Chilly Help-Portrait

Today’s Charleston Help-Portrait event was cold and rainy and probably not nearly as busy as expected. Like last year, we had four portrait stations set up with a computer and photo editor for each one (I was one of the photo editors again this year). Unlike last year, we had a big tent all to ourselves, so there was a lot more room to move around. The rain also didn’t wait until we finished, so the first part of the morning was chilly and damp. The rain eventually stopped, but it didn’t really warm up all that much. We also didn’t do any printing onsite this year either, which made things considerably less chaotic.

Despite the weather there were still a lot of people that came by to have their portraits taken. There were 48 groups at my station, and the one next to me did around 40. Not sure how many the other two did, but I’m guessing probably about the same. That means there were probably between 150-180 groups that came through so over 300 people had their portraits taken.

Thoughts on this year.

Tethering camera to laptop is definitely the way to go. It was planned for this year, but the cables didn’t arrive in time. I was able to work tethered, but the others needed to swap cards. DIYPhotoBits worked very well on my PC to retrieve images from the camera.

With the number of people that came through, giving each group a unique number was very helpful for identifying which photos belonged to each group. Using folders named by number and name helped keep things organized.

I thought I might be able to view and adjust/crop the photos after they were taken, but that turned out to be not very practical at the rate people were coming through. We were able to let people see their portrait on the laptop after they were taken, but all of the processing and cropping is going to happen afterwards.

Next time get a tent with solid white roof. Ours had yellow and white stripes, which made for some odd lighting.

I’m not sure how busy the rest of the Convoy of Hope event was, but it sounded like there were a lot of people, although not as many as planned. Still an immensely rewarding event. Thanks to Rhea and Chris for making it all happen! Can’t wait to do it again!