Reach Out - Touch & Be Touched

I'm beginning to learn the power of social media. I used to think that if I posted something, my 600+ friends would see it. That in itself is pretty good publicity. However, I'm seeing that the reach goes way beyond that.

Could your business benefit from an extra 1200 to 1400 people knowing about it? That's how many people were reached in each of the first two weeks of our Portraits of Hope Facebook page. The page generated over 300 "stories" With nearly 200 fans in the first two weeks, many of them posted links, comments, and photos from the page on their own "Wall" reaching their friends. According to our Facebook stats, over 1400 people saw those stories the first week, and over 1200 the next. Collectively, our Fans have over 50,000 friends. Only about 1/4 of the Fans of the page are my own Facebook "friends," another testimony to the reach of the project. But when you add to that, the additional wall posts I place on my personal page that are seen by my own friends (nearly 700), and the nearly 400 fans of the Carr Portrait Art page, that reach is greater still.

When you support the Portraits of Hope:

1. You will touch the lives of cancer survivors by helping provide them with a portrait of themselves with someone special who helped them through their illness and treatment process. (And believe me, it is a process).
2. You will touch many more lives by helping raise money for the fight against cancer. The money raised will fund a display that will raise awareness and additional money. Any sponsor money raised over the cost of the display and images will be donated to the Peggy and Charles Stephenson Oklahoma Cancer Center to provide services to cancer patients.
3. Your business will be listed on the display as a sponsor, be mentioned in promotions for the display, which could include mentions on the radio promotion for the premiere of the display. (KOMA is on board to promote the event). And you will be listed as a sponsor on the Portraits of Hope page and mentioned in Facebook posts and on Twitter with your name going out in front of literally 1,000s of social media users.

There are three levels of sponsorship, and the amount of publicity given to sponsoring businesses will be determined by their level of sponsorship. Please contact Carr Portrait Art if you would consider sponsoring this project and would like more information.

Two Days on Location

I'll be spending today and tomorrow at the Stephenson Cancer Center photographing cancer survivors. Some are through with treatment and "cured," some "in remission," and some still in treatment. I am looking forward to hearing their stories and creating their portraits. I have found it to be a tremendous blessing and privilege to spend time with other cancer survivors. Most are very passionate about the life they came too close to losing.

I've done several survivor portraits over the past couple of years as I have worked to get this project up and going. We have a dozen sessions on the schedule for the next two days. Most will be relationship portraits of the survivor with someone who has been particularly supportive of them during their journey, like you've seen on our blog, website and the Portraits of Hope Facebook page.

It's my desire and my prayer that this would be an on-going project. Right now, we're just working on the start-up phase. The display of 20 images will be premiered, hopefully at the Cancer Center, in the not-to-distant future (will announce the date as soon as we can nail it down). It will then be a traveling exhibit, set up in high traffic businesses around the Metro where it can draw attention to the fight against cancer and hopefully draw even more traffic into those businesses.

I do want to offer a quick "disclaimer" about the images themselves. When photographers discovered digital several years ago, we tried a wide variety of techniques, just to see what we could do, and to carve out new niches in the marketplace. One of the techniques was "selective color" - where the image is in black and white except for one area of the photo, usually just one color, chosen for impact. As more and more people got digital cameras and photo-editing software, and many of them proclaimed themselves to be professionals, they began to copy many of those techniques. Selective color seemed to be one of their favorites and has been somewhat overdone, and very often poorly done. It honestly makes me a little uncomfortable using that technique for this project.
However, I believe that when properly used to create impact and communicate a particular message, almost any photographic technique has its place if done well. I earnestly hope that the color in these images will contribute to the story and the emotion, and not be a distraction. It isn't there just because I can do it, or to look cute and artsy. It's there to set these images apart from other black and white relationship images and show that these relationships took on even greater depth because of a specific struggle.

More with Isabelle

Here are a couple of more images of Isabelle. She's 8 years old now. She was 7 when she began her cancer journey, finishing treatment just before Christmas last year. These images show her "Beads of Courage." This organization, as they put it on their Facebook page, "uses beads as powerful doses of medication. Beads of Courage help children coping with serious illness RECORD, TELL and OWN their stories of COURAGE." They award the children a bead for being courageous as they go through various medical procedures. Each bead represents a specific event - getting blood, having blood drawn, chemo.... All the things one would go through in the hospital. It's all overwhelming enough for an adult, but it's huge to a small child. And Beads of Courage helps.

If you haven't already, please go to our Portraits of Hope page on Facebook and click the like button. In the coming weeks, I'll be mentioning area businesses that help sponsor this project. The more Likes we have on that page the more evidence we'll have to show them how much people care about this issue, and how much people will notice that they care, too. Hopefully, that will help them make the decision to sponsor the Portraits of Hope display. Without giving a dime yourself, you can help raise money to fight cancer just by "Liking" the page.

