Fork In The Road Music » Camera

Youth Group Games: Photo Scavenger Hunt

Russell Martin — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 05:27:08 +0000

We did this photo scavenger hunt with 200 Sr. High youth at our last camp. Here’s how it works.

We made sure each group had a cell phone that could take photos and email them. I made sure they all had my email address.

I gave each of them two sheets of paper. The first had a contact photo sheet with photos of objects around the camp ground. They might be of a fire hydrant, a corner of a sign, or a side of a building. The second sheet had a list of items, poses, and people.

We assigned points. 200 points for each item from the contact sheet they could find and take a photo with their group in front of. 50 points for each item from the list they could include in the photo.

Each team could submit only 15 photos to be judged. They figured out the best way was to combine as many objects in the photo as they could. For instance get a photo of everyone behind the fire hydrant, sitting on yellow chairs, with a musician. 200+50+50=300 pts.

We also told them that there was a bonus for the team who came back at the designated time. We told them the time was somewhere between 7:00 and 7:30 p.m. This eliminated the need to finish first, and run all over camp, with some fast runners ahead, and leaving others in the group behind.

The Good: When I have done scavenger hunts in the past, the problem usually comes as groups try to race from one clue to the next. Half the group runs ahead, the rest lag behind. By making a designated time to aim for, and weighting it heavy with points, most of our groups returned in that 30 minute window.

The Bad: Though cell phones were not prohibited, some felt that using them for a game encouraged their use more than should be.

How to make the contact sheet: I took about 30 minutes and rode around camp taking photos. I then came back and loaded them into picasa and printed a contact sheet for each group.

How to make the list: Well I have listed our extra items list below. Sort it and edit it to fit the needs of your camp, retreat or youth meeting.

(I created this while at Methodist District Camp at Lakeview in Palestine. If you would like the photos and items selected specifically for this camp just leave a comment and let me know.)

Extra Items List

Your group …

charlies angel pose

laying in a circle with your heads together

set up like opposing football teams

riding imaginary bikes

Spell out “prayer” with your bodies

With a pastor

With someone wearing a green shirt

re-enacting a scene in a disney movie

blowing bubbles

re-enacting a famous painting

standing on one leg

with a watermelon

with a musician (musician must have instrument)

in front of a chapel

On a pier

on the prayer trail

With a live fish

with a live bug

Playing ships and sailors

Playing duck duck goose

in a road

on a sign

Writing your name

With a cafeteria person

Photo with camp staff person

pretend like eating a worm

lined up

photo of a bird

With a gift shop stuffed animal

With a (select a christian artist) CD

All wearing hats

More than 3 people doing hand stands

Make ATT bars logo

sitting in chairs

with a watermelon

sitting in pews

around a musical instrument

under a cross

with destruction behind you

over water

in front rocks

With Camp director

All wearing same colored shirt

All wearing sports team hats

in the woods

in a field

in a four square court

building a pyramid

With a name of a church

sitting in yellow chairs

wearing name tags

with a letter

with a softdrink

reinacting a famous point in history

everyone with a bible

Your group on one facebook photo

Photo of a song

50 Free Neon Backgrounds

Russell Martin — Mon, 02 May 2011 04:04:14 +0000

Looking for some different backgrounds to use with your worship songs, or presentations. What about something on the neon side. At one mission trip I attended last year, one night we had a glow in the dark dance. Participants painted their own glow in the dark shirts, we got a few hundred glow sticks, turned out the lights and turned up the music.

As always I wanted to get photos of the event, so I set out on the dance floor. Every time I tried to take a photo it ended up being blurry. After a while I decided just to go with it, set the shutter to a slow exposure and see what happened.

Here are the results. 50 free backgrounds for you to use.

While you are at it you might want to check out some of these posts…

1. 50 Free Worship Backgrounds

2. Flowers and Plants- 61 Nature themed photos

3. Water- 14 water themed photos

Video Tips- One Way to Capture Audio

Russell Martin — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:08:37 +0000

Video is something I have just started doing at our church. Even though it is new to us as a way to communicate, we are already seeing some awesome results. We started out doing all of our youth updates as a video and have had some fun with that.

To start off with though, all the videos have been kind of funny and light. That changed this past week when our pastor wanted me to video the testimony of one of our members. When doing the funny, light videos it was good to hear what was being said, but with background music and other elements in the video sound quality could be compromised a bit. With the testimony, however, I knew that we had to get the best sound possible.

First you should know we are using two Everio Hard Disk cameras, set up in two locations with different angles. Its a good consumer level camera with a decent microphone. We have not invested in higher quality equipment, extra microphones or any thing else up to this point because we are just getting started and want to build slowly. But I did need to find a way to capture good audio. When telling a testimony, we really need to hear the story.

This is when I got the idea to just use the church sound system. We used the wireless lapel mic as our input. I then captured the audio three different ways. First it was captured by one of the two cameras I had set up; Second it was captured by sending it from the board, to a wireless earphone pack, to the second camera’s microphone input; and third it was captured by a CD recorder running on the sound board. We recorded the interview and I used my computer later to sync up the video, and audio from the different sources.

The best thing would be to purchase a good microphone for the video camera, and I hope that is in our future. However, this way gave great results and did not cost us anything.

Do you use video in your church? If so how? Is it effective? What is your setup?