the next segment.

"And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do"

Besides God being a mere man, this is also true. He is referring to the Ten Commandments that Moses wrote down on Mount Sinai. They were to be kept and used to show the holy attributes of The Lord. Not only that, but keeping them would be nearly impossible if God had not intervened. In light of the commandments of the Old Testament, Christ comes and shows everyone that the laws given are much harder to follow and keep than thought previously. He shows in Matthew 5 that "You shall not kill" is the same as "You shall not have hatred towards one another". If you look at a woman with lust in your heart, it would be the same as committing adultery. Therefore, anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and therefore condemned before the law. And anyone who looks at a girl and has sexual thoughts of her has committed adultery already. Jesus actually made the hole narrower and showed that people could not possibly survive without breaking the laws. In the New Testament, a myriad of other teachings is to be followed, not just the Ten Commandments. Those act as a guideline, and since Christians can't possibly follow it on their own, they rely on the perfect person of Christ and His substitutionary death on the cross to save their souls from being condemned.

"And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish"

Yes, all sinners not saved by grace will go to hell. The way Carlin sets it up is as though humans deserve something better. He wants to show the unfairness of such a belief and how someone with a mind can respond that there must be something wrong with it. The fact is, ever since the fall of Adam, man has sinned and only known sin. Its called human depravity. In our sinful state, we are haters of God, lovers of the lust of the flesh, and we hoist ourselves as our own gods. It has been like that ever since the beginning as soon as man sinned. And since then, all the seed of Adam --you and me and everyone else on this planet has been cursed because of it and now we live in sin. We are unable to save ourselves from that sin, and in justice, our rightful destination is eternal death and torment for our crimes. Ever since the fall, we never deserved heaven. We never deserved anything to be fair. God is not fair, He is just. Like a judge that will rightfully cast a convicted felon to prison for life, wouldn't a just God do the same? Well here's the catch: You are that convicted felon. Because of the sedition against God's laws that He himself commanded, and you yourself rejected, you should realize that you deserve nothing but His justice in the form of eternal anguish and torment. Like in the verse (Matthew 10:28), Jesus actually teaches more about hell than about heaven. Being such a real place, He wanted to make a point to warn the people of the sheer reality and the hovering cloud of death over everyone who rejects it.

"where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ‘til the end of time … But He loves you!"

I can see where Carlin makes a killing on this statement. That last line is what gets the applause because it ties into the often cliche saying that God loves you. This is where we must take biblical steps to dissect exactly what it means to say that, because it is true in a sense, but not the way a lot of people assume.

We must ask ourselves some questions first and answer them logically. First, if God loves me, why would He send me to hell? Secondly, if God is forgiving and compassionate, why can't He just automatically forgive my sins when I die?

Let's answer the first question. Yes, God is love. It says so in the scriptures. He is the very essence of Love. However, that is only one attribute. And that is what many people, even Christians, forget. the Flip side to that coin is that God is holy. Meaning He is set apart from everything that is unholy (aka sinful). There is no sin in Him, and all He contains is righteousness as the Bible teaches (1 Samuel 2:2). Therefore, if those in the world are sinful, and He being holy, he is without sin because He is separate from the sinfulness of the people of the world. So why the long definition of holiness? Because God cannot forsake his own attributes. If He did, He would be unjust, and the Bible states that He isn't. So if God can still love, yet still is holy He shows that there is a standard that must be met to those whom He loves. Living a life of holiness is one of the main attributes/requirements to a genuine Christian. To those who follow Him, He loves them and will discipline them to correctly lead them down the right path. But to those who willfully reject Him, He doesn't have the same love for them.

Before I get a lot of Christians hating me on this one, I would like to point you to the true and present verse of John 17:9. Jesus here outspokenly says that He is praying for those whom God has called to be His. He does not pray for those that are in the world. It is therefore showing two different types of love. God has a special love for His people, and that ends with them coming to be saved and live in eternal life at the very end.

The other type of love is known as common grace. God shows mercy on all those who are not His followers. He will let the sun shine on the willful atheist, and so on. He shows his mercy on them every day, yet do not confuse that with his saving grace as mentioned above. The difference is everyone experiences God's common grace. Not everyone experiences God's saving grace. and the latter is what brings you to repentance and grants you eternal life with the Creator.

So putting this all together, we have come to the conclusion that yes, God loves you, but more importantly, what type of love? Because if you fall short of saving grace, you will not be saved from hell. If you reject the one who formed you, you will not taste eternal life. And that is where God's mercy ends. Because in hell, it is the ever present wrath of God being poured out on you for eternity for your wickedness and vileness. And surprising as it may seem to you, that is what you deserve. Justice.

The Bible teaches that God pleads with any who are thirsty to come and drink of this life. God says 'Come!' His mercy is present, and the very fact that you're still alive reading this, instead of being struck down as soon as you left your bed this morning is testament to that. Don't live one more day without Christ. He is the Savior of those who believe in Him. He was killed by God the Father on the cross for the sins of His people, to be that substitute. To stand in the gap and pay the price in death. The Bible simply says that if you want to be saved from the wrath to come, Repent of your sins (turn away from them) and Believe that Christ has saved you and that He died for your own sins on that cross. And you will be saved.

if there's any more you'd like to know, feel free to email me at raphael.aaron@gmail.com I'll do what I can to explain anything you may have not understood, and anything else you may want to know.

Take care,

-raph

hey

2008-06-29T13:51:00.001-07:00

welcome to the new web log.

i have no idea what i'll write about, but it should be something good.