Our beautiful new 2027 Come Follow Me Calendar is here, and I want you to have it in your home! And I hope you’ll order several copies—not just one for your own home, but others for your children, grandchildren, friends, and ministering families. At just $15 each, this is a beautiful gift that will keep giving for an entire year. This year’s calendar is particularly special because it takes us into the world of the New Testament, with twelve extraordinary photographs that bring the places and events of the Savior’s life and ministry closer to our hearts and homes. Each photograph has a story, and some of those stories are remarkable. Let me take you behind the scenes of just one of these images and show you why this is no ordinary calendar. What does it take to get a photo compelling enough to put on your wall?
Order your beautiful 2027 Come Follow Me Calendars here—just $15 each.
I started photographing the Holy Land more than 50 years ago. It’s one of my favorite places in the world to document and it comes with many challenges—mostly in how the light is perfect for photography only for a few minutes every morning and every evening—at least if you’re looking for the spectacular shots. We arise in the dark to be at just the right place for those brief morning moments of sunrise. We calculate the sunset and run to shoot in the golden light before the sun sets.
I want to tell you in detail about one of the photographs that is in the 2027 New Testament Come Follow Me Calendar. If you know about the picture, it will speak to you more clearly.
On this particular trip, Maurine and I were shooting from a storyboard for a book project, and we had to get very specific angles and very particular locations. We had a number of shots we needed on the Sea of Galilee and based on the New Testament accounts taken from Matthew 4:18-22; Mark 1:16-20; and Luke 5:1-11 (only a total of 21 verses that document the call the Savior issues to the fisherman) we needed a boat, an early morning, and at least one fisherman. To make it more complex, I couldn’t shoot this from the shore—I needed to be in a boat as well. This took some planning and a lot of help from a very dear friend of ours in Israel, Eddie Safadi, who seemed to know everyone in the country and helped us at every turn.
For these photos, we needed to be out early in the morning, on the west side of the Galilee so that I could be shooting into the rising sun. It had to be on a day where we could see the sunrise (there is often the challenge at 700 feet below sea level of early morning haze that obscures the sun for the first moments of perfect light). The Galilee is about 8 miles wide (similar to Bear Lake in northern Utah—but only 13 miles long. Bear Lake is 20 miles long). Eddie arranged for a native fisherman to arrive at 5:45 AM. He also arranged for another man to be my boatman.
The boat that the two of us used was no bigger than a good-sized bathtub. When I saw it, I was concerned that with one wrong move we would easily both go overboard. Maurine and our daughter and extra crew member would stay on shore and observe. I wasn’t worried about my falling in the water—I was worried about my camera equipment! In this little vessel, the sides of the boats were barely above the water which threatened to dunk us at any time. But this is what we had, and we had to go with it. The clock was ticking with the sunrise.
The fisherman arrived right on time. He was a wonderful Galilean fishman and looked like the kind of person you would have imagined the Savior called. My goal was not to photograph his face but to capture a number of silhouettes of him and his boat to capture the feelings and emotions I wanted to communicate.
We launched out into the water with a prayer in all our hearts that the tiny boat I was in would not tip over. My plan was to have my boatman paddle our boat staying between the other boat and the shore so I could continue to look east. I wanted the fisherman to do a variety of things including casting his net from his boat, pulling fish out of the water, rowing, watching, standing up in his boat, sitting down and just being an authentic fisherman.
I started shooting at 5:53 AM. His boat would drift one way out of the perfect view, and I would have to communicate with my fast-moving hands that we needed to paddle this way or that way to keep the angle that I wanted. At first, our boat kept turning so that I could not capture what I needed. Finally, the boatman understood what I was doing and then everything started working. I looked at my digital signatures on the photographs, and I only shot a total of 32 minutes. In that time (1,920 seconds) I was able to capture 464 images (an average of one every 4.1 seconds).
I noticed how beautiful the oar was as it struck the water. The dripping water and the ripples created a molten path of sunlight running vertically away from me. I shot 13 frames focused just on the oar. I had changed my shutter speed to 1/800th of a second hoping to capture every water drop and yet still be able to shoot at F6.3 and ISO 100. I didn’t know that there would be one of those 13 shots that was, in my estimation, perfect. It wasn’t until I reviewed the images that evening that we even discovered what had happened. The light reflecting in the water is even richer and more delicious to me than the light going through the small wall of water falling from the oar. It is magical.
So, when I see that photograph hanging on my wall in May 2027, I will remember that extraordinary morning on the Sea of Galilee. But more importantly, I will think of another morning on those same waters nearly two thousand years ago, when Jesus called Peter, Andrew, James, and John to leave their nets and follow Him. I love the Joseph Smith Translation of that call: “I am he of whom it is written by the prophets; follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (JST Matthew 4:18).
Jesus was identifying Himself as the long-awaited Messiah, the One of whom the prophets had testified for centuries. And those ordinary fishermen, going about the work they had done all their lives, were suddenly being invited into something extraordinary.
That is why this photograph means so much to me, and why I chose it for the month of May in our 2027 Come Follow Me Calendar. I want you to have that image hanging in your kitchen, your bedroom, your office, or wherever your family will see it. I want your children and grandchildren to look at it and remember that the Savior still calls ordinary people to follow Him. Perhaps someone in your family will pause in front of that photograph one morning and think about what it means to answer His call. Perhaps it will become the beginning of a conversation you might never otherwise have had. That is what I hope these photographs will do in your homes.
And this is just one photograph! There are eleven more in the calendar, each selected with the same care and love, each inviting you into the world of the New Testament. In the many decades I’ve spent photographing these sacred places, I can tell you that the beauty of these lands never grows old to me. I want to share that beauty with you and your family throughout 2027.
So please order your 2027 Come Follow Me Calendars today. Get one for your own home, and consider ordering several more for your children, grandchildren, friends, and ministering families. At just $15 each, they make wonderful Christmas gifts—gifts that will be enjoyed for twelve months and, I hope, remembered long afterward.
[ORDER YOUR 2027 COME FOLLOW ME CALENDARS HERE—JUST $15 EACH]