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| Erica Garcia feeds toddlers at meal time. |
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| Playtime with dedicated volunteers like Kathy Brady. |
Ummmm.
Okay, usually the best thing about photos involving kids, are the expressions on their faces, especially when you're shooting for a parenting magazine. Yes, photograph a news story but don't show what happened. Ouch!
Photographing a people-based story, which is to say photographing most stories, means telling peoples stories and showing their faces. It is a counter-intuitive challenge that is a little like telling me not to breathe.
That said, in this case it was necessary. Child Crisis Arizona is a shelter for children with families in crisis. Hiding their identities is a necessity.
Full disclosure, several years ago, the Virginia Piper Foundation selected me to photograph what was then known as the Child Crisis Center to provide them with professional-quality images without having to hire someone out of their own budget. It was part of the Picturing Maricopa project that matched 15 photographers with 15 Maricopa County organizations. It was a challenge that I spent parts of five days working through. It worked out with a significant amount of experimentation, searching for interesting compositions that also told us stories without visually disclosing the identities of children who lived at the shelter.
Given enough time and situations, it's doable and, in reality, is a great exercise in pushing outside your own creative boundaries to pull it all together.
RAK Article online
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| Long-time volunteer Chris Paulley gets into Play-Doh action with a little one. |
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