As professional photo organizers, we have seen many wonderful photos that clients have taken through the years that tell their stories of faith. Just recently, a friend of ours asked us for some help on taking church photos. Diane’s congregation at the Living Faith Lutheran Church wished to have some great photos for their website.
While we love photography, and consider ourselves “social photographers,” we are not professional photographers. But we know the keeper pictures you’ll want to have. Snapshots that will pop on a church website. A photo that will help your congregation tell the world about all the wonderful things that go on in your church. Here is our quick go at ten tips for taking church photos.
- Get Close –Small group photos look so much better when you get close.
- Get Smiles – “For where two or three gather in My name, there am I with them”(Matthew 18:20) – show the love and joy your members feel when they are together. Fun expressions tell so much!
- Show the Action– Look for good action shots that are closer instead of far away.
- Use Smart Phone camera – only for closer shots in good light. Often these photos look grainy, dark or even pixelized when used for publication.
- Remove clutter– take a test photo and look at it. If there are unnecessary items in the picture, remove those items and retake the photo.
- Take shots at different angles – Sometimes a series of photos from different perspectives can be great.
- Look for interesting objects/lines/symmetry – Sometimes a photo of a church glass window with reflections of clouds, lines, etc can make a great picture. Be creative.
- Avoid large group scenes – where there is no clear focus of activity. I have seen hundreds of photos from my church of large events. Nobody can tell who’s who, what the activity is and why the photo is important.
- Use a simple background– for photos of people. Don’t let a distracting background take away from a great moment.
- Learn how to take better photos – there are literally hundreds of website posts on how to take better pictures. Take advantage of them all!
- Bonus Tip: look at other church websites. Learn what you like and more importantly, what you don’t!
Examples of Photos Taken at Church
Here is a photo I took of my kids for an Easter egg hunt back in 2013 at my own church. It’s okay, but not a real attention-grabbing photo.
Check out these following photo. Here, you can see the boy looking intently at an Easter message contained within the egg.
This next photo is even better because you can see the excitement in their faces as they look for empty eggs. The empty eggs were used to help the children remember how the tomb was found empty on Easter morning.
Photos offer an incredible opportunity to share our faith and reminisce about family traditions that can go back generations. Think about all the family photos you may have from Easters long past. In a church (or any other organization), photos capture the heart of what your group does together.
Save Those Photos in a Meaningful Way
Think about tagging all of your photos with Easter so that you can do a search and start using those Easter photos to help promote your church activities the following year. This works with the other holidays throughout the year.
See below for a screenshot of a variety of my Easter photos stored in Forever. Over the years, I tagged these photos with “Easter.” I simply clicked on my Easter tag and all of these photos appeared. So much fun to relive the memories for this very special week for our family and my own church.
Need help on tagging photos or organizing old photos? Come to a workshop where you can have dedicated time and professional assistance to get going on saving your family memories!
We hope these tips are helpful and we wish you all a Blessed Easter!
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