Taking My Camera To Church

"You even take your camera to church?" Yeah, occasionally. If there is something special going on, like a holiday celebration, several other people might bring their camera, so why not me?

Yesterday was just a normal Sunday morning; nothing special going on. Our Pastor wasn't even there - he's away on vacation with his family. Another preacher from SC was filling in. I decided to make some photos as an experiment, just to see how the lighting was in this church. In  my experience, most churches have awful lighting for photography, in both quantity and quality. First of all, it's usually relatively dim. That's to be expected. After all, it's a worship service, not a Broadway musical. Then there's usually mixed sources (fluorescent/incandescent) that play havoc with color balance. Adjustable white balance on a digital camera only helps a little. Since using flash is out of the question, blurred photos with LSD-inspired colors are often the result. This church, one we've been attending for only a few months, was no exception.

So as not disturb the other worshipers, I shot from the little booth where the audio/video people work. I used both my Olympus DSLR, and my little Lumix, both mounted on a tripod. From that distance and angle, I couldn't get an individual photo of everybody on the platform, but I tried to get as many as I could. Out of almost 200 exposures made during the worship service (and a couple from my Sunday School class), these were the few keepers (by my standards), and they still required quite a bit of tinkering in the digital darkroom. Enjoy. (Click on photos to enlarge.)