VBC Pictures

My church’s Vacation Bible Camp (VBC) this year was held on three Saturdays during July with yesterday being the third Saturday.  In the past it has been held the last week in June, which means that I couldn’t help out since I have to work. If I had kids I would take a week’s vacation to help out but since I don’t, as much as I would like to help out, I have never been willing to sacrifice a week of vacation for it.

Since this year VBC was held on Saturdays and I wanted to put together a power point showing everyone the fun that was had, I volunteered to take pictures.  I ended up taking well over 200 pictures over the three days.  Out of those pictures, I chose about 50 to edit and use in the power point.

I also used them for the service slides today trying to pick pictures that had something to do with what we were doing during the service.  Such as, ones that looked like the kids were contemplative or praying for the prayer slides.  The pictures from the lunches were perfect for the communion slides although I suspect that seeing pictures of the macaroni and cheese and pizza might have made a few stomachs growl.  Pictures of the kids listening to stories fit in to the Bible reading slides.  It was amazing to me that, when I had edited the pictures last week from the first two Saturdays, I realized that I really didn’t have something appropriate for some of the service slides.  So I had to be more deliberate in taking pictures yesterday so I would have the slides that I needed.

All in all, the service slides turned out nice and it was wonderful to see our own church members as the subject of the slides rather than generic images downloaded from IStock Photo.  The VBC power point also turned out really well. On the advice of a friend, I grouped photos together so that all the craft slides were together, all the games slides, all the meal slides, etc.  I was thinking of doing it chronologically but this made much more sense and it flowed better.  I also played the music from VBC rather than having our music director play the piano while the slides were running.  I think it added a nice touch.

I hope that next year we can do it on Saturdays again.  It was great to watch the kids having so much fun and I was able to capture some great pictures.  There were a couple of pictures I loved.  One was during “Hot Potato” when the kids passed a water balloon around a circle stepping farther away from each other with each passing.  I caught one little boy dropping the balloon and the balloon was about six inches from the pavement.  The look on the boy’s face that had tossed the balloon was priceless because he could see that the other boy wasn’t going to catch it.  The other picture I loved was of three little girls sitting waiting for lunch.  Two of the girls were sticking their tongues out at each other and the girl sitting in the middle was laughing.  It is a completely spontaneous picture that just, to me, epitomized the joy of childhood.  I didn’t even know I had captured that moment until I downloaded the pictures.  It was a wonderful surprise to see it.  I really enjoy capturing moments like that.  A moment that may be fleeting but now that we have a picture of it, will last forever.

I hope that the kid’s memories of VBC 2010 will also last forever and be thought of with joy and happiness when they look back as adults.  Thinking of that makes all the hard work worthwhile for everyone.