As a photographer and a Christian, I see things differently. When I go for a walk, I take note of how the glowing sky combines colors. When someone shares good artwork, I think about how it would fit with a web site I’m designing. On a snowy day, I see the intricate frost patterns standing like knifepoints in the snow that my feet are crunching.

In some ways, my viewpoint seems to be a perfect fit with our increasingly visual world. YouTube is now screamingly popular, with over 1 billion unique visitors per month, and some people demand, “Pictures or it didn’t happen!” But I’m conscious of how important it is to portray visual beauty in a way that points to God. How can I do this?

It’s not just in the photographs I take, but the way I take them.

I was shooting a wedding at which no one (to my knowledge) was a Christian. Toward the end of the day one of the bridesmaids said, with some surprise, “You’re the nicest wedding photographer I’ve ever met.” She sounded confused, as though a nice, helpful, patient wedding photographer was a concept unknown to her. At another wedding, a hotel staffmember was shocked when I came up to him explaining how we were progressing and when we expected to be finished, assuring him that we were on schedule so they could serve the food as expected. “Most wedding photographers expect us to wait on them,” he explained.

As a Christian and a wedding photographer, even though I am being paid for my services, I’m there as a servant to the bride and groom, and their family and friends. This means being patient with the child who doesn’t want to smile and the teenager who hides her face. I wait for elderly family members for a group photograph, and I stay late for that photograph of friends we’ve been trying to arrange all day. Even when my service does not reflect Christ as well as it ought, I can trust Him to cover that, too, with grace.

I have the opportunity to help people see the beauty in themselves.

One of the things I love about weddings is that it is a time when people have the lowest resistance to photographs. It’s a time when we are at our happiest, and our most beautiful—or so we imagine. Not only do the bride and groom feel camera-ready, but the guests are also dressed up and smartened up, with a new hairstyle, a new outfit, and makeup. There’s laughter, dancing, gifts, prayer, and joy. At a wedding, these are expected.

In our day-to-day lives, however, most of us are incredibly dissatisfied with our looks. I see it constantly as a photographer. The moment the camera comes out, so do the excuses, the cries, and the avoidance techniques. I’m asked—usually masked as a joke—if I can Photoshop the picture so the subject looks taller, thinner, blonder, with more hair or less wrinkles. And I want to say, “But you’re so beautiful when you are being yourself.”

This natural beauty is what comes out at a wedding, when the resistances are lowered, the expectation is that photographs will be taken, and pictures are allowed, even asked for. These are the photographs that are oohed and ahhed over, the ones that bring laughter and joy and a few tears after the wedding day has gone by. These pictures are special because instead of hiding, closing down, or turning away, people are turning to the camera and accepting the capture of their beauty. It brings me so much joy when they see the beauty I see.

If I could encourage all of my readers to do one thing, it would be not to instantly turn away when a camera appears, but to turn towards it with joy. You may have to fake it for a while, feeling insecure or overweight or unbeautiful or less appealing than this person or that person, but you have so much beauty when you are being the “everyday you” that God created you to be. Christ sees beauty in you—and so many times, so do I.

I have the privilege of capturing and sharing the beauty of God’s creation all over the world.

I live in Scotland, but my photography work has taken me to some far-flung corners of the earth. I’ve worked in remote islands, small towns, big cities, and exotic locations. Many of these are places that few others get to see. As a single woman, I have the flexibility to travel more often, and with more variety, than many people with families and children are able to do. Many of my online followers and fans are parents who long to simply jump on a train and visit a new town, wandering through it with all the time in the world. Traveling might be not only far-fetched, but also laughable when you are corralling your five children into the car, racing to the next sports event, and budgeting for the family groceries. For these people, and for many others who for health or budget or family reasons are unable to see such places, I have the joy of sharing the windswept white sands of Luskentyre Beach on the Isle of Harris, or the sun’s fading rays stretched over age-old buildings in Larnaca, Cyprus, or the waves crashing against the rocks on the Great Ocean Road in Australia.

Beauty helps bring me joy in dark times.

One of the biggest failings of social media is that we have the opportunity to present a false front to the world. I’m extremely cautious about making negative statements on Facebook and similar sites because I don’t want to be a complainer, a constant moaner who is never happy with the life I’ve been given. The flipside is a dangerous tendency for my life to appear as though it is a perfect, shining, glorious, happy thing with no difficulties in it.

I have many reasons to see my life as a dark and difficult thing: chronic fatigue and an extremely weak immune system, the daily dose of missing my family in another country, learning the challenges of running my own businesses, and all the insecurities and fears that continually dog my heels. Through seeing and sharing the beauty that God daily supplies, I have the opportunity, not to say, “See how good my life is, and don’t you wish you had the same?” but, “See how good my God is, even in the midst of dark and difficult days!” In social media, I’m not going to share what broke my heart today, or the new health challenge I faced, or my sleepless nights. But I will share beauty and invite you to rejoice in it—and in Him—with me.

I can contribute to God’s people remembering His goodness.

Printed photographs are beginning to come back in style. Apps that allow you to print directly from your phone mean that Polaroid shots and photo albums and posters are much easier to order. We are rediscovering that the printed photograph gives us far more than the image itself, because it has no other distractions. When I turn on my phone to show you a photo, I’m sidetracked by 4 new emails and 13 text messages and another app I meant to show you. The experience of seeing the laughing face of my nephew has turned into yet another multifaceted experience, and we forget what we were saying. But when the mother of one of my brides takes out a small photo album from her handbag and shares it with a friend, I see the two of them bent over it, pointing, laughing, and entirely caught up in one moment, not divided into many.

This beauty that can be shared is a good and beautiful thing to have and to remember when the darker days of ill health, depression, financial difficulty, or great pain come—or simply in the later days of life. The Psalms constantly remind us to tell ourselves and our children about what God has done: “Give thanks to the Lord.…tell of all His wondrous works!…Remember the wondrous works that He has done, His miracles” (Ps. 105:1-5). The visual representations of His wonderful works are a beautiful thing to think about, to review, to consider, and to share.

“O Lord my God, how many are the wonders Thou have done! How many are the gracious thoughts which Thou towards us hast shown! No one can sort and set them out; none can compare to Thee. If I would tell and speak of them, they could not numbered be” (Psalm 40C, stanza 5, The Book of Psalms for Singing).

Karen Reyburn is a dual British-American citizen living in Airdrie, Scotland. She attends Airdrie RP Church and is an international photographer. She also manages an online marketing business, The Profitable Firm.