Ash Wednesday

A couple hours after shooting my swimming assignment, I had to shoot a church service for Ash Wednesday. Now, if there is one place I hate to shoot more than anywhere else it is church! The main reason being I see church as an extremely sacred place, it's a lot like shooting funerals, not a whole lot of people want to see a photographer there. So when I am shooting in church I pretty much do everything that I can to stay low key. Of course getting the pastor's blessing for you to be there is most important part. That was done early in the afternoon rather than showing up at the last minute. Then I get there and try and scout out a location to shoot from that will give me both a good look at what's going on but allows me to stay kind of out of sight. This one worked out well I got the shot above standing off to the side while shooting with a 70-200mm lens. My thinking on this is not only am I trying not to make a scene, but I also don't want ruin the chance of shooting here again in the future or making the newspaper look bad. In situations like this I will take a subpar photo, rather than making a scene. However, I guess I did something right, since the church's music minister sent me a thank you email the next day saying they loved the photo.