Jennifer L | Blue Wave Studio

The last time I had my photo professionally taken was in my senior year of high school. If we wanted to be in the yearbook, we had to pay a specific photography company $10 to have our picture taken that was then forwarded to the school’s yearbook staff. The photos weren’t exactly the best quality and we had to put on a fake top that made it look like we were wearing a black dress; many people ended up booking photo sessions with another company so that they could have better photographs to trade with their friends.

As for family portraits, my family didn’t have a professional photo taken until we went on our very first cruise trip 5 years ago. I’m glad we did especially since we’ll never be able to do that again.

For me, photography is more than just taking photographs or selling them. I’ve always wanted to do something beyond that. A few months ago, I learned about a portrait photography effort called Help-Portrait, a “global movement of photographers using their time, gear, and expertise to give back to those in need.” I wanted to get involved especially after having been inspired by Raul Touzon’s work. So earlier this month, I volunteered for the local Help-Portrait event in San Francisco and recruited some of my friends as part of the worldwide effort. It was a wonderful experience.

I had a great time with fellow photographers and friends. The event was the day after I returned from Asia, so while on vacation, I prepared by viewing a workshop on Children’s Portrait Photography with Tamara Lackey and reading up on family portraiture and posing techniques. Although I had signed up to be a photographer and to work on Lightroom, I ended up working at the Lightroom stations almost the entire time. Not having much experience with studio lighting or posing since I mostly shoot with available light and candids, I was more comfortable with Lightroom anyway even though the challenge would have been fine.

I also had a chance to bust out my Cantonese to speak to some of the families. I talked with little kids, parents, and grandmothers who were long time friends. One man who was a new immigrant was encouraged by his relative to have his portrait taken. On top of that, people had a chance to have their hair and makeup done for the photo session if they wanted and they got to take home prints afterwards.

The plan was to shoot in JPG format indoors (and RAW outdoors but the weather didn’t allow for it). I was able to catch a couple of behind the scenes shots in between the busyness. It was my first time shooting manual and JPG format – more pressure to get it right out of the camera, plus white seamless and studio Profoto lights. We had some fun times even if I was at a loss as to how to pose myself!

At one point, I pulled out my camera to test the setup on my friend Conrad and discovered that some of the photos were coming out with a black stripe on the side.

We were able to fix this by taking down the shutter speed from 1/250 to 1/200. (And after having watched part of Zack Arias’ Studio Lighting workshop, I now know it’s because of flash sync issues from the closing of the rear/second curtain.)

A final image with the black stripe removed in Photoshop:

And normally in a group situation, everyone takes out their cameras for a group photo so that everyone can go home with their own copy, but I learned that that’s not the way a group of photographers roll; many of us got the files from the main camera copied onto our own media cards (and then did our own post-processing).

Many thanks to Joey Chandler, one of the SF SmugMug Photographer Meetup organizers, for coordinating such a great event and pulling everything together! And Conrad for being a guinea pig.

The Help-Portrait SF team who made it through the end of the day with many who started volunteering from the first shift in the morning!

Our SF totals were:

• 75 volunteers
• ~100 families/groups
• 250+ people photographed

And the final worldwide totals were:

• 7,015 volunteers
• 3,559 photographers
• 54,526 portraits
• Events in 46 countries and 47 US states

Happy Holidays!

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