On December 12, 2009, volunteer photographers and other volunteers got together to donate time and materials to create family portraits for people that otherwise wouldn't be able to have them. I wrote it up here.

Although I cannot post pictures of the actual participants, I can post photos of the other photographers and assistants as I describe the event.

I arrived (second... not first, like usual) and helped another photographer set up this large gray sweep. A "sweep" is a huge (usually cloth) background that goes from ceiling to floor. It has plenty of material on the floor in order to create the "seamless" look, and this particular one was probably about 12 feet wide. The junior photographer I brought with me, Jenny, obligingly stood on the newly erected gray sweep and patiently waited while we pointed various lights at her in order to dispel as many shadows as possible.

This background is actually so large that in the end, we took our group shot in front of it, and it was posted by another photographer here. All thirteen of us-including the really helpful kid!-managed to cram ourselves into the shot.

We had three backgrounds erected. There was the gray sweep, the black sweep, and a really nifty foldy gray-splatty pop up. It ended up being an odd team effort, with three photographers at each station. Two of us would switch back and forth between shooting the families, and the third photographer would peer over our shoulders and help us decide if the shots looked good or not.

I was at the black sweep with Jack (pictured here) and Bill. This shot here is of Jack letting me test the flash power on his head. We were using a speedlight and it had this really cool remote firing device on it. Of course, the first shot I took of Jack made him look like he'd been nuked... this is after I set my aperture to 6.7.

The black sweep was interesting in that we didn't put chairs in front. The gray sweep had a couch (it's in the group shot) and the gray-splatty background had a rocking chair. That meant that people in wheelchairs were led over to our spot.

I discovered instantly that if one person is in a wheelchair, the other people in the photo should NOT be standing if it can be helped. The difference in heights would be extremely obvious, and, it creates a big gap between the person standing behind or near the wheelchair.

I also was using a regular portrait lens (my 28-70mm f2.8L) and while that's great for one person, it doesn't work well for more than two. Mostly, though, I was shooting two people close together and so it worked great. The couple of times I shot a group of four I had to back up so far I nearly fell over the people behind me.

I also was the lucky person who got to shoot Leroy.

Leroy was the cat.

Leroy did not want to be in the pictures.

The gentleman that had Leroy in his pictures loved the "your cat is being strangled" photos anyway. He had his best friend in the pictures with him, and they were both trying to get Leroy to look at the camera.

As you can see, Leroy was not cooperating. :) The picture I eventually chose to print was the shot with the cat being kissed on the head. It was the cutest.

Each person got about three or four photos taken of them (with the exception of The Leroy Incident, and I took nine). Then, we took our memory cards out, walked over to the (totally amazingly cool) Selphy photo printers, and instantly printed out 4x6 prints!

As you might wonder... no... we could NOT edit the photos at that point. The Selphy photo printers would print out the file exactly as it was. Occasionally we'd have to go to the computer and crop a picture because an edge was showing, but mostly it was Shoot it RIGHT because that's what you're PRINTING!!

I did go home and have a good look at the photos I took, and here is one of me.. well, looking. The photo is of an adorable older lady that was wearing bobble-reindeer antlers on her head. She was posing with one of the staffers at the retirement home. Because of confidentiality I can't directly post the photos here. I've been debating whether the photo I'm looking at here or the "strangle-the-cat" photo is my favorite of the day.

(all photos can be viewed full size by right-clicking on them.)

**Update: There has been an official press release about the event HERE**