Home»Religion»Easter Vigil - March 26, 2005»Easter Vigil 2005

This photo set is of Saint Joseph Cathedral's Easter Vigil service in Jefferson City, Missouri taken on Saturday March 26, 2005 at approximately 8:30 PM. The Most Reverend Bishop John R. Gaydos prayed over the ceremonial fire pit and proceeded to light the Paschal candle from those blessed flames. What amazed me was the way the wind whipped the flames into what appears to be a significant Easter image (Image 14).

(Photograph taken with a Nikon D70 at f-3.5, 1/60 sec at 1600 ISO)


Back Story:

I took this set of photographs while on assignment for the Jefferson City News Tribune Daily newspaper. The editor requested this picture package for the Easter Sunday edition. I recall I was on tight deadline because the pressmen wanted to start running before 9:00 PM so they could get home for the Holiday. I was even more stressed since I decided to use my new personal camera but hadn't quite mastered the location of all the controls which made a little difficult in the dark. I opted not to use the Paper's camera (Kodak 620) since it tended to shift the color of fire to cartoon pink and had terrible noise beyond ISO 400. You may have noticed the variety of exposure in images and that is because I had to BLH (Bracket Like Heck) meaning that I constantly changed my shutter speed and apertures to ensure I’d capture something useful. (I took more than a hundred pictures that night and these were the only ones worth saving. Many were out of focus (dark), poorly exposed (BLH-ing) or out of frame. I took the majority of these while holding the camera over my head to avoid the people in front of me.
When I got back to the Paper that night, I couldn't get the images to transfer correctly since the D70s used jpegs and not tiffs. I recall not being able to see the image previews and the editor was standing behind pushing me to hurry since it was 9:10 PM. when got back. I knew I wanted a shot where the Bishop was lighting the candle so I randomly picked from the middle of the 120 plus images. The random image I picked was what I now call the "Miracle Flame". I let out a "whoa" when the photo finally appeared in the photo browser and my neck hairs stood on end. I didn’t sleep much that night trying to ponder the odds of not only capturing such an image let alone the significance of when and where is was taken.
At first many folks were not impressed with the photo believing that it was just a cross on fire. That is why I decided to show the sequence of events to better explain what was happening. The fire pit was about three feet high and constructed of loose bricks arranged in a circle in the front parking lot of St. Joes. The kindling for the fire appeared to consist of varying lengths of 1” cubed pinewood loosely stacked like a 2-foot tall Jenga tower mixed with bits of scrap plywood doused with lighter fluid. The clergyman on the left is using the tongs stoke the fire. The tongs were also used to pull out a burning ember to ignite a stick for the Bishop to use for lighting the Easter Candle. Other people have wondered what the white thing above the head of the clergy man holding the Easter candle. It is simply a street light at the entrance of Memorial Park.

Thank you for taking a look.

P.S. I’ve wondered if this was a message directed to me personally since I named my first born Thomas ... I have no doubts now!

For full disclosure:

I am a practicing Catholic at St. Peters Church which belongs to the same Diocese as St. Joseph Cathedral.

The only photo enhancement I used for these set of photos is: croping, levels and noise reduction.

I am not currenty working for the News Tribune.