Photographing an outdoor baptism

A Baptism is an important event for any Christ follower, their family, and their church. On a regular basis CCM provides new, and recommitting, Christ followers an opportunity to be publicly baptized. We like to capture these moments to share with the rest of the church. This post provides some information on the how we photograph these events.

All of our baptisms are held outside, either at the beach or at a public pool/aquatic center. To document the day, we will get shots of the venue showing the active areas of the event. It's  good to get a wide angle shot that shows these areas in a single shot and provide a reference for the viewer.

This shot was taken using a wide angle lens and the camera was held high overhead on a monopod. I used  the timed shutter release to activate the shutter after it was raised.

Raised Monopod Shot

This shot is very unique, as it was shot from a kite mounted camera

Kite Mounted Camera

When capturing the crowd, there are two things we like to see. The first is the size of the crowd, especially if there is a large crowd. A church body is always encouraged when they get to see the impact that God is having on the church community, and seeing a big turnout is a big encouragement. The second thing we've learned is the crowd is the place where people connect with each other..families are together, friends are greeting and encouraging each other. The key is to be constantly scanning the crowd for shots like these.

Praise and worship moments

Connecting with the church family

Family moments

The shots that have the most impact are those moments of emotion that can tell the story in a single image. It's critical to get in close-up face shots for this. So much emotion is conveyed in the expressions on people's faces. Here are a few samples.

Tears show the emotion

The look of Peace

The look of Joy

Finally I wanted to discuss some of the technical challenges, along with the techniques we use to get the shots.

Lighting:
The biggest challenge is the lighting. Our baptisms usually occur early in the morning when the sun is low in the sky. When the baptism is at the aquatic center, the sun is well positioned to light the faces of those getting baptized. At the beach the sun is coming from behind and requires a little more strategy. There are two ways to overcome this problem, but both require the photographer to get a little wet. One way is to use fill flash, which of course requires the photographer to be fairly close to the subject. The other is to try to change the angle between the sun, the subject and the camera. This can be done by moving out farther into the water and shooting from the side, but may require the baptizer/baptized to change their angle towards the photographer.

Using fill flash with sun behind subject(s)

Lens Choice:
My "go to" lens for this is an 70-200 zoom. It allows me to get in tight while staying at an unobtrusive distance. It is still important to get a good angle on the action and be close enough to fill the frame with subject. This lens covers 90% of the shots. The other 10% are taken with a wider zoom lens, like a 17-55mm on a crop frame camera, or a 24-70mm on a full frame camera. The wide angle is used primarily for the wide crowd shots.

Camera Settings:
For us, these are sunlit events, and there is plenty of light to use low ISOs, fast shutter speeds, and reasonable aperture settings. I usually shoot in Aperture Priority so I can adjust the depth of field for the scene. I use "One Shot" focusing for the crowd shots, both close-up and wide angle. For the actual baptizing, I switch to "Servo" to track the action better.