Saturday was a very special day for me. For the past few months I have been working on something called Help Portrait. Help Portrait was started by photographer, Jeremy Cowart, to get photographers giving back to their community. I thought it would be a great opportunity for Faded & Blurred to get involved.

The idea is to find people that would normally not be able get family photos taken (because of finances, living situation, health, etc.), take their pictures, and give them prints of those pictures as a gift. This would take place on December 12th all over the world. Our group of about a dozen photographers ended up at a large Christmas party put on by the county sheriff’s department for battered women’s shelters in the area. It was quite an experience.

There were about 8 shelters that were bussed in. They had a huge Christmas tree, a big turkey dinner set up for them, a rock-climbing wall, crafts for the kids, clothes and presents… Their first stop (after passing through two lines of sheriffs holding out roses for them) was our makeshift “studio”. I think all of us were a bit overwhelmed at first, but we all got into the swing of things very quickly. Our number one job was just to make them feel comfortable. It was so great to just watch the expressions on their faces, especially the kids, as they started having fun with it.

I wish I could share some of the photos with you. The women and their kids just sparkled. Because of security issues we left our memory cards with the sheriffs so they will print out the photos for the families. I’ll leave you with a photo, tho, of our mangy group of photographers. We all cannot wait to do this again.