Heres an article I wrote a little ago and posted on deviantART where I usually post my pictures.

Original link: http://news.deviantart.com/article/59567/

Photographic philosophy of a Christ follower

<sub>Music:
- A place for us by: Leigh Nash and Tyler James
- J.S. Bach: Cello suite No 1 in G (BWV 1007) – I: Prelude</sub>
- Our Soldiers’ Letters – Angelo Badalamenti (A very long Engagement Movie Soundtrack)

For those who don’t know me as being a follower of that renowned historic figure named Jesus, the Christ, well, I am. I wanted to start things off this way so that those who feel offended can close the window now and now feel pushed into reading something they have no interest in. Other than that I shall jump right into the topic. Throughout my 4 year and a half (up to this day) long photographic career I have continuously heard people talk about the importance of one’s outlook on photography. From the beginning I asked myself the big question “so what is the way I have to look at photography in order for my pictures to look good?”.

In time, however I realized how this kind of thinking is not the kind of attitude that I like to think of myself as having. Why? Well because the more I thought about photography and art in general, I couldn’t help but conclude how there is so much more to art than just creating the kind that people will appreciate. Sure, it’s nice to have many faves in your gallery, but I strongly believe that there are way greater joys to have had from the wonderful world of photography. An example of which can be the achievement of expressing those thoughts in our images that we wish to express, the ability to achieve storytelling through photographs, to a level that allows the viewer to truly enter the emotional context in which the photograph was taken, or, last but not least, as a Christ follower, I believe a wonderful part of photography can be the making photography into a tool of worship, prayer and fellowship with God. The last of these is the one that I would like to look at in more detail, because it is the one that I find to be most fascinating of the potential joys of photography and the one that has given me the most satisfaction trough the years.

Worship, prayer, fellowship with God …and a Nikon D200:
You will wonder how a Nikon D200 armed with an 18-55mm (especially one without Vibration Reduction) kit lens could possibly be a tool for worship, prayer and fellowship with God; especially those of you who are Canon users . But let me humour you and try to explain why I think this scenario is far from being unlikely.

I have been a follower of Christ since the autumn of 2004. I say this because it was then, when I finally decided that once and for all I would make up my mind about my spiritual beliefs and would either straight-out follow God or live my life as though He was not real. I have given Him then a chance and asked Him to show me that I am doing the right thing following Him, and I believe that the course of events that followed answered in a positive manner my request. By the way, when I refer to God I say Him, not because I am sexist or believe that the spirit of God is male, but because I am most certainly not going to call Him an ‘it’ and I decided against going for ‘her’ because this writing is not meant to be a work written with the purpose of aggitating sexual debates, so I shall simply use the commonly used manner of addressing Him found in most Bibles to date. Apart from me becomming a follower of Christ, the year of 2004 A.D. also marks the year when I started to consider photography as a serious hobby and I joined deviantART.com. Often, as I advanced in learning about the being a follower of Christ, I wondered if this could in some way affect my approach to photography. I mean, the gospels do talk about how God wants to have a relationship with each of us and become part of how we do everything in our lives, so why could photography not count? So my first attempts to translate these thoughts into relaity were to go out into nature and show the rest of the world God’s Creation, perhaps in ways that they had not yet seen before, places hard to reach for many, or places that people might not have a direct interest in seeing. In this kind of a way I would be somewhat of a messenger of God’s Creation’s beauty to those who for whatever reason aren’t able to see/find/notice it on their own. Well… that did not exactly always work as I expected. Often times I would be disappointed, comming home empty handed, having found nothing out of the ordinary that would make me feel great about my unconventional philosophy for photography. Then slowly as time went by I less and less practiced this approach to photography.

God centered photography happens on God’s terms:
I noticed an interesting phenomenon happening as time went by. My photographic practices tend to happen the following way; I have periods in which I shoot massive amounts of pictures, days and weeks on. I shoot and I unload to my laptop. Then I shoot again. This way of doing things leaves me with tons of editing material for the times when I either can not go out on photoshoots or do not feel inspired to do so. Then, you will find me sitting at my laptop, listening to music and editing. That is also when I discover the value and worth of pictures that I thought were useless at other times, especially when I had just shot them. Many of the pictures in my gallery right now that have many faves are such images, that only later I began to value, I edited and eventually posted.

I thought about this and one day I had an epiphany and in my mind exclaimed, “of course!”. When God speaks to us about wanting to be in a relationship with us, for us to pick up his ‘yoke’(Matthew 11:28-30), to learn from Him and work alongside Him, allowing Him to open up doors for us that otherwise we could not open, He does not mean that we should go out there and ask Him to deliver results to us that we can then boast in, but that he actually imagines a collaborative activity in which He expects us to expect Him to have an active and immediate involvement, which is not what I used to do.

