How to Start a Photo Ministry

Thanks to the invention of digital photography, photographers can offer their services to those who cannot otherwise pay for their services at a very minimal cost. Photo ministries are designed to provide healing during tough transitions and shouldn’t be taken lightly. Depending on your passion, your talent and your time, your photo ministry can encompass many products from simple photos on a CD-ROM to photo montages to digital scrapbooks to a single family portrait. The success of your photo ministry will be in your ability to balance your ministry with your business—your paying customers.

Instructions

1. Choose a demographic. Every photo ministry starts with a demography: a group of people based upon certain characteristics. Take the time to understand why you want to volunteer your services as a photographer, then find a group of people who meet your reasons. It could be to give parents of dying newborns a chance to hold onto their children—if only for a moment. It could be to help the dying leave a part of themselves behind for their loved ones—a way of capturing their true spirit, a way to remember them the way they want to be remembered. Or it could be to capture the reunion of military families after they’ve returned from months of deployment.

2. Write a contract. No matter what your intentions are, you need to protect yourself, your business and your family. You do that by providing a contract that spells everything out in complete detail: what services you are offering, who owns the copyrights to the photos, what products you are providing free of charge, what products you are providing for a fee (and what that fee is), liability clause, dispute resolution and what happens when your equipment malfunctions or the photos are lost.

3. Contact your insurance company. It’s important that you know whether or not your business insurance covers your photo ministry and, if not, what steps are needed to obtain coverage so that you and your company are protected should anything go wrong.

4. Set a limit. When you first start your photo ministry, clients may be few and far between. But as your ministry grows, so will the needs of others to use your free services. You need to set a limit on how many clients you will photograph for your ministry on a weekly or yearly basis. You cannot run a successful and profitable photography business if the bulk of your time is used photographing clients for your photo ministry. And you cannot photograph clients for your photo ministry if you don’t have money coming in to pay your bills, order supplies or purchase photographs.

5. Meet with your clients. It may be tempting to skimp on formalities when it comes to photographing clients for free, but don’t. Take the time to meet with your clients before the photo shoot to talk with them about the reasons they want to use your services, what they expect to gain from the photo session and when and where they’d like the photo shoot to take place.

6. Photograph clients. Meet with your clients on the designated date and time. Stay for the entire time you’ve allotted, and no matter how heartbreaking it may be or how difficult the clients may become, keep your cool. Remember that your clients are going through a very difficult time and what they need from you is your professionalism, your compassion and your talent.

7. Deliver photos. Delivery of the photos can be done in person or they can be done by mail. The choice is yours.

Tips & Warnings

• Patience is very important. Your clients are going through a difficult period in their lives and may not always be the most reasonable or understanding individuals—even if you’re providing your service for free.

• Don’t get too emotionally involved. Doing so could cause you to overpromise.

Resources

• Transitions Abroad: Volunteering With an NGO as a Photographer
• Flashes of Hope
• Operation Love
• Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep