Baptism By The Bay 2008
July 20, 2008
I love baptisms!
To watch someone proclaim their faith in public with a couple hundred people and a man sunbathing in a pink g-string bikini 20 feet away, is one of the more spectacular things about following Jesus Christ. Just before the person enters the polluted bay to make a symbolic profession of faith, they, eyes squinting in the setting sun, tell stories of how they came to this moment.
One boy, just 10 years old, at most, said, “My dad isn’t a Christian and this is one of the ways that I can practically show him that I’m serious about my faith.” THAT, to me, is amazing! As he entered the water and listened to the pastor of National Community Church, Mark Batterson, he looked up with intensity, hanging on every word they said about what he was about to do. As they lowered him into the water and raised him out, he threw his hands up in the rock n’ roll hand gesture.
It’s that joy that I love to capture. It’s what draws me to photograph weddings. It’s what draws me to shooting photographs in the first place. I love what I do. I love stopping that one moment that you pause and say, “I commit my life to you” to someone. It doesn’t get any better than raw emotion!
Every year, I help add to the video at National Community Church by taking these photos. 2 years ago, Jeremy Sexton, made this amazing baptism video to the song, “Fix You” by Coldplay (when you see the list of videos, choose Baptism By The Bay) and last year he put another video together using an underwater camera to capture a different angle.
This year, we decided to take formal portraits of everyone to go along with their on-camera interviews. You can see a few of them on the left and all of them on my flickr page.
Portraits of the Baptizee’s
Dairo playing the bongos
My roommate, Steve, and his killer ‘stache
a boy plays on the beach
Entering the water
Rock N’ Roll!
Watching family being baptized
This is me and my girlfriend, Joanna. Being a photographer, we have maybe 4 good photos of us together so I handed the camera to her sister, Jen, to take some photos. This is typical of us.
Commentary
JC
July 24, 2008 · 8:51 AM
Simply beautiful. And the photos are pretty good, too. Thank you for sharing.