Images of Faith: Behind the Scenes of a Photo Exhibit

by: Fred Del Rosario

Not Many Pounced on the Idea at First. Perhaps, the Parish Pastoral officers (PPO) knew it would be daunting to mount a photo exhibit showing forty years of parish history. But being current president of the Camera Club of the Philippines, I had to make a pitch. Fortunately, Father Steve gave his thumbs-up.

Photos came from different sources— Building the Kingdom coffee table book, parishioners’ and ministry photos, CTK’s FB posts, Bing del Rosario and myself. The target: forty photos that will give a glimpse of forty years of CTK.

We started with five hundred photos but not all of them were of good image quality. But pixelated or not, the images told a moment of CTK’s story. I was frustrated at first by the photos being too “class pictureish.” But I realized that these actually capture togetherness, the faith experience, and the sense of community. Hence, the final criteria for selection: photos should tell a story, have visual impact and good composition, and of acceptable digital quality, meaning high resolution. We decided to divide the photos into five groups depicting the Church, the Priests, the Community, the Faith, and the Youth. From the portfolio, the final forty were chosen.

But another passion posed a challenge. A day before the exhibit launch was another major fiesta undertaking—the concert, Christ in Our Hearts. In between singing, recording, rehearsing, my wife, Anne, and I fixed photos and easels and sticking tape onto the back of forty sintra boards.

But God always sends his angels when you need them most. The morning after the concert, Bing, Anne, Dodo, our handyman Ronnie, and I were on our hands and knees doing some last-minute carpentry work to mount the photos. Finally, at 5 p.m., the CTK Image of Faith Photo Exhibit was successfully launched, the ribbon cut, the collection opened to the community. Now that’s another snapshot of community we will forever keep in our hearts.