On and off for the past 16 years I’ve been taking portraits of church families and creating a printed photo directory. As I first proposed it to my church leaders long ago, it would help us learn each others’ names so there’d be no excuse to not know someone.
The photo directory has been a great success. I can’t help but feel it has boosted the friendliness of our congregation. When new families arrive we give them a copy — they are so excited to be able to integrate quickly and call people by name. New missionaries transferring in can’t believe it when we hand them this organized directory that lets them hit the ground running. We had a face book before Facebook.
Every time we put out a new version it’s exciting, like that one giddy day at the end of the school year when yearbooks come out. Today I handed out the 2015 edition, and it was so gratifying to watch people flip through and learn the new families. (Sorry, Sunday School teachers.) This week as the new directory went out, a new family moved in. It’s already out of date.
One of my key purposes of the photo directory is to help everyone learn the childrens’ names, listed left to right in the photos. We all end up helping raising and teaching each others’ kids, so we have a cheat sheet that lets us call them all by name. It helps the kids know we care about them. When I was teaching the 12- and 13-year-old boys I’d give them all copies and quiz them on family names. These boys took turns serving as bishop’s messenger each week, so they needed to actually know the families. The whole class had to score 80% to earn chocolate.
The photos (and photographer) have gotten more sophisticated with time. I started with a 0.3 megapixel Apple QuickTake camera. These days I’m setting up a photo studio in our gym several times a year with a tripod-mounted DSLR, strobes on stands with an umbrella and a 12’ backdrop. It’s a lot to haul week after week, and it takes time to set up and break down. But at some point I realized most families don’t take as many portraits together as they should; if we’re gathering everybody anyway, let’s make it look good and give it to those who want a copy. The finished book looks amazing in the end.
Family History
In the last few days I've realized having all these photos on my hard drive is an important family and church history archive I need to share. Families have moved in and out. Kids on laps in 1999 are now college students. Families have grown from one person, to two, to six … or the other way around. (Things get pretty poignant when you have to Photoshop yourself out of your own family picture.) Many beloved friends have passed on. Change happens in all families and it’s part of the deal.See the archive of 455 photos, A-Z.
Except for the earliest images shot at 640 x 480, photos are downsampled to 1000 pixels on the long edge. If you want a higher resolution version of something for your family, let me know, I should have the originals.
