Before I start, I just want to credit the photographers who took the pictures in the diptych above. John Lindroth took the photo on the left of Krista Leapold, myself, and Kathy Hare, and Kathy Hare took the photo of me on the right. John, Kathy, & Krista all joined me to photograph children and their families at the MUSC Children’s Hospital this morning.

I have to go ahead and say that we had an absolute blast doing this today. In fact, it was a major highlight of my journey behind the lens so far. The families were genuinely grateful and excited to get their pictures taken. The looks of joy on the kid’s faces was worth more than anything tangible in this world. I wish I could share some of the pictures that Kathy & John took of the kids checking out their photos on the back of my camera’s LCD screen. Their joy was matched only by the joy in my own face as I looked at their reactions. I felt like a parent on Christmas morning watching his children open up their gifts. But the pictures we made today are for the people we photographed and are not mine to show, so I can only share my words with you.

To be able to share our passion for photography and creativity with people like those that we served today is why most of us ever decide to make photographs. We want people to share in a moment of time that we stopped forever because it meant something to us at that point. Little gifts like this will hopefully make the experiences these children are enduring filled with enough highlights that their passion for life will burn stronger than the illness that put them there.

Unlike the other local Help-Portrait group that is serving the Charleston Convoy of Hope on December 11th, we did not serve hundreds of people today (they did an amazing job last year and are estimating over 1,000 subjects at this years event). This gave us the opportunity to not only create professional portraits, but also take candid editorial style photos of the kids during the event. We were lucky to photograph every kid that was not confined to their rooms, which was amazing. They each got a CD filled with the pictures we made, and the hospital also got a DVD of all of the pictures we took so they can use them any way they want to.

I shared a bunch of pictures in yesterday’s post that are similar to what I was doing today, so because Krista was helping out today I present a picture I took of her being her bright and cheery self. Thanks for reading!