spirit from the stage

Image captured hand-held 2/5/11, 8:36am • Canon 5D, Canon EF28-200mm f/3.5-5.6 USM • 64mm, f/5, 1/25 sec, ISO 1000 • minor adjustments made in Adobe Lightroom 2

Last weekend, I had the honor of spending three days at Green Lake Conference Center for our church's annual Middle School Winter Retreat as their photographer.

With 10 different churches represented this year and nearly 200 students, this retreat is a very big deal—lots of planning goes into the whole event. But the coolest part is, it's so much more than just another "cool event". God receives SO much glory!

As the photographer for this event, I get to capture stills of all of the students and leaders during games, activities (indoor and outdoor in the snow), main sessions, team challenges in the gym, and more. Over the course of the weekend, I snapped over 1000 photographs and sorted & edited nearly 300 while I was there. They get uploaded to a site where the students can access them soon after they get home from the retreat.

These two images were a couple of my favorites from the main session times. Our student worship band, Fueled, is made up of high school and middle school students. They did an absolutely AMAZING job leading everyone in spirited worship to God. I loved the confidence each of them brought to the stage.

I tried to capture these images exactly as they appeared in person with the darkness of the large room and colorful stage lighting. The low available light definitely made them hard to shoot hand-held, but I'm happy with the mood that they freeze in time. What memories!

"We are a chosen generation, rise up holy nation! God we live for you.
You have called us out of darkness, into light so glorious. God, we live for you.
Our God will not be moved, our God will never be shaken! We run to you, we run!"