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Help-Portrait MUSC Kids 2012

Photo by William Long

On Friday morning, I was joined by 5 great volunteers to gift portraits to the families of children at MUSC Children’s Hospital in Charleston, SC. This was the 3rd Help-Portrait event I’ve led at the children’s hospital and every year it gets better.

Top Row: William Long, John Lindroth, Joseph Nienstedt
Bottom Row: Katee Cornette, Jen Pfeffer, Kathy Hare

Due to the nature of the event we hold and HIPA, I don’t ask the subjects too much about the nature of their conditions. Instead, my philosophy is a little different than most other Help-Portrait events. My goal for the team is to make these kids and their families feel normal. We treat them as if they were coming into a studio and walk them through the whole process. We also provide them with craft photo frames that they design for their portraits, which is always fun for the kids.

Photo by William Long

One of the children asked to see my camera, so I showed him how it works. Then he wanted to take pictures of our next subject, so we let him – and the portraits turned out perfect! In fact, we printed those out and gave them to the subject, and they loved them. This is exactly what we wanted to provide for these families – a fun event that made them forget why they were in a hospital.

Photo by Kathy Hare

Here’s one of the portraits that Tyreq made:

Photo by Tyreq

There are a lot of meaningful things that the families and hospital staff say, but one that sticks out was a parent who’s child was too sick to leave the room but really wanted to participate. Because it was the parent requesting it, we were able to send a photographer into the room and take their family’s portraits – something they haven’t been able to do because of their situation. The photograph meant so much to the parent that she figured out a way to make it happen. This was such an example of the power of a photograph and what it means to someone in need.

Photo by William Long

Please take a moment and watch this slideshow of images from the event. I hope the images move you even slightly as much as they moved us:

Last Day of Movember 2012

I just wanted to share my final self-portrait for Movember of 2012. I try to do at least one of these a week during the event. Last week’s was a little more special since I made it on top of a rocky cliff 😉

So far, my team has raised over $2,000 during the month, and I think that’s awesome! So thank you for those of you who supported. If you are feeling generous, there’s still some time to donate some money at my MoSpace page.

Movember 2012

Movember Week #1

This morning I took my razor to my lip and removed my mustache. It’s been with me for almost a year now since I started growing it during last year’s Movember event. So it was with great pride that I shed my stache just to document it’s regrowth for you in the hopes that you might donate a few clams to men’s health organizations through my MoSpace page.

If you have no idea what Movember is, you can read all about it here. The TLDR version is that every November, participants try to raise vital awareness and funds for men’s health issues, specifically prostate and testicular cancer initiatives. The traditional method of doing this is to grow a fresh new mustache during November and let everyone know why you’re doing it.

Last year was such a success that I’m excited to participate again. This year I’ve joined a local Movember group, The Charleston Gentlemen of Leisure.

Please donate whatever you can spare. It’s a rough time for a lot of my friends up north, so I wouldn’t mind if you decided to throw some money to the American Red Cross instead (or both if you can). Another organization that’s directly helping out people in need in NY & NJ is Occupy Sandy Relief. They have a ton of information, including drop off locations and volunteer efforts for places that are currently being overlooked by FEMA and the Red Cross.

I look forward to sharing my weekly self-portraits with you as my upper lip gets fuzzy again. Last year’s family photo was one of my favorite photos of all time:

Help Help-Portrait 2012

First off, lets start off with some great news, the date has been set for my Help-Portrait group’s now annual visit to the MUSC children’s hospital. We will be shooting on Friday morning, December 7th 2012. The actual worldwide date for Help-Portrait is the 8th, but the hospital can’t do this on a weekend, so we’re as close as humanly possible this year! The Help-Portrait community website hasn’t quite settled on what back-end technology they are going with yet this year, so I’ll be using this Facebook page to get organized. This leads me to the next thing I wanted talk about.

Help-Portrait needs your help! We’re turning to our local communities to pitch in and help us provide portraits to the families we’re serving. Here’s the deal:

Every $10 donation provides the ability for us to provide at least 3 prints and a frame to each family we shoot. What’s better is that for each $10 donation, Wacom (the makers of the pen tablet that I use to edit photos on a daily basis) is matching each donation! So for every $10 that gets donated, Wacom will also give a $10 donation that goes to our community. In effect, your $10 just magically became $20 because of Wacom! Also, if you are donating in Charleston, SC, the money raised stays in Charleston to fund one of our events (including the one at MUSC).

Here’s the link to donate: Donate $10

I know that this is a tough time of the year to ask for a donation, with schools and boy/girl scouts both doing their annual fund raising now, but time is of the essence! This is a Groupon Grassroots Campaign and is only running to Wednesday, September 26th 2012!

