A creative ministry at Benoni Baptist Church is photography.
The team
Sonny and Yolanda, together with Kaitlyn, snap shots on a Sunday. Craig and Robert are involved in video streaming.
The disclaimer
We take photos in the main hall, and the Sunday service is live streamed. We will never post photos of children without permission from parents.
How photos are used
We upload photos to socials (FaceBook, Instagram, Google, and our WhatsApp Channel) for use in posts, photo gallaries and reels. They look great! (see them here: https://www.facebook.com/BenoniBaptistChurch/photos).
We’ve also been using the photos as our YouTube LIVE service thumbnails (see them here: https://www.youtube.com/@BenoniBaptistChurch).
What I want to draw your attention to is our reworked website. Thanks for the way you guys are serving. It’s making a difference (see the website here: https://www.benonibaptistchurch.com/).
The shot selection
Before service
People mingling and greeting. Get groups of people, in natural poses, with lots of smiles. We’re a diverse church, young and old, black and white, male and female. Try and capture that where possible. The suburbs that we reach predominantly people in their mid thirty’s with kids, so keep that in mind too.
Worship team. It’s better to get close ups of the worship team before the service rather than during the service. We don’t have a lot of these shots, so it’d be great if we build a repository over the next few months.
During service
Congregation worshipping. These shots get taken from the back or side. Better to use a lens than get in a person’s face.
What we want are authentic moments of worship, eyes closed, hands raised. Authentic moments of fellowship, people hugging, and smiling. Authentic moments of people listening during preaching, Bible’s open.
I love back of room shots with a wide angle lens that captures as many people as possible.
Preacher preaching. This is best from the back, with lots of people in the frame.
After service
Fellowship. Joy, people in groups, drinking tea and coffee together. These shots can be poses (ask a group to take a photo of them), or natural, taken from a distance.
Kids
Only take photos where kids cannot be identified.
Google Drive
Upload photos to the unprocessed Google Drive directory. The idea is that we have place where we can keep church photo and video assets. The photos are stored in a directory that relates to the photo, and with a date prefix YYYYMMDD. Upload in Ultra HD.