 Team Reports |
A Photo SurpriseDoug Cunningham — Cobourg, ON I was team leader for Sleeping Children Around the World [SCAW] on this year’s Mumbai bedkit distribution. As such, I was the official photographer. This entailed finding a location with an interesting backdrop, supervising the setting up of the bedkit, and adjusting my camera to clearly show the children’s faces, the bedkit, and the label showing the name of you, the donors. Now that we’ve gone digital, we download the camera memory card to a laptop computer each evening for backup and burn a disk of the photos. This way we have them in at least three places to protect against loss or damage. On our eighth distribution, we went to Abernath in the morning to distribute one hundred and fifty bedkits. As usual, I looked for a photo location that would allow for an organized flow of the children. They would have to arrive at the site, register, get a set of clothing, go to a dressing room to change for the photo, and then move along to receive their bedkits that you, our donors, so generously provided.
The location was at a site operated by a manufacturing association and consisted of a building with offices and washrooms with a lot at the rear which was prepared for the distribution. The Rotary Club had put bamboo posts into the ground and covered three-quarters of the area with various-coloured nylon to offer protection from the sun for the children and the volunteers. I usually like to take my pictures outside and in the sun if possible but I found this was not practical here so I chose a location under the canopy that would allow the best movement of the children. That evening when I downloaded the pictures to the computer, I got a surprise. Every photo I had taken that morning was tinted red. The children’s faces, the clothes, and even the ground around the pictures had a red hue. What I had not taken into consideration was the fact that the nylon covering the area was mostly red. The sun shining on it had given everything that red tint. What a scare! If these 150 pictures couldn’t be used, SCAW would have to come up with $4,500 to take new pictures for 150 donors. I am told that our computer will correct the problem — I certainly hope so. The pictures are sharp and you can see everything clearly: the children’s faces, the labels, and the bedkit items. There is just this red hue over everything.
If you happen to be a recipient of one of the photos from Abernath and a correction or adjustment was not possible, I hope I’ve explained the reason. I certainly learned a lesson and I assure you that the children in the pictures did receive their bedkits. The happy child who received your donation and the happy volunteer who was there to give it, thank you from the bottom of our hearts — even though we may all be a little red in the face. |
