For a while now, there’s been a particular object/concept that I’ve been wanting to photograph for a Shoot to Serve Photo Assignment. I’ve talked with many publishers who describe the type of photo they need . . . audio book, Christmas, fatherhood, balloons, etc. But no one needed this one thing I’ve been itching to go out and photograph.

Until now!

When this photo need came up as an option for the August assignment, I was excited to jump on it! But exactly what that particular object/concept actually is, I’m not going to tell you until you watch the demonstration video! As you are watching, see if you can figure out what it is . . . I bet you’ll never guess!

Now you know what this month’s assignment is. 🙂 And for those who didn’t watch the video before they started scrolling, to peek at a photo before they guessed, I’m putting up a totally unrelated photo next to throw them off. 🙂 It has nothing to do with this assignment . . .

. . . except that, well, it was taken on the same trip as I took the church photos!

While you are in the mood for guessing, can you guess where this lighthouse photo was taken? We were traveling to the Southeast Homeschool Expo in Georgia, so you might think it would be in North Carolina or South Carolina. But it’s not! In fact, it’s perched on a hill in a completely landlocked state without a single ship sailing in sight. That’s right. It’s in my own home state of West Virginia! This lighthouse is purely intended to be a tourist attraction and if you climb to the top you can see a lake over the treetops below. We only took enough time to snap a photo, though, and continued on our way.

Anyway, back to this month’s assignment. 🙂

As we spun down the highway, we researched where to find churches for the demonstration video. While you can take this assignment in any direction you’d like (photographing inside or outside of a church, incorporating or not incorporating people, wide-angle vs. detailed shots, etc.) I have always loved finding quaint, old country churches and using landscape style photography to capture them. And now I had an excuse to explore around and take pictures of a subject I already love!

The first church I found that was close to our route was this one:

With so many telephone wires around, I had to get really close up with a wide angle lens.

Stepping back, I could get this shot:

And of course, going in to Lightroom to do a little telephone-wire removing helps it out a lot:

The details for this assignment say that only horizontal photos should be submitted, but I liked the following vertical composition for my own personal portfolio:

And here’s the shot from a little way down the driveway:

From up on the hill, I could see down into the valley and spotted another church with a red roof. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to swing by it and see what photos I could get since we were already there.

Here’s the front of that church with as many telephone wires cropped out as I could manage:

Here’s the side view with the nice stone wall incorporated:

Here’s the side view with the nice stone wall incorporated after I remembered I was supposed to submit only horizontal photos:

And this is just a random shot taken while I was walking back to the car:

It was a nice building, but the surroundings ruined its picturesqueness. Perhaps I should have come to photograph it before telephone wires were invented. 🙂

The last church we stopped at was probably the most scenic of the three. It stood on a hill with open fields all around. In fact, the surroundings were so open that I drove to a cemetery across the valley in hopes of getting a more unique perspective. But the cemetery was surrounded by a fence and gate, and the trees blocked any other view I could find of the church. So I abandoned that idea and went back to see what regular, close-up shots I could get. And it still turned out to be very nice:

The sun came out for a very short time while I was there, so I was able to grab this shot:

I hope you couldn’t notice, but to help it look a little more dynamic, I added just a little bit of glowing radial gradient over where the sun was shining through the tree.

And below is the last photo of the day. You can see more obviously that I added a glowing radial gradient in this one. 🙂

Now It’s Your Turn!

I very much enjoyed photographing this assignment! And I hope you do too. It is now time for you to go gather all the details and photograph it yourself. What picturesque church can you find near you? Can’t wait to see your photos!

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