Our group had other similar endeavors – we volunteered to help document the damage wrought by Sendong in January 2012, and partnered with Gawad Kalinga to document a village for Sendong survivors also in 2012 and in 2013.
In December 2008, we also volunteered to do a photo workshop for autistic children, an experience that taught us a lot.
Wedding photographer Gian Carlo said he was challenged when the call for volunteers showed up in the The Umbrella’s Facebook page, which dared photographers to help the poor, and not just shoot pretty girls. “It’s Christmas. It’s nice to help in our own little ways,” he said.
“Not all people can afford to have their family portraits taken,” said Al Fritz Ermac, who volunteered in our first ever charity shoot way back in 2010. “This is the kind of picture we’d like hanging on our wall for eternity,” said the former hobbyist who later made a career of shooting sporting events, the Milo athletic events among them.
“The feeling is different when you see those families who are so happy during our charity shoot,” said Jelo Pacaña, who volunteered in the 2010 and February 2012 charity shoots. He has since moved to New York shooting weddings.
Nurse Mac Macapil, who teaches radiologic technology at the Iligan Medical Center College, said he wanted to “make other people happy even with just a simple token.”
Taking beautiful pictures is easy for amateur photographers. They do it all the time. But for those who could not afford to have their pictures taken, moreso in a studio setting, it’s such a big thing.
Eileen Manulat, president of the Gawad Kalinga Rainbow Village in Tambacan, said the families were so happy, even displaying the pictures in the alley after our group of photographers left. “It was perfect Christmas gift for them, especially so because it was given on Christmas eve,” she said.
Maybe your camera club would want to do this, too. It’s not too late. And it’s actually easy.
First, check out with your camera club if there are willing volunteers to do family portraits in the field, bringing their portable lighting equipment with them. (We call that strobist’s kit, consisting of small flashguns, light stands and umbrellas or diffusers; not the heavy lighting equipment you see in studios.)
Getting volunteers is actually easy, because hobbyists regularly go out to shoot. Getting donors within the group who are willing to sponsor the cost of making blowup prints and the frames is harder, but a few will stand up.
You can also ask FB friends, especially now during this season of giving.
A set of blowup print (either 8×10 or A4 size) and frame is not really expensive. If you’re lucky, as we are, you can get them in the P250 to P300 range. A group member, Robert Booc, runs the local Kodak lab and does framing jobs, too. So we were able to get a huge discount. Once you confirm the amount you will get from the sponsors, you now have an idea how many prints and frames you can do.
Don’t attempt to give pictures to all the poor families in your city. Like, there’s a really big GK Village here in our area, those intended for Sendong survivors. But with a few hundred families there, we know we can’t do it.
Check out contacts with organized communities.