Isabelle

Here's a sneak peak of today's session with Isabelle for the Portraits of Hope project. She's 8 years old and about 3 months out from her treatment for Leukemia. (Orange is the color for Leukemia - like pink is for breast cancer).

Spring Family Portraits - special offer

It's time to plan family portraits for Spring!
April and May are beginning to fill up on our calendar. People are calling and scheduling family portraits for outdoors in the Spring. It may be a little early this year, as warm as it is right now, but typically in Oklahoma, the outdoors is not really ready (grass green, trees all leafy, flowers blooming) until mid-to-late April.
But don't wait until then to schedule.

• The schedule may be full and you won't be able to do your portrait until hot weather arrives.
• Now is the time to sit down together and plan your portrait so that it will be truly beautiful and meaningful to your family - not just another glorified snapshot - something that reflects who you are.
• The creation fees for family portraits begin at $125. If you call before April 15, I'll apply 1/2 your creation fee to your portrait order! This is a special offer. We don't usually do this, but I will this spring if you call before April 15, 2012 to schedule your family portrait session.

There is no obligation to come in and chat about your family portrait. Call and schedule a planning consultation now. If you decide to book with me at that time, you can pay your creation fee to lock in your date on my calendar. Session must be photographed in April or May 2012 to qualify for the special offer.

The Faith of a Child (& a few others)

On the way to mother's day out class -  3 yr old Anna: "What's Daddy doing today?"
Elise: "He's at work."
Anna: "What's Nana doing today?"
Elise: "Well, she's at her work, too."
Anna: "What's Papa doing today?
Elise: "Papa's talking to some people at a radio station about a very important project he's working on."
Anna: "We should pray for him."
Elise: "Okay." and she prays aloud that the meeting would go well and the radio people would catch the vision for the project and agree to help promote it.
Anna: "Amen!"

I know others were praying as well, but how can you lose with the faith of a child on your side? We've seen it before. Children just don't know any better than to believe their prayers will be answered. As we get older we tend to over think things or let our senses convince that faith just isn't reasonable. Children don't have that problem, and I've been amazed sometimes to watch adults pray about something, and nothing happened until their children prayed, too.

Anyway, the meeting went well. I didn't want to name the station until after I knew for sure they were on board with the project. The local Renda Broadcasting affiliate, KOMA, did catch the vision for the Portraits of Hope project and agreed to help promote it. I'm not sure at this point if the promos will run on their sister stations, KOKC, KMGL, and KRXO. But they will promote the premiere of the display. We're working on the timing and location for the premiere.

So, for the next few weeks, I will continue to photograph cancer survivors, and I'll be contacting area businesses and asking them to contribute.

With the radio station on board, the promotion for the project is significantly increased, as well as the doors to get the display into some key area businesses and malls, increasing the value of sponsoring the project. In other words, the businesses that sponsor the project will get significantly more recognition. Some on the promos on radio. They'll get even more recognition by the number of people who will see the display (where there will be a list of the sponsoring businesses) at the premiere and at the other locations where it will be displayed.

 There will be different levels of sponsorship. The goal is to raise enough support to more than cover the cost of the project. Any money received over the cost will be donated to Stephenson Cancer Research Center. (Costs include creating the display and the finished, framed images, and providing each survivor with a print of their portrait.)

Imagine

I was blown away by this video - "A Day Made of Glass" from Corning on the SchoolTube.com website. The imagination and creativity that went into this is amazing and inspiring.  I don't know how far away this technology is, but sci-fi future is becoming closer to reality. (Makes me think of the Star Trek IV movie where Scotty picks up the computer mouse and says, "Hello. Computer?".)

Can you imagine the applications of this in the photography industry for presentation and distribution of images?
http://bit.ly/oO7Xkq

Portraits of Hope

I have an appointment with a radio station tomorrow. The program director seems genuinely enthused about the Portraits of Hope project. He even said there may be an event coming up in late Spring that they could tie it to and kick it off. That's what I'm praying for. Please join me in this. Pray that they really will catch the vision for it and get on board to help launch it.

With radio backing it, it will increase the value of supporting it. Local businesses who contribute will not only get recognition in the display and promotions that I do on Facebook, blog, and Twitter, but also in the radio promotions. They will be able to view it as a more effective advertising expense, and write it off on their taxes that way as well. This should help them feel more free to contribute, which will make the project a more effective fund-raiser.

In addition, if it can be tied to a specific event, and the launch of the project be highly promoted through a medium such as radio, it will make it even more appealing to area business and maybe even malls, to set up the display in their business and promote the fact that the display is now at their location. It should draw traffic into and benefit their business. And, since I will donate a portion of the proceeds from any portrait sessions booked from the public display of the photos, that will make it an on-going fund-raiser. I really want to give cancer as big of a kick in the teeth as I possibly can. So, I'm really praying the pieces of this project all come together to make it as big and successful as it possibly can be.