I didn’t want the year to end without sharing about my favorite gig of the year – and it didn’t involve an invoice at its conclusion. I’m a firm believer that while keeping strong relationships with your clientele is important, it’s often the pro bono gigs that give me the chance to branch out, sharpen new skills and stay creatively fresh.

It was a very rewarding project over a couple of months this Spring. I was approached by the intern director at my church, who had been working with 20+ interns across several departments, including arts, design, youth ministry and several others. This vibrant initiative always brings such a great energy to the staff, and we all wanted to give some love and appreciation to a great crew of people who would be moving on to new adventures.

This was not only an act of love for a group of people with whom I had grown very close; but it was also a chance to get into a great space (our church has a great studio) and really focus on the art of portraiture.

I wanted this to be way more than just a headshot session. To really capture the spirit of each one of these marvelous souls, I needed to take some time. But we also had a limited amount of studio and post time to get this project done.

First, I needed a simple but flexible lighting scheme where I could move the subject and get easy variations of the look. And because there were always projects going on in the space, scheduling was always uncertain and I needed to be able to set it up quickly. When I was just learning, my “lighting sensei” Don Giannatti showed me how to use a basic white fabric shower curtain and a strobe to create a literal wall of light that would allow me to go from nearly full frontal to dark and moody lighting – all depending on where I placed the subject.

The quick setup gave me more time to spend with each subject. It started with some simple instructions and a set of questions that allowed me to capture the ups and downs of their experience over the previous months. Some took a little more time than others to get comfortable, but I was very happy with the results!

But it didn’t end there. As the intern director and I talked about how best to present the work, we ultimately biased toward going big with six foot tall poster prints of each intern with a prayer that their supervisor personally wrote for them. I’ll never forget seeing those images hung for the end of year celebration…

But seeing the reactions to their images was even better! Offering this act of love to them reminded me of the impact that a well crafted image can have on a person.

I put all of the content into a cool little hack that I’ve used for a lot of applications – from storytelling to annual reports for a nonprofit I work with. It has a few limitations here and there, but Adobe Spark Page is a fantastic app that does a lot quickly and beautifully. Here’s the result and a little about each of the people I was so glad to get to know. Check out the Interns’ Gallery here.

I already have a few gigs lined up for next year and I’m really looking forward to helping people and organizations of all kinds tell their stories in 2019!