Project Tassel: Helping Out One Portrait At A Time

I live in the Philippines. Not everyone here can afford going to school, let alone having a decent graduation portrait. Last month a friend contacted me and told me she was looking for a photographer for her project – free graduation pictures to the less fortunate.

When I heard about this Project I immediately contacted a photographer friend, Jay De Guzman, and my girlfriend, Jubcy Sebastian to also help out with the project.

What is Project Tassel?

Project Tassel aims to empower students from less fortunate communities by providing them with a complete graduation photo package—which includes hair, makeup and a photo shoot—all for free! Graduation photos symbolize an important milestone, both for the parents and their child, and serve as a tangible thing that shows one of the greatest accomplishments a student can achieve. When parents see graduation photos, they can’t help but be proud.

[The graduation photo] is like a pat on the back of parents for working hard to get their children to where they want to be and for the kids who studied hard to get a step closer to where they want to be in the future. We place importance on that and don’t want to deprive them of a simple graduation picture. That’s why Project Tassel was created.

We traveled to Pandi, Bulacan around 3 hours away from the main city to visit the school and do the photoshoot.

 

For the shoot, I brought 3 of my studio strobes, 2 softboxes, a reflector, background stand and a muslin cloth.

All the graduating children had there make up and hair done by professionals.

 

Here is how the day looked like:

The Team for Batch 2o15 of project tassel:

• Yuki Tansengco, founder of Project Tassel.
• Photographers: Laya Gerlock (Me) and Jay Jay De Guzman;
• Make- up artist: Ham Viloria
• Hairstyling: Alex of Blo Blow Dry Bar
• Beautiful assistant: Jubcy Sebastian (the girlfriend)

On their actual graduation day, Yuki went back to the school and gave the students printed copies of their portraits. We also gave the school the digital files so they can use them in publications.