So, if you’ve felt the slightest bit of warmness in your heart for the service we provide, please consider helping out. Need some more convincing? Just check out my previous wrap-up posts here and here and here, and also here.

Art For Charity Event

Click the poster for the full size version

I just wanted to let you know that I’ll be shooting portraits of the guests at the Art For Charity event at the Michael Mitchel Studio in Charleston, SC on Friday, June 1st, 2012.

First, the details:

-Michael Mitchell Gallery is located at 438 King Street, Charleston, SC 29403
-The events are held from 6 pm to 9 pm.
-A $10 donation would be greatly appreciated
-The event I’ll be shooting will be benefiting the Ryan White Program and Wellness Center

What is Art For Charity?

Art For Charity is a unique gallery event where a portion of profits from sold artwork benefit local, non-profit organizations. This year’s charities include Friends of MUSC Children’s Hospital, Crisis Ministries, Komen Lowcountry, Roper St. Francis Ryan White Program, Charleston Waterkeeper and MUSC Hollings Cancer Center.

The event I’ll be shooting will be benefiting the Ryan White Program and Wellness Center.

Who is Ryan White and what is the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program?

Ryan White and his mom courageously fought AIDS-related discrimination and helped educate the Nation about his disease.
Ryan White was diagnosed with AIDS at age 13. He and his mother Jeanne White Ginder fought for his right to attend school, gaining international attention as a voice of reason about HIV/AIDS. At the age of 18, Ryan White died on April 8, 1990, just months before Congress passed the AIDS bill that bears his name – the Ryan White CARE (Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency) Act. The legislation has been reauthorized four times since – in 1996, 2000, 2006, and 2009 – and is now called the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program.

I’m pretty stoked to be a part of this, and I hope to see you there. Heck, just bring $10 to donate at the door, get your photo taken, & check out some art (and possibly buy some since part of the proceeds benefit the charity). I’ll be posting the photos for you to download just like I did for the recent Change For Change Art Show.

Help-Portrait Charleston 2011

I had the pleasure of not only organizing a Help-Portrait event at MUSC Children’s Hospital again this year, but also of volunteering as a shooter for the Charleston Help-Portrait group at the Convoy of Hope event on James Island. I want to share some of my favorite shots from the day.

This was a lot different from the event I organized. I was one of three shooters, we had 2 editors, registration volunteers, and a makeup artist all in one tent!

Here are a couple of shots from my phone of the other two shooters at the event:

Doug DeLong

Hansje Gold-Krueck

I also got to shoot some other event volunteers, such as these mimes who were performing:

As well as the local fire department:

Help-Portrait CHS James Island Fire Department

I shot a lot of families. It can be challenging to get a group to fit within the borders of a portable collapsible background. There was a lot of convincing on my part to get people as close as possible to each other. Luckily, that also usually got people laughing right away.

When shooting kids, I tried to get them to also pose without their parents so they could let their personalities show. Something about taking a picture with adults makes kids squirm, but when they’re with other kids they really seem to open up.

I also shot a little differently than I did with the MUSC event. I shot in JPEG normal to make the file sizes smaller and also let the camera handle the JPEG conversions to speed up the processing. I shot over 54 different subjects – and I was one of 3 photogs! Needless to say the editors were very busy.

The other change I made was to slightly bump up my ISO to 250 to make my flashes work a little less. I worked 7 hours and never had to change the batteries!

I have to say, it’s nice to let someone else worry about leading every once and a while. Being a professional means a lot more than just taking pictures! For this event though, I just had to worry about setting up and making people smile. I still love leading, but it was nice to have a break from the “business” end of things for a change.

All in all it was a really successful event. I had a blast, and the subjects I interacted with were all unique and interesting people from all walks of life. I didn’t get a chance to check out the rest of the event, although we had a stage right next to our tent so we were jamming to lots of gospel music, which I was enjoying to the point of ridiculousness (although that could have been the exhaustion kicking in). Everybody was in such high spirits though that it was hard not to have a sore face from smiling all day long. You can view the rest of my portraits from the event here.

Help-Portrait MUSC Kids 2011

Every once in a while you take a photo that reminds you of why you love photography. Help-Portrait is an event where every time you press the shutter you make that picture.

On Friday, our small group of volunteers headed back to the atrium at the MUSC Children’s hospital in downtown Charleston, SC to give portraits to families of children who are being cared for there.

This year, the organizers of Help-Portrait have reversed their stance on sharing the photos of the subjects and have in fact encouraged us to do so. I’d like to share the photos I took of our 13 subjects during the event.

