Four years ago, Karen Alsop started The Christmas Wish Project with a goal to make Christmas happier for sick children in Australia. The project has since gone global, and this year it included volunteers, photographers and composite artists from all over the world. They all joined forces to create magical Christmas-inspired art and put a smile on children’s faces during this holiday season.
School photographer causes outrage after offering retouching services for eight-year-olds
by 33 Comments
Retouching portraits isn’t at all uncommon, and most photographers include it in their services. But if we talk about portraits of children, this becomes a rather sensitive topic. Journalist Sam Walker recently expressed her outrage with a school photographer who offered “basic and premium retouching” for annual school photos of eight-year-olds. The packages included blemish removal, teeth whitening, and evening skin tones.
Here are 11 great ideas for using your photography to give back to the community
by 3 Comments
If you are a photographer, you can use nothing but your skills to make a difference and make this world a better place. Isn’t that wonderful? If you’d like to give back to the community by using your photography, it may be a bit confusing at first. You may not know where to start. But Denae & Andrew will help you get started. In this video, they share 11 ideas for doing charity with photography.
10 tips for getting kids to smile naturally in photos – secrets from a children’s photographer
by 2 Comments
Everyone has been taught from birth how to get a kid to smile. You just tell them to say “cheese” and they respond with a nice big natural smile, right? Well, anyone that’s actually tried this can testify to how well it works (if you didn’t catch my sarcasm… it doesn’t). You end up with a photo of a kid with clenched teeth, a scrunched nose, and raised eyebrows. In this article, I’m going to give away all of my secrets that I’ve picked up as a professional children’s photographer for getting nice, natural smiles out of children.
Photographer shares posing and editing tips for this gorgeous candid photo of children
by 1 Comment
You know those moments when you aimlessly scroll through Facebook feed, and all of a sudden, a gorgeous photo captures your attention? It happened to me with this beautiful photo by Amy Weiblinger of Lainey Lou Photography. It got me smiling and I was curious to learn how she got it. So, I contacted Amy, and she shared her settings with us, along with some valuable tips for directing and editing photos of children.
Photographer turns bullied kids into Avengers in this empowering project
by 1 Comment
We’ve seen photographer Josh Rossi turn kids into superheroes before. When his three-year-old daughter received hateful comments after he photographed her as Wonder Woman, the photographer decided to use his creativity to send a message against bullying. He gathered fifteen kids who have been bullied and turned them into Avengers for a photo shoot. This project hasn’t only resulted in epic images, but it has also empowered the kids who have been facing bullying and hatred on a daily basis.
Photographer receives death threats after images suggesting animal abuse go viral
by 58 Comments
They say to never work with children or animals. Personally, though, I rather enjoy working with animals in the studio, and I know many photographers who adore working with children. Mixing the two, though, is often fraught with risk, especially for children who aren’t used to being around animals. This is what photographer Mercer Harris is discovering after announcing his Easter sessions to Facebook this week.
The photographer has now gone on to receive death threats both online and over the phone. The photographs of what appear to be clear examples of animal abuse at the hands of these children and captured by Harris has naturally upset a lot of people.
Photographers create magical scenes, bringing Christmas spirit to sick children across Australia
by 1 Comment
Last year, The Christmas Wish Project put a smile on faces of sick children in Monash Children’s Hospital in Australia. This year, Karen Alsop and her team did it for children across Australia. With the help of photography, Photoshop and of course, Santa Claus, The heART Project made the holidays happier for children from 56 families.
This year, the project is bigger, and it involved a week of traveling across the country, along with hours of shooting and post-processing. Karen has shared the photos and more details with DIYP, and I’m happy to announce that the project will grow even bigger next year – it goes global!
How magic ponies can help to keep kids and pets under control in front of your camera
by Leave a Comment
They say to never work with children or animals, but as a photographer, it sometimes can’t be helped. I avoid kids at all cost, preferring animals. Photographer, Paul Monaghan, though, is happy to photograph kids, as he recently did for some school portraits. Of course, photographing a bunch of little kids isn’t easy.
They have short attention spans and get distracted easily. They don’t want to have to sit and look at a camera pretending to enjoy themselves. So, Paul enlisted the help of his “magic pony”. It’s a great technique to get the attention of those you want to face the camera, so DIYP had a chat with Paul about it.
12 photographers unite to create a fantasy photo book and comfort sick children
by 2 Comments
We’ve featured the heart-warming, beautiful projects of The heART Project before. This time, 12 photographers came together to create a wonderful photo storybook, The Get Well Tree. It contains 14 photos that look like they came straight out of a fairy tale. But the main characters are real-life girls, two little heroes.
Evie Gleeson (5) and Indy Dawes (4) met two and a half years ago in a hospital where they were undergoing childhood cancer treatment. Over this time, they became close friends, and they both managed to fight the illness. Now they want to encourage other sick children through their story. So, they posed for the photos that became a part of the Get Well Tree book. We share these amazing photos with you, together with the video and the story.
FIND THIS INTERESTING? SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS!