World Vision’s award-winning photographers travel around the world every year, capturing moments of God’s grace and faithfulness as we follow Jesus’ example to show unconditional love to the poor and oppressed. They bring back stories that inspire us to action and compassion.
Discover what’s it like behind the scenes during some of these moments.
Gandhi, despair, and return to the brothel in Bangladesh
Written and photographed by World Vision photographer Jon Warren
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The Bangladesh brothel was still there when Kari Costanza and I returned a year later, busy as ever.
Worse, one of the brothel women who told us last time how badly she wanted to get out was now even more deeply mired in the trade and resigned to her fate. Several others seemed to have disappeared completely.
A Bangladeshi reporter told us scores of children, both girls and boys, are still trafficked each day across the porous border with India.
It should have been a depressing visit. The problems haven’t gone away. I should have felt despair.
We were accompanied this time by World Vision U.S. President Rich Stearns, his wife, Reneé, and a group of dedicated, loving World Vision supporters. It’s virtually impossible to do good photography when you’re with a large group of people, particularly when many of them also have cameras. Chaotic crowds, short visits, and a rigid schedule are not a good recipe for the quiet, intimate real-life settings I prefer. But the folks I was with have powerful voices — and the chance to make a small contribution to their efforts was too important to miss.
I decided to work mostly with a 24-120mm all-purpose lens and a bounce flash to compensate for the slower lens opening. By the end of the trip, I had gone back to my standard kit of 17-35mm, 35mm or 50mm fast lens, and 70-200mm. So much for becoming more nimble.
One of our first visits was to a brothel community perched on a muddy dike in a large river. Smack dab in the middle of a line of rickety “working” shacks was a gleaming blue Child-Friendly Space crammed full of children eager to learn and play. We asked children what they dreamed of becoming when they were adults. They answered: doctor, teacher, driver, World Vision staff! Not one of them said sex worker, even though they are surrounded by the trade day and night.
We met with Rusmi (not her real name) and her parents. She was kidnapped by a trusted teacher and made into a sex slave at 12. Her father, ignoring the counsel of neighbors to abandon hope, spent every last taka the family had to find her. World Vision not only helped track her down and convict her abductor to a 30-year prison sentence but also worked with their neighbors and school to make sure she was welcomed home.
I had only a few moments to photograph the family without showing their faces. So I photographed them from behind — shallow depth-of-field against a dark bamboo stand to emphasize Rusmi’s delicate long hair, her mother’s supportive touch, and the upright father, who his wife said “wept like a woman” when he thought his daughter was lost.
Contrast this with vibrant Child Forums we visited, full of articulate, passionate teenagers (many of them sponsored through World Vision). In the Child Forums, they spread the word about trafficking dangers, promote responsible parenting, and planning for a productive future.
A little girl at one of the Child-Friendly Spaces grabbed all our hearts. Her name, Sonali, means “golden” in Bengali. Her mother, a prostitute since age 10, invited the women in our group to see her place of business across the street. It was a moment I needed to capture. When the women gathered around her and laid hands on her in prayer, everyone was in tears. No one wants Sonali to end up in the brothel.
More than a catalog, Kenya
Written and photographed by World Vision photographer Lindsey Minerva
Canon EOS 5D Mark II
70-200mm lens, 1/250th at f/7.1, 250 ISO
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This photo was taken in only 1/320th of a second. But for me, it was years in the making.
Almost 10 years ago, I was freshly graduated from high school and enrolled in beauty school in my hometown. Really, I was floating directionless, killing time while I figured out what to do with my life.
Christmas rolled around and the usual barrage of catalogs came with it. As I sorted the mail, I picked up the World Vision Gift Catalog and flipped through the pages. It was filled with farm animals, tools, and medical interventions. Then my eyes landed on a photo of a child and a mosquito net.
At the time, a mosquito net hung above my bed, because it was fashionable in home decor. I didn’t understand its practical application. The product description in the catalog explained that every 30 seconds a child dies of malaria, and a simple bed net could help prevent children from contracting this disease as they slept.
