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:

In the print lab

We are supposed to bring in a couple of “tentative” prints for our final project tonight, so I was in the print lab last night processing and printing. When this one came out of the printer, I stopped short. He is just one of the couple hundred people who came for dental treatment at the MOR event last weekend. He was one of the lucky ones – his number in the lottery was drawn.

As you can see, his face reflects a life I can’t know anything about, but he was kind and he was gentle and he trusted me to take his picture.

I have no idea if WordPress is going to do this fellow justice. I love how the actual photograph came out.

Gentleman in a Fedora

I may have mentioned before that my lighting instructor is an award-winning photographer. His bread and butter is commercial photography, but his photography goes far beyond. On the first day of class he showed us some of his work, and later we learned more of the back story to many of his shots through this program, The Work of Art, produced by KNPB. I highly recommend watching it and it will give you a great idea of who Jeff Ross is as an artist and a human being.

I had a routine visit with my cardiologist today. Actually, it wasn’t that routine as my regular EP, Dr. Dhir, has left the practice and I was seeing a “new” doctor today: Dr. Letitia Anderson. The last time I’d seen Dr. Anderson was in November 2009 when I was in the emergency room at Renown prior to being admitted for four days of observation. I liked her then, and today’s visit confirmed that I made the right choice in requesting her after Dr. Dhir’s departure.

Yes…there is a connection here. Patience!

Dr. Anderson wanted me to get my pacemaker read and as I was heading into the waiting area I saw an elderly black man checking in with the receptionist. I immediately recognized him as the gentleman in this photo. A super-sized version of this photo hangs in Jeff’s studio in Reno and it moves me very much.

And there he was, looking just as he did in the photograph. Same hat, same expression, same demeanor.

At first I wasn’t going to say anything to Mr. Marks, but I felt drawn to him. I wanted him to know I knew who he was, and so I walked up to him and said, “I know you from your photograph.” We chatted briefly; I told him how much I loved Jeff’s photograph of him. He remembered Jeff and the photo. I touched the sleeve of his trench coat with my left hand, and he reached for my right hand to hold it. I told him that I would tell Jeff tonight that I’d seen him. We said good-bye.

And then he smiled at me and kissed my hand.

Cross-posted at Blue Lyon

Day 47 – Lighting class “quick fire” challenge

Our instructor was out tonight, but our lab assistant was there and between him and Jeff, they had an assignment for us for the night. The exercise we were given was adapted from Photo Workout: Flex Your Photographic Skills at Digital Photography Magazine online.

Light is critical to photography. Without light, you can’t take pictures! One of the keys to becoming a better photographer is to “see: the light and understand what it is doing within an image. The camera only sees the light and emphasized that light, even it it’s not flattering or beneficial for the subject. It is the job of the photographer to understand and properly utilize light for the desired effect.

ASSIGNMENT: Create an image using light as a creative or technical component to your composition. Illustrate how your light effectively interact with or within the composition (Does it affect the subject? Is it the subject? Does it provide movement? Does it increase or decrease the contrast Does it enhance the composition, if so, how?) You may use: natural, artificial, continuous, flash or any combination of them all. Your image must be shot in class time. Print one copy of your image, black and white or color. HAVE FUN!

Tips: Using the techniques that you have learned so far, find, create and/or use light in an interesting manner! Pay attention to both the quality and quantity of the light, and the effect it is having or producing. Look for spots of light, colored light, edge light, light contrasting with shadow or shadows themselves (as shadows are as much a part of light as the light itself). Look at the light, and what it is doing in your photograph. See how the light might be interesting in and of itself. Look at how light and shadows are interacting throughout the image.

So…

We were given an hour to go out and shoot, and then we were to come back to the lab to process and print one photo. We grabbed our cameras and out we headed out. I shot a lot of photos, and some of them su-u-u-cked, but I managed to shoot a few of interesting shots.

A light on the wall in Knowledge Center:

Palms near the windows in the Knowledge Center with sun shining through their leaves.

Outside the Starbucks located in “The Joe” (Joe Crowley Student Union) I saw a table stacked on another. The shadow the leg cast on the brick wall captured my attention for a bit.