Day 139 – Final Project

I didn’t want to post this until the results were in. (And yes, the last photo was taken today). What follows are just thirteen of the approximately 400 photos I took of the event and the days leading up to it.

Final Project – ART 235
Medical Outreach Response Event
April 13 – 14, 2012
Silver Stage High School, Silver Springs, NV

Organizers and Volunteers
Christy (right) is the Director of the Healthy Communities Coalition. Freida (left) runs the Dayton Food bank and was the instigating force for the event. She wondered, What good did it do to give people food if they couldn’t chew it? Freida was the volunteer organizer and logistics person for the event.

Wendy organized the professionals (dentists, doctors, nurses, optometrists, etc). She is the head of Community Roots.

Rita was one of a couple hundred extraordinary volunteers. Here she is calling people who registered late for the event to let them know what services would be available.<

The Event – Friday, April 13 (12 – 5pm) & Saturday, April 14 (9am – 5pm)

Community Health Nurses consult with one another in preparation for the MORE event.

One of the dentists and his assistants heading out to the mobile dental van.

Wendy cannot contain her excitement after getting a look at the dental van. It really was amazing. It was a complete, modern dental office (five chairs) on wheels.

There were so many who needed dental work, that it was meted out via lottery tickets. On day one 8 numbers were drawn every half hour. The dentists did their best to keep up, but many clients with tickets had not been served by the end of the first day, so those patients came back the next day, as did anyone else who had a lottery ticket in the raffle can. There was no way all who needed help were going to be seen. And yet the people waited and hoped. Once their number was called, it was still a long wait and I saw some people who had been standing in line on Friday morning still waiting for dental treatment on Saturday at 4pm when I left , No one who was lucky enough to get their number called complained. They waited and waited and waited until they finally saw the dentist. And among those lucky enough to get their ticket pulled, well, in some cases they gave their place to someone else in their family whose needs were more urgent.

One client speaking to a volunteer at the lottery table.

Other services were also offered. Immunizations were by far the most popular after dental work.

We had optometrists on hand as well. The Lions Club volunteers did vision testing and screening, and prospective patients were sent back to the optometrists.

Dental work was, by far, the most requested and labor intensive service offered at MORE 2012.

Mark needed a filling in his front incisor.

Dr. Brad Munninger of Desert Valley Dental in Fernley worked his magic.

Mark’s reaction was pretty typical of all the dental patients. Big smiles, hugs, and even some tears.

“If I cannot eat, cannot smile, cannot kiss without pain, do you think I can work, attend school, participate in the normal affairs of my family, peers and community?”

~ Shaun Griffin

I was very proud to have done this project and I’m honored the organizers trusted me to do the event justice. I’m happy with the result, but more than that, I’m happy that the photographs I took will be used to influence support for further events of this type in the near future, and legislation and change in the coming years.

Icing on the cake:

Day 138 – Showing up is half the battle

Until the recession kicked the city and the business community’s collective hind end, the City of Reno held an annual Corporate Challenge. My company competed every year; the organizers doing their best to recruit participants for every event from Pictionary to darts to Track and Field to softball to swimming and even tug-of-war. I competed in 2009 and 2010 (the last year the event was held). In 2009 I competed in swimming (backstroke and breaststroke) and managed to pull off a silver medal in each event. In 2010, I bested myself and won a gold medal in breaststroke, a silver in freestyle and shock of all shocks, a silver in the long jump. Go figure. I wasn’t in shape at all, but the company needed women in my age bracket to compete, if for no other reason than to help boost our overall score. So I showed up. I swam. I jumped. I even tossed a shot put and a softball. And I had fun.

These medals hang on my office bulletin board as a daily reminder: Show up. Participate.

Day 137 – Neighbors

Super busy day. I woke up, grabbed some coffee, finished uploading the Fun Fly photos, was chained to my desk all day, came home to finish up Cindy’s photos so I could get them to her, then ran a quick vacuum around the house, and THEN I could pick up my camera. I headed outside with my tripod and tried to capture the dusky horizon, and then turned east to see illuminated homes. It’s quite unusual to see all of them lit at the same time, so I gave it a go. A bit noisy, due to the long exposure, but I kind of like it.

Day 136 – Leaves

Lilac bush catching the last bit of sun before it fell below the western horizon. Shot hand-held using Speedlite with soft box attachment to provide a little fill.

Grape leaves and baby grapes.

Day 135 – Soaring in the Clouds

I caught this hawk soaring in the sunbeams on my way out to my car yesterday.* Hope you like it.

*I couldn’t post it last night as our internet went out at home.

Day 134 – How we spent Mother’s Day

We got up bright and early and participated in Moms On the Run, a local organization that helps women with cancer to meet their living expenses while undergoing treatment. My co-worker, Rachel (a young mother of two boys), was diagnosed with breast cancer last December and is currently undergoing treatment. While our insurance is good, she is out for several months and at the time she was beginning treatment, her husband had been unemployed. For her, Moms on the Run was a just the help she needed at a very challenging time.

Rachel’s Pirates for the Cureibbean were out in force today.

All the pictures of the day can be found at my SmugMug Mother’s Day gallery (I’m sounding like Disperser!), but here are a few from the day.

This next shot was supposed to be a shot of the crowd. I held my camera up and thought I was shooting straight out. Instead I got these two women. I like the composition with just them and everyone else’s legs and feet.

We did the 5K walk through the neighborhood around Reno High and then through Idlewild Park along the Truckee River. It was a gorgeous day and a beautiful setting.

After the walk, we headed across the river to the Pneumatic Diner, a tiny restaurant that seats maybe 30 people at tiny tables and specializes in vegetarian and vegan fare. Surprisingly, it wasn’t as busy as it usually is on Sunday mornings.

Sweetie had a vegan pecan waffle and eggs.In the picture above you can see a person putting their own fixings on their waffle. Yep, that’s how they roll at Pneumatic. Daughter and I each had the Vegan Bubba with Slab (grilled tofu).

I think we may have found a new Mother’s Day tradition!

Day 133 – Big boy toys and my first paid job – UPDATE

Sweetie is a radio-control airplane aficionado and in recent months has joined a club of like-minded guys. This means I lose him for hours at a time on weekends, but I’m happy he’s got a hobby and friends outside of the home. The club held its first annual Fun Fly today and I was asked to photograph the event. I took a couple hundred photos and am still going through them. Just one from the batch is below. I’ll link to them later when I’ve got them all processed and ready to go.

One of the guys flying his plane.

The other exciting news is that I had my first PAID job today! My friend is starting back to work as a consultant and needed some headshots done. Here are a couple of my favorites. Unfortunately, WordPress in “crunching” my images has made them cooler and more washed out than they should be. I’ve broken down and set up a SmugMug account, and when I can, I will link to the photos. (UPDATE: I have replaced all the photos below with linked-to SmugMug photos. The difference is clear. The colors are as they should be.)

Just so you know I’m not imagining the color difference, the photo below is after WordPress is through “crunching” it.

It wasn’t all serious . . . we had some fun too!

Day 132 – Columbine

The flower, that is.

Taken in my garden this evening using my Speedlite (bounced of the steps to the left of the flower). As this particular side garden is right under our dryer vent, there are a few bits of its output on the flower.