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12/14/2009 07:55:25 PM · #1 |
At the sister church of the one I attend, they got this brainy idea that as an outreach thing, they'd offer Christmas portraits to the folks in the neighborhood. Now this is all very nice and all......they set up a schedule, rounded up a printer or two, made & distributed flyers, and when they called me a week and a half ago, they had *NO* photographers for sure......
Hmm. This sounded pretty much like the typical kind of thing my church does......has a great idea, does all the groundwork leading up to the event, then kind of falls short when the time comes to actually make it happen. And this wasn't even MY church, but our sister church twenty miles away. So being the people-pleasing fool that I am, endowed with hero/broken wing syndrome, of course I said I'd do it. After much back and forth, I managed to ascertain that the setup was pretty marginal, so I'd be shooting, then throwing the images into my laptop for a speed edit into a 5x7....take a couple shots to be sure, and select the best one to edit & print. The subjects were scheduled 15 minutes apart.....as long as everything went according to plan, all would be well.
So.....I showed up 45 minutes early to get set up and make sure we were as ready as we were going to get, and there is another photog there, one of their members who proceeds to tell me how it's going to go. Very pushy, very much under the impression that she's got the lead. I explained to her that I was going to shoot, speed edit to 5x7, and give a flash drive with the finished image to the printing person so that all they had to do was send it to the printer. So she proceeds to tell me that we won't have time for that, we'll get too backed up waiting for me to edit, so I'm to just give the card to the person doing the printing.
To back up a little, the guy who called me said they were just going to put the memory card into the printer and print them straight off. I told him that I shoot in RAW so that won't work....he said "Huh?". So I told him I guess I could shoot in jpeg, does the printer actually have a slot for a CF card?....he said "Huh?". That's when I figured, shoot, edit on laptop, and give the flash drive to the print person all ready to print. So this lady starts to get really insistent about how it's going to be done so I had to stop her and explain that I was there to do a job, I knew what I was going to do, and that if she had wanted to tell me how the thing was going to play out, it should have been two weeks ago rather than fifteen minutes before it's going to start. I was going to shoot, edit, and pass the flash drive....period. So she kind of huffed off muttering about how she'd have to take up the slack when it gets all backed up......
It went spectacularly!
Once we started shooting, and the other photog realized that she not only had someone competent there, and was helpful to boot, we started to have a lot of fun. We held umbrellas to block light for each other, joked and generally chatted with the subjects putting them at ease, and the print crew did a great job of keeping up with us as the folks were pretty decent about being patient waiting for their prints. We did 47 shoots, consisting of 94 people between 9:00 and 3:00 and everyone took their pictures home. As I said, this was an outreach thing, so not a dime was charged....
The people were very nice, and very grateful.
And we *all* had fun! Here are a couple shots.....
  
Granted, these aren't the best portraits in the world, but they were free, they were fun, and the people were just plain delighted.
Here's where this whole thing is going.....the reason this post came about, and the sappy part is:
Dawn & her Dad: 
They came by mid-morning, and got their picture taken.....William's a nice guy, and wore the hat for Dawn's sake, and they seemed pretty happy. They got their picture, and left, and I didn't think much about it.
About 2:30, Dawn came back with her sister, her sister's husband, and their baby boy, 'cause they wanted a picture with the baby and her Aunt Dawn. I was talking to Dawn while she was waiting for the picture to print and found out two things.
The young lady is 21 years old........and this was the first time she'd ever had a portrait done with her Daddy.
Some days life is just too sweet.
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12/14/2009 08:33:50 PM · #2 |
| Very nice pictures. Thanks for sharing! I'm glad that the shoot ultimately went well. I bet the other photographer took some tips from you on how to do things, too. |
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12/14/2009 08:49:58 PM · #3 |
| That was a nice story, Jeb. I bet it made your day to hear how special these portraits were to these folks, especially for Dawn. Kudos for your good works. |
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12/14/2009 08:55:28 PM · #4 |
I can't remember the name of the thing but I know a few people here did that volunteer Christmas Portrait thing for the the less fortunate...?
I'm curious if this was related and for those who did the shoot I'm speaking of how, did it go?
I tried to volunteer and went to an organizational meeting that turned out to be something weird tied into an Amway like marketing thing. It was so bizarre. I split after 15 minutes but regret that I didn't do the portrait shooting...if it ever happened.
Nice pix. |
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12/14/2009 08:57:51 PM · #5 |
We did this at my church -- I was the photographer. We have a very small, rural church, but were able to give some pictures to some very nice people, and a small gift bag of stuff as well.
It was a lot of fun, and some of the people of the church have already started talking about what we can do next year. |
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12/14/2009 09:00:33 PM · #6 |
That was a day well spent Jeb. You passed a lot of happiness around, and it will last a lifetime for some of the people that you photographed that day.
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12/14/2009 09:21:26 PM · #7 |
Originally posted by MelonMusketeer:
That was a day well spent Jeb. You passed a lot of happiness around, and it will last a lifetime for some of the people that you photographed that day. |
That's the funny thing......I cannot begin to express what kind of feeling came over me when Dawn told me about this being the first time she and her Dad had their portrait done.
It really makes you stop and think how fortunate so many of us are, and how much we take for granted.
It seemed like such a little thing to do, yet it was a once in a lifetime experience for this young lady.
Reminders like this are good to have, and it sure makes me realize that if I can shoot decent pictures, that it's a gift, and that I should always remember that. Giving back a little seems like the right thing to do in return.
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12/14/2009 09:23:13 PM · #8 |
Originally posted by pawdrix:
I can't remember the name of the thing but I know a few people here did that volunteer Christmas Portrait thing for the the less fortunate...?
I'm curious if this was related and for those who did the shoot I'm speaking of how, did it go?
I tried to volunteer and went to an organizational meeting that turned out to be something weird tied into an Amway like marketing thing. It was so bizarre. I split after 15 minutes but regret that I didn't do the portrait shooting...if it ever happened.
Nice pix. |
I think you're referring to Help Portrait. They did that here in this area as well. I had signed up for it, but the people organizing it were pretty inept, and they piggybacked it onto another organization. I declined to be a part of that one.....and got called for this one a day later! LOL!!!
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