Close to my heart
Posted on October 10, 2008
For those of you who know me or have read my “about” me section, you know that I have a very special place in my heart for individuals with special needs. I am pretty sure this passion developed at a very young age as I grew up with my brother who has special needs. Our family is among the more fortunate families who have children with special needs because Jake is very high-functioning and does not have a diagnosis other than “developmentally delayed”.
I had the privilege of working professionally in the special needs field for about 2 years, and I saw first hand just how many families have huge obstacles to jump through each and every day. In my opinion (and experience with), Autism is among the worst of all developmental disabilities because the manifestations of autism cover such a wide spectrum of physical and mental functioning levels. Anyway…I could go on forever, but I just wanted to mention that there are 2 guys, Robert Williams and Bobby Genese, who are walking across America to benefit families struggling to pay for autism therapy and medical services. They are walking in remembrance of Elias Tembenis, a little boy with autism who died at the age of 6 due to seizure complications.
I heard Bobby Genese on the radio this morning talking about his journey and it is just incredible. Both men started in May 2008 on Route 50 in San Francisco and will end on the Discovery Trail in Washington, DC sometime in late November 2008. That is 3000 miles!!
For more information and/or to donate to their case, check out the following links:
http://www.nationalautismassociation.org/eliaswalk/index.htm
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Liz & Joey’s Senior Session
Posted on August 18, 2008
Liz & Joey are just so cute! They are twins and come from a large family - of 7 - and let me tell you that each each person in their family has their own unique personality! Joey & Liz, ironic as it might seem considering they are twins, are probably the most opposite! Joey is smart, sweet, soft-spoken, and responsible whereas Liz is always the life of the party, outgoing, fun, and isn’t afraid to test the boundaries (hopefully she won’t kill me for writing that - haha!). I think the only thing they actually have in common is their passion for dancing & singing. Aside from their different personalities, though, the twins really do get along great.
Their family owns a house down on Norris Lake where they spend most of their Summer boating, wake boarding, skiing, tubing - you name it, they’re into it! We were able to squeeze their senior session in when they came back to town for a few days. Joey & Liz were extremely laid back and easy to work with - not to mention photogenic! I also need to add popular to that list because we ran into one of their friends at every place we stopped to take pictures!
Joey & Liz ~ Even though we were all sweating to death by the end, I had a great time hanging out with you guys and taking your pictures! Thanks for being so easy-going & fun :)
International Documentary Challenge (IDC)
Posted on June 10, 2008
One of the highlights of my year so far was definitely the weekend I had the privilege of participating with team “docuNATI” in the International Documentary Challenge (IDC). The basic premise of the IDC is that each team has just five days to make a short documentary (4-7 mins). All creativity - research, writing, shooting, editing and adding a musical soundtrack - had to be completed beginning Thursday, March 6, 2008 at 8 AM and ending Monday, March 10, 2008. To make things more challenging, on the morning of Thursday the 6th each team was given the choice of 2 genres as well as a broad theme that must be addressed in their film.
Our genre was NATURE and our theme was CHANGE. These happened to work perfectly with what we really wanted to shoot - which was the idea of “Down Syndrome Art”. The way we tied everything together was with the tag line “one chromosome changes everything…” The CHANGE in one chromosome determines whether a person is born with Down Syndrome and since people are a part of the natural physical world, incorporating NATURE was easy. Visionaries & Voices, an art studio for people with disabilities, was kind enough to let us film their brand new studio in Northside and interview their artists.
Directed by Brandon Faris, there were 6 of us who made up our team, and we all brought a different aspect of creativity to the table. My role was to take still shots…but I ended up getting to try my hand at some video as well. Brandon’s team participated in this challenge for the first time last year and their film was chosen as one of the top 12 finalists. All of the teams chosen as finalists get to go to the film festival in Toronto - which I hear is a blast. This year the challenge has grown substantially and there are over 100 teams competing from 12 different countries.
Although our film, titled “bright | simple”, did not make it to the finals this year, I definitely don’t regret the time and effort we put forth to make this film. It was so much fun spending time at Visionaries & Voices and getting to meet all of the new artists. The whole experience has been such a blast and an awesome opportunity…and the icing on the cake is that it was all in the name of art. To see the “bright | simple” video and some of Brandon’s other cool videos, click HERE to be directed to his blog .
Brandon filming an interview and Brandon & Donny way up there on the crane:
The outside of the new studio and the executive director of V&V, Victor Strunk:
Here are some of the talented artists:
A sampling of the artwork:
