Young children and adults gather at the United Church of Christ on Wednesday evenings for their LAF program. LAF is an acronym for 'Loaves and Fishes' and is in place of Sunday school each weekend.
I haven't been involved with the program much, I don't yet have children. Though it would be a wonderful volunteer opportunity. One Sunday I noticed an announcement in the church bulletin looking for individuals who would loan their digital camera to they children to use. The posting also asked if anyone would like to accompany their camera and help the kids.
Anyone who knows me understands two things: I don't like cameras nor do I like children. Wait a minute, scratch that - I AM a big kid who is cool working with children and I do enjoy photography. So, of course it seemed like something to do.
These children (that I helped with) are preschool age. I wondered how one would present photography to children. Hinduism is the religion that all children at LAF have been learning about for the last couple of weeks. Photography would be used to demonstrate how to see God in everything.
In this photo Pastor Steve is teaching the children to greet each other by using the phrase "Namaste". If I recall his explanation he said that it's a good way to say, "The God in me recognizes the God in you." I hope that I paraphrased that correctly.
Jason Askew, a local photographer and memeber of the UCC, brought his computer to the group to show images that he thought were beautiful. He does a lot of work with HDR (High Dynamic Range) images. You can check out his website here.
We really only got about ten minutes with the kids to go and look for things that they find interesting in the church. I was paired with Liam and his mom. Here are a couple of photos that he took:
You may or may not be able to see that the children in the above photo are learning how to do yoga. They were children aged 5 and above. We went downstairs, I thought to take some photos of them.
This young man thought that he might like to try to do yoga and that it might be more fun than taking pictures. So, he handed the camera to his mom and joined the kids on the floor.
Really, who can blame him? I enjoy yoga when I get around to doing it. And really the goal is just to create a positive experience in church.
Click on the "People That You Meet" photo along the right to view the photographs that I snapped at LAF.
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