An image of the preschoolers my sister taught flashed through my mind. If she had 30 children in her class, there wouldn’t be any survivors after 15 minutes of recess. I couldn’t wrap my mind around that reality. I was stunned, angry, and sad. I was mad that it was happening, mad that I didn’t know, and mad that the world was letting it happen.
Suddenly, time wasn’t something to be wasted, but a precious commodity I had been given. I had a life, and I wanted to spend it helping other people live. The things I was doing — my entry-level corporate job and beauty school — didn’t fit with my newfound perspective. I wanted my daily work to be about giving people a window into someone else’s experience and inviting them to become part of the story.
My focus quickly turned to storytelling. I finished beauty school but traded in my makeup brushes and tweezers for a camera, notebook, and pen. I dove into college and journalism classes as major newspapers across the country were closing their doors. I had no idea what the future would hold, but I knew I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
Recently as I sorted through my mail, Benson, who I met and photographed in Kenya earlier this year, smiled back at me from World Vision’s Gift Catalog cover. Tears filled my eyes. What God made possible was more than I could have asked or imagined. “This is real life,” I told myself as I flipped through its pages. Simeon, Benson’s little brother, is in the pages of the catalog holding a chicken. Lucy, his little sister, is a few pages away holding a goat.
I thought back to the day I spent with their family. Benson, Lucy, and Simeon started out shy but quickly warmed up to our team of local World Vision staff and visitors from the U.S. office. The whole team pitched in to make photos happen: holding reflectors, handling animals, translating, playing games as one child was photographed and the others waited. I wouldn’t have a single frame without them.
The crew was patient and flexible as the light changed and goats decided they no longer cared to be photographed. There was talking, laughing, tea-drinking, and lots of photos.
I loved watching the children interact with their father, a kind and gentle man. They crawled in his lap and put their arms around his shoulders as I sat and talked with him. He was so proud when I showed him the photos of his family.
Ten years ago, I had no idea what God was going to do when I first picked up the Gift Catalog. But he did. The number of children dying of malaria has been nearly cut in half — from one every 30 seconds to one almost every minute. While one child per minute is still too many, the progress makes my heart resonate with hope. Change is more than a possibility. It’s a reality.
Not so long ago, I hadn’t heard of malaria or spent much time outside of my hometown. Today, I have the incredible privilege of using words and pictures to bring help to children around the world. When I think about what God has done, I’m filled with awe, gratitude, and humility.
The brokenness of our world will always give us reason to despair, but when we enter the suffering of others and allow it to change us, we get to be a part of the redemption story God is writing.
Ignorance and mistakes, NASCAR, Kentucky
Written and photographed by World Vision photographer Jon Warren
Nikon D3
70mm lens, 1/20th at f/10, 1000 ISO
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Are there times when ignorance can lead to better photographs?
In a meeting at work, I was told the owner of the Furniture Row NASCAR team had offered to wrap his #78 car in World Vision’s logo for three races at no cost to the organization, to give World Vision free visibility before the huge NASCAR audience. The first race was the Kentucky Quaker State 400 and World Vision needed photographs.
I knew absolutely nothing about NASCAR beyond the fact that the cars go insanely fast and are loud, and that the fan base was enormous. Online sports photo sites suggested I use shutter speeds over 1/350th of a second and a medium zoom lens. In case of a crash, I should duck behind the barrier wall.
So several weeks ago I bought a bundle of earplugs, packed a bag full of lenses and boarded a flight for Kentucky.
On the plane, I decided to watch a TED Talk. The topic: ignorance. The presenter said that for research scientists, learning what they don’t know can be even more valuable than finding the right answer.
When it came to photographing race cars, I already knew I was ignorant. I certainly didn’t know the right way to photograph racing and didn’t even know what questions to ask.
At the speedway, the Furniture Row race team and patient, knowledgeable colleagues gave me advice about where I could stand and what key events fans would be most interested in.
The first day of practice runs gave me a chance to practice, as well. So did qualifying. I used the recommended shutter speeds above 1/350th and decided which vantage points looked most promising.
