Help Portrait | Philadelphia, 2013 | This one's for you

On Saturday, December 7th, 2013 an amazing event called “Help Portrait” swept across the globe. I lead a group and assembled one of the Help Portrait events right here in Philadelphia.What is Help Portrait? In a word, it's the most awesome photographic, charitable, story-telling, story-giving, picture-creating, tear-jerking, perspective-gaining, thought-provoking, and fun events that one could conjure up.

Help Portrait happens when a group of photographers, hair stylists, makeup artists, and volunteers get together and spend a day giving portraits away to those in need. For free. The people we photographed were characters of every walk of life; fathers, mothers, families, and fun-loving kids.

Partnering up with a number of Philadelphia photographers and artists (credits later on in this post) we had an event that went off without a hitch! I owe a massive “thank you” to everyone involved for helping to make this what it was and what it will be in the future! Without the selfless giving of others, we could never have made this happen!

During the event the best moment I experienced was when one 79 year-old gentleman-who had never been photographed before-looked at me and told me that he now "had a photograph he could give to his granddaughters so they would always remember him”. How cool and incredible is that? That’s a moment that will not soon be lost on me. Perspective gained.

I’d be remiss if I didn't mention that this whole worldwide event was started several years ago by the fantastic Nashville photographer, Jeremy Cowart. (Jeremy hates being mentioned in these articles, but credit where credit is due. *bow* )

We had a great location, Old First Reformed United Church of Christ which the incredible Philly-based company ShareMySpace helped up find and schedule.

Here are a few of the photos I shot on that day:

One of our organizers/photographers for all the Philadelphia Help Portrait events, Jaleel King. This dude is hilarious.

Also, here is a rundown of the awesome people who came out and rocked this event with us!

Organizer & Lead Assistant Nathaniel Dodson (Me) Alex Cerrato

Photographers Chris Dawson & Susan Harner Victor C. Green Kyle Cassidy Max Grudzinski(Max also has a blog post on his experience with Help Portrait ») Stephanie DeFeo Jeffrey Sabotta Jaleel King

Makeup Artists Marissa Cordero Nina Wachuku

Hair Stylists Jessica Pineda Ivy Ji Han

Volunteers Steven Collins Mikey Ilagan Christopher Dodson Angelyn Dodson David and Lexi Moore

Fashion Model Katie Shea Walters | Philadelphia Photography

Daughter of local photographer, a film student, avid Star Wars fan, and budding young fashion model, Katie Shea Walters sure has her hands full modeling, walking in events such as the recent “Philadelphia Fashion Week”, oh, and-as mentioned-she’s a film student.

Katie and I first got together in January of 2013 and have worked together a couple times since then. These images are from our very first shoot together. This was very much a run-and-gun style shoot as we ran around a Philadelphia area town called Manayunk and captured images in several different areas of town. This shoot was a stylized, fashion-influenced, environmental portrait shoot to get Katie some unique and fun pictures that she could add to her portfolio.

The light source in these images was a single light, a 400W head with a 39” Rotalux Deep Octa bank (one of my personal favorite lighting modifiers!)

Check out a few of the images we captured below.