How to Use Portraits in Church Photography

The term “portrait” gets used a lot in the photography world, but what does it mean? How does it apply to your church?

Portrait photography is about capturing the personality, emotions, and story of a person or group of people in an image. In church photography, this can be used to display your church’s overall culture and to showcase your church community.

Taking portraits isn’t always the hard part, often finding the right places to use them is a challenge. Keep reading as I explain what portrait photography is and give ideas for where your church can use it.

What Is Portrait Photography?

In photography, portraits are photos of a person, a group of people, or an animal that capture their personality, emotions, and story. These photos can be staged or candid, both have benefits and drawbacks. I’ll get into the pros and cons of both further in the article, but for now, let’s look at the most important factor in portrait photography: context.

Before fully explaining what context means in this instance, it’s important for church photographers to know that a deep understanding of the context of your image will help you to tell a story and to drive emotion.

To understand the context of your image, you need to ask yourself some basic questions: Who is the subject of your image and how do they relate to your church? What are they doing in the photo? When is this photo being taken and is it a significant point in time? Where is it being taken? Why is it being taken, for a specific event or promotion? How is this photo going to be used?

Consider these questions before your shoot, after all, you’re going to have trouble showcasing the personality and story of your subject if you don’t understand them yourself.

The ultimate goal of a portrait is to showcase genuine emotion, but what does that mean? I have an article breaking down exactly what genuine emotion is and how to capture it.

What Are Candids & Why Are They Important?

In photography, a candid is a still from an actual moment in time. What this means is that your subject is either unaware that they’re being photographed at that specific moment or has no direction from the photographer.

These photos are not staged and aim to showcase genuine emotion. They achieve this by being unfiltered and raw, which makes a noticeable difference in an image.

Candids also can show the relationship between multiple people. Have you ever seen two people and thought, “They must be really close”? Photographs have the power to display these types of relationships. For a church, this is a great tool for showcasing your church community.

Another aspect of candids is that they don’t only showcase an actual moment in time, but a specific one. Let’s say you are documenting a church missions project, and you take a photo of the entire team. This is a great way to remember the trip and everyone who served on it.

Now, conversely, let’s say you take a candid photo of the team in action. Looking back on that image will invoke the memories and emotions associated with that specific part of the trip.

If you’re looking for more information, I have an article explaining what candid church photography is and its importance.

How Your Church Can Use Headshots

Though technically separate from each other, headshots and portraits have some very similar uses in a church setting.

In photography, a headshot is a photo that is focused specifically on the subject’s face. Contrary to candid photos, headshots are staged photos generally used to showcase the subject, not an underlying theme.

In a church setting, you’ll see these most in staff and elders’ photos. They can also be used for spotlights and announcements. For example, when making a social media post about an upcoming baptism, instead of posting a generic picture of a lake or baptism tank, your church could post pictures of each of the people being baptized. In this instance either a headshot or candid portrait would work, it all comes down to taste.

How Your Church Can Use Portrait Photography

Now that we understand what portrait photography is and why it’s important, let’s look at some practical ways your church can use the portraits that you take.

Social media is becoming increasingly popular for churches to stay connected with their members and to outreach to their communities. Including portraits in your posts is a great way to showcase your church community and put real faces to the name of your church. Anytime there is an opportunity to put a face to a name with a portrait photo on social media, take it, especially if it’s a staff member or volunteer.

Print materials don’t often get pointed out by those who don’t have a hand in producing them, but they can still make an impact on those who see them. Newsletters, pamphlets, welcome packages, and event directories, to name a few, are all opportunities to showcase the members of your church helping to build community.

More and more churches are building websites as digital services and materials have become popular in recent times. Again, this is a great way to showcase your church family to your community and any newcomers. Sure, you can use stock photos, but those rarely show genuine emotion and are easily recognizable as stock.

One of the more obvious places to use portrait photos is during services. These portraits could be displayed as part of a related announcement, maybe highlighting a group led by a congregation member with a portrait of them talking to a group of people. They’re also useful for introductions when someone is being highlighted. For example, highlighting a staff member in charge of tech team volunteers with a portrait of them makes it easier for them to be found by those looking.

The final way, and my personal favourite, for portraits to be used at church, is in a digital photo album. This is an excellent way to build community and can be very meaningful for congregation members as they attend the church over time. This could be an album on Facebook or even a simple Google Drive folder.