It’s amazing to be able to give the families of these kids something in a situation where so much has been taken from them. There is something about a kid smiling with you despite the struggle they’re fighting that makes you value the life we have.

Amy was in charge of gathering hats for our wardrobe since hair & make-up really wouldn’t work in this situation. For all the hats that we brought, the girls mostly liked the feather boa!

As I’ve mentioned before, the inspiration for us to bring Help-Portrait to MUSC Children’s Hospital came from leukemia survivor Jesse Dasinger. Last year, he was unable to participate due to his health. This year, he’s doing amazingly well and was able to drop in with his family to get his picture made:

I did have on technical problem that arose from a bad cable, and I had to retake Christopher’s photo here because the first attempt failed. He was a trooper, and was able to re-create the magic:

One of the brightest moments for me was when this girl, Amouri, came to get her photo made. She was also the last subject I shot. I grilled her a bit at first and found out she was a cheerleader. I knew she would be a great subject. She said something that made me feel tremendously enlightened about what goes on at MUSC. I asked her how she was feeling, and she said “I feel amazing”.

Another change introduced in this year’s Help-Portrait was the involvement of the participants. We came up with the idea to bring plain wooden picture frames to let the kids decorate them with – they loved it! John Lindroth took this shot of Megan:

Here’s the team photo shot by one of the staffers at the hospital:

Help-Portrait Charleston SC MUSC Kids Team

Drew, John, & Eugene also have some photos of the event that I’ll share soon. All of the photos will be available here. I also participated in the Charleston Help-Portrait group at the James Island Convoy of Hope event yesterday. I’ll be sure to write up another recap of that event soon! Stay tuned…

Movember Family Photo

I just wanted to share this photo of my family supporting the Movember movement. How awesome are they? You could be awesome too – just head on over to my MoSpace page and donate a few bucks today. There’s only a couple more days left to show some support for men’s health via this very studly drive. If you’ve been holding out, please do it today. It won’t hurt, I promise.

Last Week of Movember

All right loyal photo enthusiasts, friends, family members, lurkers, and internet bots. I know you’re reading this (I see the analytics reports). It’s time to give back! Help me raise money for men’s health charities through my Movember page. Even if it’s a couple of dollars. Anything you can afford to donate will help.

Over the past 3 weeks, I’ve gone through the effort of making self portraits to document my facial hair growth. I do have an ulterior motive though – I’m trying to get your attention with them. Much like the actual mustache on my face starts conversations with the people I see on a regular basis, I’m posting these pics online to spark your interest in helping us men folk out.

The time is here and now. Head on over to my MoSpace page and help out if you’re planning on helping. We’ve only got this last week to go, and I’d really like to see just how much of a difference this little website can make.

Thanks for reading,

Joseph W. Nienstedt

Help Portrait MUSC Kids 2011

It’s been almost a year since we held our Help-Portrait MUSC Kids events (last year we did 2 – you can read about those here and here). This year, I’ll be leading our team on Friday, December 9th at the MUSC Children’s Hospital. We can’t do weekends at the hospital, so this was the closest we could get to the actual event. The Charleston, SC Group is also planning to host 4 events simultaneously on the official day in North Charleston, Charleston, James Island, & Johns Island. So if you can’t help us out on Friday, I’m sure they could use it on Saturday.

This year the Help-Portrait organizers want everybody to be a bit more interactive with their subjects. To best understand what they mean, Jeremy Cowart tells us in this video:

I think we can do some exciting stuff with these children since we don’t have a large amount of kids that we shoot. We can really spend some time getting to know their stories and spreading the word about Help-Portrait. Some ideas I have are to do some video, which would mean that a videographer could help us out this year. Since we can’t really do hair and makeup, maybe we could incorporate some really awesome hats as props – if anyone can pull together a unique hat collection, that would be cool (maybe we could ask a local thrift store to lend some to us). How about some frames that the kids can paint? I’ll be bringing a 5×7 photo printer, so the kids can make their photos into an art project (the atrium has painting supplies). If you have any ideas, I’d really appreciate them (either here in the comments, on the Help-Portrait Community site, or on Facebook).

I also wanted to share with you some great news from the boy who was our inspiration to do this at MUSC Children’s Hospital. Jessie Dasinger has passed the 280+ day mark after his bone marrow transplant and he’s doing great. He’s back in school and back to being a normal kid again. His story is an inspiration considering that just a year ago at this time he wasn’t well enough to participate in the event.

Make sure to check our community page for all planning info regarding the event. It’s less than a month away, so please don’t be shy – lets get the conversation started!