Help Portrait Vancouver 2011- A Tradition!

Last Saturday on December 3rd was the third annual Help Portrait Vancouver event at the Union Gospel Mission. This year was bigger and better than ever with 150 volunteers in total we were able to deliver portraits to over 700 people. There was lots of local news media coverage of the event and a dedicated group of volunteers Tweeted and live blogged the event all day. One of the local stations even called our event a tradition for the downtown Eastside. By the excitement and smiles on all the faces of the guests that came through you knew that they look forward to this almost as much as all the volunteers do. They say that many hands makes the lifting easy. Well this year many hands lifted the hearts and spirits of all those that experienced Help Portrait Vancouver! I'm already looking forward to next year.

This was the morning crew of photographers that kicked things off for the day.

Here we are at the end of the day for the group shot with photographers, editors and make up artists. There were many more that day but they couldn't stay for the photo unfortunately.

Help Portrait Vancouver 2011

There is one particular event of the year that I as a photographer look forward to the most and that is Help Portrait Vancouver. I volunteered for this event three years ago and have been part of it since then and each year it just keeps getting better and better. This year will be no exception and on Saturday, December 3rd we'll be putting on the event at the Union Gospel Mission in Vancouver's downtown Eastside. Even before this large scale event we put on a smaller event at the BC Children's Hospital on November 2nd. A small group of photographers and makeup artists set up a small studio in the terminally ill ward and invited patients and their families in for portraits sessions. This year we were also very privileged and were welcomed into some of the patients rooms for those that could not make it to the studio. Here are two videos from that day plus a group photo of the team that made it possible.

Help Portrait itself is a world wide event that happens in almost every major city around the world so if you would like to find out more about it or volunteer then check out the site or get online and search for one in your city. There is no greater feeling than to be able to give back doing something that you love.