This year I’ve started a project to photograph churches. During my travels, I’ve photographed a few churches but this year I want to give it more purpose and work on it as a project.

I like photographing churches. Many are beautiful works of inspired art, design, and imagery. People have poured their time, love, and money into making churches unique and special. They are symbols of faith but also centerpieces in many communities.

In our time, there are less people going to churches and thousands of churches are closing each year. I recently experienced this first hand. It’s a sad day when you take part in a decision to close a church. This fact further energized me to photograph more churches. I want to capture images of these beautiful structures while I can and while they’re still open.

This past week I got to visit and photograph two churches in western Massachusetts. I’m sharing these two to show a contrast between churches and how they’re all different.

The Classic White Church

The first church I visited was – The First Congregational Church Williamstown. This is an active Protestant church affiliated with the United Church of Christ denomination. This is a large white wooden church with a tall steeple, clock tower, and Greek columns on the front edifice. It’s a classic church that you might see in the center of many small towns in Massachusetts. (Up until the early 1800’s, many of the congregational churches in Massachusetts functioned as town halls and the local town government). The original church was founded in 1765. It was destroyed by fire in 1866 and was replaced by the current one you see in the pictures below.

The church is beautiful in its unadorned simplicity and sparseness (most likely a Puritan influence). The interior is simple with the lack of color (other than white). There is no statuary, images, or iconography. There’s no altar and no ceremonial instruments on display. It has just a pulpit and wooden cross. As an FYI, many Protestant churches don’t have statues, images, or religious icons. There’s a reason for that but I’m not going to get into religious or denominational beliefs in this article.

This church was open to the public for meditation. I was lucky to be the only one there. I was able to wonder and take some pictures. It is beautifully maintained. As I studied the pews I thought of all the families and people who sat in the pews over the past 160 years.

The Ornate Shrine

The second church I visited was – The National Shrine of Divine Mercy on Stockbridge. You’ll see the contrast between this church and the first one in the pictures below. This a newer Catholic church built in 1960. It’s a small and intimate church built by a local craftsman using all local materials. The exterior is marble and granite. The inside is highlighted by carved wood panels and arches.

This church is loaded with imagery, statues, and religious iconography, which is not uncommon for a Catholic church. Ornate is the word that best describes it. It has eight pairs of stained glass windows, each of which depicts a bible passage. There are painted images of saints above the windows. In the sanctuary there are carved statues of the 12 apostles and a brilliant white statue of Mary.

I’ve learned recently that the imagery and iconography present in most churches is not there for worship or for artistic decoration. It’s intended to help convey and help people connect with the messaging in the Bible (and church Tradition for Catholic churches). Stained glass windows in churches were originally created as early graphics to help people who couldn’t read or who didn’t have access to a Bible to experience the messaging in the Bible.

This church is somewhat famous for its focus on Divine Mercy. The church receives thousands of visitors each year. During the summer and fall, it holds outdoor Masses for people making pilgrimages. I attended a Mass inside this church during my visit. It was a very traditional Catholic service.

More to Come

This was just a quick trip were I got to visit two churches. I’ve got a few more trips planned this year to visit some specific churches. So, I’ll be sharing more church pictures and stories about churches throughout the year. If you know I one I should visit, please leave me a comment.

FYI. I took most of these pictures with a Sony a6400 using a Tamron 10-20mm F2.8 lens. The Tamron lens is a wide angle lens and great for interior shots with low light.