Going photoshooting with God:
Wouldn’t it be pretty amazing to go photoshooting with God? I always like going photoshooting with someone else, I often don’t like going alone. When you’re with someone you have someone to talk to, someone to give you a second opinion to ideas, angles, places to go. You can learn from that person and you can offer your experiences as an oportunity to learn for them. So I’d say going for a photoshoot with the Creator of the Universe would quite an experience. So why not do just this?

It’s all in the way you look at it. I mean, God is with us always anyway, whenever we walk, sit, pull out the camera, whichever way we turn, He is there. It is however up to us whether or not we acknowledge His presence or whether we choose to do things on our own.

So what does it mean to acknowledge God when on a photoshoot?
- God wants us to acknowledge His presence:

Remember that you are not alone. Remember that you are in the world that He created. Greet Him. If you marvel at the beauty around, remember who gets credit for it.

- God wants us to enjoy the fruits of nature, not the fruits of vanity

Keep in mind why you are where you are. Which is, to enjoy the beauty of God’s creation. This means to enjoy it, as in behold it, photograph it and marvel at it’s complexity. I guess what is more important in this part is what enjoying nature does not mean. It does not mean to look around and think to yourself “Alright God, show me something impressing that I can take a photo of and that will bring me many faves on dA “. Why not? Well, it’s not that getting faves on dA is a bad thing. It is great when people appreciate our work. But when we work toward that purpose and it takes over our motivation, then yes it becomes a negative thing. Why? Because someimes God does not take us into the middle of the wilderness to take pictures that will make daily deviations, but because He wants to tell us something; us or others through us. Many times I have received comments on my deviations from various people who told me how they were inspired and encouraged by my artwork, some artwork, at times, that I don’t even consider some of my best works, some that don’t even have faves. When we involve God into our lives, He promises that He will use us in useful ways, but sometimes the usefulness of a photoshoot is not the acquiring of faves and personal fame, but perhaps just a good walk, a talk, an encouraging message that someone will pick out of a posted picture somewhere two years down the road that we might never even know about.

- God wants to be part of the creative work

Often times I would go photoshooting and I did not think I had much to work with at the end of the day. I would often think “these pictures are garbage, I might as well erase them all”. We should however not underestimate God’s work habbits. He seems to always want to make a point out of showing the greatness of His power by making great things out of nearly nothing. He started this when He made mankind out of dust… now if that doesn’t make a point… . So why would He not be able to use to His advantage pictures that now I find do not have what it takes to be great. And He often does, when later I look over old pictures and choose some for editing, I find promissing ones among piles of pictures that in the past I considered useless.

This picture for example, I shot one afternoon when I was convinced the day was lost. It was a cold day and I had not gone into town on time to catch enough sunlight for a good photoshoot. So in the gloominess of the moment I walked to the end of the street and waiting for the bus (this one comes by every 45 minutes) I started shooting into a little bunch of grass. I found these two extremely acrobatic ants and when I got back home, just about the right idea came to me all of a sudden and I did the right thing to bring out the best in the picture. Link: [link] Thumb:

So whether God wants to make his presence felt in the random events that happen during the photoshoot, or through the purpose he wants to use you for, or through the random idea that shows up in your mind during editing, He wants us to be open to it and allow Him to play His part in the process.

Doing these things may not always assure you more faves than the day before, but will definitely enrich the spiritual experience that God would like every activity we do to be by involving Him.

Unexpected photographic opportunities:
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- did not have my tripod with me. luckily I had the idea of putting the camera on the ground and tilting it up using the lens cap and filter holder

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- did not have my tripod with me. luckily I had the idea of putting the camera on the ground and tilting it up using the lens cap and filter holder

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- I was comming home one Sunday morning from church when I noticed the frog in the grass in my backyard. I was dead tired since I had not slept much the night before, but I decided to take the camera out anyway. It paid off

Making the best out of an unpromissing situation or pictures:
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- a picture I shot when I was in a hurry. It ended up being the conduit by which I met *canuckgurl22

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- I shot this in autumn 2007, nearly a year ago. I did not think it could be of much use to me until I looked through the folder it was in a few days ago, et voila, with a little bit of a new editing technique it got me over 40 faves!

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- it was a cold evening in winter 2007-2008 and I was out with my Tamron 70-300mm lens. I did not have much hope for a good closeup picture of a bird as they all flew off almst as soon as they landed, especially at ISO 1000 on the Nikon D200 which is not known for good high ISO noise handling. But look, a year later, with better editing skills it turned out to be a success.