Its that time of the year again, Schoolhouse Supplies drive to provide a year’s supply of necessities for kids whose families are struggling to keep a roof over their head and food on the table.  Every year, local Portland businesses sponsors a Portland city grade school and not only donates money but also their time to pack backpacks with the year’s school supplies and distribute these packs to the children on the first day of school.

Each year these business compete as to which teams can pack their backpacks in the fastest time.  I  have had the pleasure of photographing Webtrends that past couple year’s in their quest to be top dog.  This year, they made a respectable time of under 3 minutes.  Jim vowed to bring the whole IT department next year in order to win the top spot!  Stay tuned…

Click on the following link to view the video:  Webtrends for Tools for Schools

Webtrends Packing Up Tools for Schools

I was asked to photograph a terrific volunteer team from Webtrends packing up back packs to be delivered to Peninsula Elementary School.  Webtrends is sponsoring Peninsula through Schoolhouse Supplies Tools for School Program.

A large part of “on location” shooting is problem solving.  So what do you do when you have a back lit situation as is seen here with windows behind the subjects on the left of this image?  I could leave them in shadow but I would also miss the detail of the pencils stacked in the foreground.  I could use an on camera flash but I might risk either blowing out the pencils in the foreground or having the people be too dark in the background.  And neither of these solutions would give me the “natural” light look that I personally like.

Hmmm, what to do, what to do?  This is a perfect situation to use an off camera flash.  Look at the left edge of the image below to see  how this issue was resolved using an off camera strobe on a light stand.