i’d like to introduce you to robin: a friend, client and former schoolmate who i’ve had the pleasure of photographing multiple times over the last few years. robin took my DSLR bootcamp just this january and i can’t tell you how impressed and proud of her i am! she was already very handy with her camera, and with just a little help from me has taken her photography to another level and used her skill to make a difference in the world. i can’t imagine a more satisfying feeling for her (or for me as the teacher)! robin is an incredible human being and i’m honored to have her guest blog for me about her trip earlier this month. XOXO, Helen
Recently I was able to spend a week in Uganda- my first time to Africa. I work in the field of international adoption (when I’m not obsessively clicking pictures of my own two children) and have traveled to several parts of the world, visiting thousands of children in living orphanages.
This trip to Uganda was a bit unique for me though. It was my first big trip with my big girl camera. Photography is hugely important to me in my personal life, as well as in my professional life. It is often a single photograph that changes a prospective adoptive family’s lives forever. In international adoption, when a prospective child is referred to a waiting family, they are often asked to make a decision about moving forward with that child’s adoption based on just a few, or even a single picture (along with some medical information). That single picture will be framed in a prominent place in their home, on their private blog, emailed to friends and family, send to an international adoption clinic for medical review, in their future child’s life book, and dozens of other places. In some international adoption programs, this photograph is often the first photograph that has ever been taken of the child and often becomes a lifelong treasure. That photograph can become the ultimate prized possession.
Uganda is a country of huge dichotomies. Gorgeous landscape, including Lake Victoria (the largest lake in Africa) and the River Nile, and the friendliest and most welcoming people I have ever met. But also destitute poverty and a staggering number of children who have lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS, malaria, TB, maternal mortality, conflict, and/or malnutrition, among other things.
I sought to capture the real Uganda, as I experienced it. Spending time with amazing and gorgeous children but also witnessing a life that is so drastically different than most of us living the U.S. It is often the personalities of the people and the land, alongside the needs of the children living without families, that draws prospective adoptive parents to a particular country. Hopefully I am able to inspire at least one family to travel to Uganda and provide a safe, loving and permanent family for a child in need of adoption.
