Press Release: Photographers Will Donate 10% of All Proceeds to Charitable Organizations

Best Friends Animal Society. National Park Foundation. Habitat For Humanity. These are just a few of the charitable organizations receiving donations from D.C. Area photographers Lauren Udwari and Josh Marans, who launched Photos That Give on August 23, 2010.

“Our mission is to donate 10% of all photo proceeds to charitable organizations that mean something to us,” says Lauren Udwari, who fell in love with photography on a two month trip to Patagonia, Chile in 2009. She returned with dozens of photos of street dogs. Two months and one photography exhibit later, she had raised over $1000 for Vets Without Borders.

Josh Marans describes how the idea for Photos That Give was born: “The idea came to us as we were about to embark on a two month road trip across the country in June. We were trying to figure out a way to make a living doing what we love, while simultaneously giving back to the organizations we love. That’s how Photos That Give started.”

Photos That Give already has a strong presence online. In addition to their website, you’ll find them blogging regularly on their blog, posting on their Facebook page, and tweeting on Twitter. “It’s important to connect with your audience on as many levels as possible. The more outreach we do, the more sales we make, and the more we are able to donate” explains Josh.

Photos That Give aims to expand beyond the Internet this Fall. Look for their booth at the D.C. Eastern Market Flea Market in October. They’re also working to coordinate a Photo Exhibit and make their prints available at various stores and boutiques downtown.

For more information about Photos That Give, contact the photographers at photosthatgive@gmail.com or 301-531-GIVE.

a photo funny

courtesy of toothpaste for dinner comic site

Good News All Around

The website launched this morning and we're receiving awesome feedback from family, friends, and people who've heard about PTG through the grapevine. It comes to a point where you just have to put it out there and hope for the best - Lauren and I are both writers and wordsmiths (and slightly anal?), so we'd go back and forth, changing the verbiage, adding a comma here and there all hours of the day (and night - in fact, I do my best thinking in the shower), but now we're happy with the finished product. And we hope you are too. We're mostly excited to see which photo gets purchased first (Lauren swears it'll be one of mine, but she never gives herself enough credit) and to which charity the first donation will go.

I'm also excited because my new camera body arrived early this morning from our favorite camera store, B&H Photo and Video in NYC. If you don't know why I had to order a new camera see post below re: Smash & Grab. I've got a great new lens, a serviceable camera body, and am feeling inspired to take some new shots to add to our collection. Hopefully there'll be something on there you'd like to see hanging on your wall.

Ollie

Ollie has proven to be quite the subject for me this weekend, while I'm in charge of this little four-month-old golden doodle. His expressions are priceless, he poses with such patience and poise, and he's only peed in the house once.

BURST!

I'm not convinced that even the greatest photographers can will inspiration; creativity is not a readily available resource. Ideas can slowly creep to the surface (hibernating long enough to cause a bit of worry) or they can BURST! from your brain in an adrenaline-producing manner.

My inspiration came to me in burst form last night, as I walked to the Quarry-house in Silver Spring to meet a friend for beer before seeing The Kids Are All Right. The sky was gray and the streets wet from a recent rain. I was walking quickly toward my destination, head down, noticing a stream of fluorescent light from one of the stores I walked by.

It was a Barbershop. A black man sat in the chair, eyes closed, knees falling in opposite directions as the Barber shaved the graying hair off his head. That's when the burst happened. The scene was so appealing to me; almost moving. It was such an interesting, every-day representation of my city's culture. One man getting a routine hair cut, another doing his work to get by, and not another soul to crowd the frame. I wanted to preserve the image to share with someone else. And that, I think, is what photography is all about.

And so I would like to make a photographic series and call it "Barbershop." Although the subject is self-explanatory, I think it will provide me with many interesting sub-subjects: barbers, customers, kids, interesting shop spaces (walls, ceilings, floors), hair cutting supplies, and on and on and on.

Josh likes the idea. Of course this helps because he is my partner, and I know his perspective and endless supply of good ideas will enhance the project. Together we can put together an interesting collection of shots.

But can we do it? Can we capture not only what we're seeing but what we're feeling? Practice makes perfect, right? We're going for it.

Smash & Grab

This is a term I had never heard until someone smashed two of my truck windows overnight in Tracy, CA (a suburb of San Fran) and snatched up my camera, 3 lenses, and all accompanying accessories. Of course, I could have avoided this by not leaving $2500+ worth of camera gear in the truck while we were sleeping soundly in our Fairfield Inn hotel room. Luckily we had both of our laptops and all of Lauren's camera gear inside with us. A slight downer to an otherwise successful cross-country adventure.

I'll let Lauren write an overview in a later post because she's better at that kind of stuff, but for now I'll just say the trip was amazing. We drove over 14,000 miles during a 6-week, coast-to-coast trip which included two border crossings into Canada, nearly two dozen National Parks, a number of State Parks (and RV Parks for that matter), getting pulled over twice (with two verbal warnings), and way too much McDonald's and Subway.

The good news is that I had recently backed up my photos to my laptop before my camera was stolen, so Lauren and I will be adding a number of our x-country shots to the Photos That Give library over the next couple of days. Although I'm currently camera-less, we're committed to getting PTG up and running within the next week or two which includes finalizing a logo, adding a few more charities, and making the last few tweaks to the website.

We're looking forward to the launch and hope our most recent photos will inspire everyone to explore the diverse landscapes of our country.