Last weekend we were at my son-in-law and daughter’s church, Holy Cross Orthodox Church in Linthicum Heights, Maryland, where my youngest granddaughter, Beatrice, was baptized into the life in Christ.
In my last post (which I wrote earlier today), I talked about the itch to capture beauty, or the arresting image, or the image that engages us as persons. The last is usually an image of other persons, especially when they are interacting with others. A service of worship, especially a liturgical one, provides lots of opportunity for this. People may be distracted (especially children), or moved, or amused. When something is happening to someone, as in baptism, there is a focus of attention on someone who is completely unselfconscious and unaware of what is about to happen (when a baby). He or she is the object of the love of parents, grandparents, godparents, and those who love these others. This gives the photographer great opportunities to capture the visible signs of this love, in the context of the worship of the One who has made us.
The couple carrying the child are the godparents, Darius and Anastasia. My son-in-law is the priest, Fr. Joshua Burnett (in black), and my daughter, Meredith, is the smiling mom behind him in the second image. The serving priest is Fr. Timothy (whose last name I did not get).
Sometimes an image calls for a special treatment. One reminded me of old-style, black & white images of services, and of painted tableaux. So that’s how I rendered it in post-processing, with a little bit of grain to imitate film. (That’s my wife, Edith, in the background, with her camera up to capture the processing of the priest and godparents around the table.) We sing, “All those who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. Alleluia!”
To see the gallery with a lot more images from the baptism, go here.