But the first pictures looked sterile and lifeless, like catalog records. They certainly didn’t capture the ZOOM and exhilarating rush of the cars screaming around the track. I needed to do something different.
By race night, the level of my ignorance became acute. My preferred spot behind the pits was crowded with crew members, officials, and fans. I couldn’t see far down the track and the cars seem to come so fast that I could only get off a few frames before they were gone.
The good thing about ignorance is that if you don’t know the “right” way to photograph, you are open to trying something completely different. I could get off only one or two shots each lap anyway, so I might as well see what the effect would be with slower shutter speeds — 1/30th, then 1/20th and then even slower. I got rid of the doubler I used with my 70-200 and widened my frame of view. I looked for more and more motion and let ropes and banners in front of the camera add their own color streaks.
At the areas away from the pits, I abandoned the telephoto lens completely and went as wide as possible. I even put on a fisheye lens and stuck it through an opening in the fence as far into the track as possible.
Finally, with my “mistakes,” I began to get some images that looked how it felt to be at the racetrack.
I often preach how important craft is to photography. But this time, ignorance opened new windows for me.
Mother Teresa’s advice for photographers
Written and photographed by World Vision photographer Jon Warren
Nikon D600
24mm lens, 1/30th at f/4, 2500 ISO
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Early in my photography career, I ran across a Mother Teresa quote: “We can do no great things; only small things with great love.”
Those words pierced my soul. They inspired the ideal that became my driving motivation, the words I try to listen to every time I point a camera at someone: Photograph only those you love.
This is an easy track to follow when your primary subjects are those you love deeply already — your family and friends. I think it’s the reason each of us has amazingly tender family moments in our camera phone libraries.
And it’s not a stretch for me to be consistent here at World Vision when my primary task is to photograph darling kids, or hardworking parents, or saints dedicating their lives to the service of others. These are folks it’s easy to fall in love with.
But is it possible to be true to the ideal when the subject is unlovely, or even someone most people despise?
A couple of months ago, writer Kari Costanza and I were working on an especially difficult and gruesome story in middle Africa — child sacrifice. Witchdoctors were using children’s body parts in ceremonies for clients, who were promised quick wealth or healing from terminal illnesses.
A courageous staff member, Obed, was assigned to combat the problem. One of his first steps was to engage the witchdoctors directly. He confronted their leader and challenged the witchdoctors to pledge that they wouldn’t sacrifice children. He even made them part of an African Amber Alert system, calling the community to action if a child went missing.
Obed took us to meet several witchdoctors in their shrines, along with their leader. He wanted them to tell us in person that they would have no part of child sacrifice.
So there I am in a dark shrine with a witchdoctor, surrounded by his potions, animal skins, and magic paraphernalia — and I have permission to photograph. He sits by a fire and rattles his magic shells. I’m unnerved, repulsed, and curious. I know, as a Christian, that his spells have no power over me. But just that morning we’d visited a family whose grandson was butchered for witchcraft only a few months before. To tell the child sacrifice story effectively, I need to help our readers visualize what a modern witchdoctor and his shrine looks like. I need to start clicking.
Where does this “love” thing fit in when your subject is a witch doctor and the story is child sacrifice?
Here is what went through my head as I fiddled with camera settings, bumping up the ISO to 2500, setting the exposure manually, choosing a fast and wide 24mm/1.4:
Be respectful. Think of him as someone of value to God. Be accurate and honest.
And each time I clicked, in between worrying that I was focusing correctly in that dark shrine and not using too slow of a shutter speed — I reminded myself again that God loves everyone, even witchdoctors.
When he raised a burning splint to light his sacred pipe, I knew I had an opportunity for a picture. And then I got out of there.
My ideal is still to love everyone I photograph. When it seems impossible, when my own heart is hard or indifferent, I remind myself that God loves them.
Mother Teresa has more wise words for us photographers. “I am not sure what exactly heaven will be like, but I know that when we die and it comes time for God to judge us, he will not ask, ‘How many good things have you done in your life?’ rather he will ask, ‘How much love did you put into what you did?’”
Read more testimonies from World Vision photographers in our Life Frames series.
