Portraits of Hope

This week at I Heart Faces everyone is posting about their experiences using photography to give back to the community to bring attention to a wonderful group of photographers that are giving back by taking photos for families of children that are ill.

Please click the image above for more information. :)

However, considering that I've just recently started shooting for people other than my family members, I didn't think I had anything to add. But I'd forgotten something.

Last year I worked with a group called Portraits of Hope in my area. Their purpose was to try to get information out to the public about children from our area in the foster care system. These are children that are either in foster homes or in group homes (sadly, all but one of the kids I photographed lived in group homes.) All these kids are ones that need homes and forever families and the hope was that getting their faces out there would help find them homes.

Now, in order for me to do this I had to sign away my rights to the pictures I took because I was working with the foster program. A small thing when you remember that these kids don't have families but I cannot share them here. I can however, link to a news report about Portraits of Hope that was on the local TV station and in it you do see one of my pictures (the girl with the pretty beads in her hair--she was so sweet but shy. She liked trying to pose for me though, and that picture was the one she liked. :) ) You can see a couple of others in the background.

Heart and Soul: Portraits of Hope

Doing this was an experience I will never forget and one I'm glad I did. Of course, I don't get updates on the kids (privacy and all) but I truly hope that they've all found families now. If I didn't already have five kids, I'd probably have been trying to bring them home with me. They were all great kids.