I am a web designer and a photographer, this is my personal online portfolio and blog

I first read about Help-Portrait on sxc.hu. A long-time user Leroy, posted in the sxc.hu forum about this idea, executed worldwide on the same date, of helping others for Christmas as photographers, giving our time and skills to those less fortunate.

Organising the venue

With only a week to the deadline, I started organising Help-Portrait Cork. There was a Cork Help-Portrait group on the web site, but no details on the event, so I decided to call into my contact Barry from Denis MacSweeny Photo Shop, and ask for the use of his studio. Not only did Barry give me the use of the studio after I pitched him the idea, he also offered free 8×10” prints to each person.

Organising photographers and getting the word out

The idea gathered momentum. I made up some posters and flyers, which Eamon Warn kindly printed and laminated for me free of charge, along with some laminated badges for the photographers.

Having emailed Cork Camera Group, a number of members expressed their interest, so I kept them updated on events, while making up a press release for all the local print publications and radio stations, which I emailed along with a pdf attachment of the designed poster. I notified NASC, a center for asylum seekers, and they kindly forwarded my email to other groups they are in contact with, and put some posters in their building. I also notified the center for teenage parents and gave them a poster for members, I put posters up in the local Cork City Library and Credit Union, I gave community leaders a heads up and some posters (lots of posters being handed out), and of course I used my web site, twitter, facebook, any and all means of getting the word out.

With two days to go, I looked at the Help-Portrait web site again, and found the Cork group had activated, and had posted about their Help-Portrait event in the Clarion Hotel. Having spoken to their organiser Paul O Mahony, it seemed we had targeted different groups of people entirely, which I think worked out great, because more people got photographed!

Behind the scenes

In all we photographed 7 groups of people, all families. For each shoot we tried to vary the photos, from the family group portrait, to portraits of just the parents, or Dad and child, Mum and child, etc. It took around 40+ minutes to photograph each group, depending on the number of people/combination’s. We then burned a selection of images onto cd, and their photographer brought them downstairs with the cd to pick out their favourite one to get printed. They got to keep the cd so the images we didn’t print on the day, they can still save, email, or get prints in the future of them!

With the date being a Saturday, and so close to Christmas, the shop was very busy, and it probably would have suited better with how we organised our shoot, to hold it on a Sunday. If it doesn’t go against the rules, I would hold the event next year on the Sunday instead! Either that, or use a home printer, but to be honest, getting the professional prints really was great.

Here’s a tiny sample of the pictures taken:

Our Cork Camera Group team! :)

Thanks

I want to say a big huge THANK YOU to Barry and all the staff of Denis MacSweeny Photo Shop for their patience, generosity and time, and massive THANKS to all of the photographers from CCG, without their time, expertise and team-work, it never would have happened. Thanks to Eamon Warn for providing us with posters and flyers, and photographing our ‘behind the scenes’ shots (among other errands), and to Nathan’s girlfriend Evelyn, for being our emergency make-up artist!

You all did a really good thing. And when those children grow up, these will be the pictures they look back on, so I think everyone involved should be very proud of both the work we produced, and the generosity of spirit this project entailed.

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