*Tech Tools is the new series that highlights technologies that can be helpful to youth ministries.
In the Old Testament, when God did amazing and providential things for the Israelites they would often build altars as reminders of what God did in that place.
Today, we take pictures.
The value of snapping photos at youth events cannot be overestimated. Pictures of your students should be hanging on every wall of your youth room and prominently displayed on your website. Photos have the ability to:
- Make students feel important
- Promote events the next time they happen
- Help Parents feel connected to what happens at youth group
- Give ownership to a space (this is my place, see… there’s my photo)
- Tell the story of your ministry
- Remind students of significant experiences in their lives.
My favorite pictures have less to do with what we were doing and more with what we were experiencing when the picture was taken. I love looking back on them, but there are hundreds and hundreds of pictures (we are averaging about 1000 pics a year and climbing). How do I share the shutterbug joy with everyone?
Enter: 
Chances are you’ve heard of Flickr (pronounced Flick-er) if you spend much time online. The Yahoo-owned photo-sharing sight has one of the most loyal fan bases of any photography site on the web and literally millions of pictures are uploaded from Professionals to point-and-shooters. There’s a lot to love, like:
Uploading is simple. Getting your pictures onto Flickr is a piece of cake. There are 5 ways to move your collection online. You can download the Flickr Uploadr for batch uploading, use the in-browser tool, use iPhoto or plugins for other Photo Management Software (I use the Send 2 Flickr plugin for Picasa), and you can even send photos to your account via e-mail (which I do constantly from my BlackBerry). Plus the build-in editor, Picnik, makes editing the photos a snap once they are uploaded.
Organization is intuitive. It’s easy to create albums (or “sets”) once your photos are online. A bunch of sets makes a collection. So, for example, I will upload the photos from our Fall Retreat and make a new set called “Fall Retreat 2008,” I then place that set in the ""2008" Folder, making it even easier to find.
Sharing is easy. The whole point of uploading (besides archiving) the pictures is letting the students enjoy them, right? Sharing pictures is very simple with Flickr, you just have to point your visitors to your "photostream" (collection of pictures).Here is my group's photostream. There area also a good set of privacy settings, which means you can lock down certain collections, sets, or specific photos if you need to.
Flickr plays well with others. Because it is one of the most popular photo-sharing sites on the web (and as a great API), a lot of other web services tie in directly to Flickr, meaning you are more likely to be able to import your if you want to print photos from an online retailer or make something new with them. We'll look at some of these options in future "Tech Tools" posts.
So the typical budget-minded youth pastor asks, "What does it cost?"
As with most web services, Flickr has a free option and a "Bells-and-Whistles" option (aka "Pro Account"). This is great because it gives you a chance to mess around with it before committing, but I would recommend going Pro. The 100MB limit on the free account runs out pretty fast if you're uploading decent pictures, and the 200 picture limit won't seem like much when you fill up your memory card at the overnighter. At $25/year, it is way cheaper than buying a new external hard drive each year.
Flickr has made it a breeze for me to archive and organize all our youth event photos and put them somewhere that the students can readily see them, which is extra important for a young church like us without a physical youth room. However you choose to capture the meaningful moments that occur in your ministry, never underestimate the power of a picture to convey the heart of what you're doing in teenagers' lives.
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