Tag: Help Portrait

Helped out with another successful Help-Portrait event this year. And for the third year in a row, it was a chilly and rainy day. It was a great event though despite the chill. Seeing the expressions on the faces of everybody when they see their photo is heartwarming and exceedingly gratifying.

This year the tent was slightly smaller and the lights a lot bigger, but at least the roof of the tent was all white. No need to deal with odd lighting like we did last year with the yellow and white striped tent.

Like last year, we didn’t do any printing on site and considering the smaller space we had this year, probably just as well. I didn’t get an exact count, but from a brief look at the log sheets it looked like we had at least 160 families go through. Most of them were pretty large groups too. Most of the families that came through my station had 4-7 people. I’d say we took photos of at least 500 people today. With that much volume, trying to print photos on-site is pretty challenging. Since we were shooting tethered we were still able to give everybody a look at their photo.

We had three photo stations set up with some pretty big soft boxes at two of the stations. Made things cozy, but the photos were well lit.

Overall, things went pretty smoothly today. One of the photographers was having problems shooting tethered and eventually abandoned it. Not sure what the problem was, although it might have been cable related. Although the tethered shooting with my camera wasn’t working during testing, it worked just fine with Mike’s Nikon D40. I was worried for a little bit that it wasn’t going to work, but it turned out fine. As always, test everything before hand, and then test it again.

Having a bigger space would have been nice, but otherwise everything went pretty well. I was happy to work with a great group of people for yet another Help-Portrait event, and look forward to doing more in the future.

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!

There are multiple Help-Portrait events going on in Charleston this year! This is pretty sweet!

If you’re not convinced yet, have a look at the video from last year’s Charleston Help-Portrait.

Joe Nienstedt has organized two dates to photograph kids and their families at MUSC Children’s Hospital. December 6 and 16 are the first two dates of what is planned to be a recurring event. There’s a planning meeting at 1PM on December 1 at EVO if you’re interested in finding out more.

On December 11 there will be another Charleston Help-Portrait event happening along with the Charleston Convoy of Hope. This one is potentially a much bigger event with a lot more people.

Photographers, equipment (backdrops, lighting, printers, laptops) will be needed for all events. That’s not all though! We want to make sure people look their best before taking their portrait, so makeup artists and hair stylists are needed as well! Donations of photo paper and ink will also be gratefully accepted.

If you’re interested in helping out in any capacity or want to find out more, join one or both groups and help out. Make a difference in someone’s life!