Snapshot: Taking an Interest – portrait and artistic photography in Portland, OR

We’re still winding down after a busy day at the Holiday Cravings Shopping Party, and we’ll have photos from the event soon… but today we’re feeling like it’s high time for a snapshot.

We had the chance to see Springfield School District Superintendent Nancy Golden in action, while shooting on-location in Springfield several weeks ago. She has a reputation for being an active and forward-thinking educator: not only does she bring other educators together, but she also makes sure to stay in touch and relate with the students. More about the work that she and other educators are doing to strengthen public schools is in the latest issue of Education Northwest Magazine.

(and yes, you can book with us for photojournalistic promotional and event photography… we shoot in a variety of situations, for people from all walks of life. Just e-mail or call us to get the details!)

Enko Photography – event, portrait, and artistic photographers in Portland, Oregon

Monday Snapshot: Making Portland (and the world) Better – event and artistic photography in Portland, OR

We’re coming off of Portland Fashion Week’s closing night of all-eco-friendly clothing designers, heading towards Blog Action Day, getting familiar with even more of the awesome local businesses in Portland, and all of this has us thinking about making the world a little bit better than it is. Issues like climate change, sustainable practices, and building a thriving local community are important to a lot of us, but we don’t always feel that we can do a lot to help with that. It’s easy to buy the big-box products, to do the one-stop shopping thing, to say that we’re too busy to do more, and to even neglect ourselves because other things seem more “important.”

It’s easy to forget that social change isn’t just a matter of some Important Person making a grand decree: it’s a series of small steps from a lot of different people. Your choice to switch to renewable power, or get rid of your excess junk on Freecycle instead of tossing it in the trash, or even shop at the local farmer’s market may not seem like a life-altering decision, but when one person makes that choice, others follow. One person becomes several, becomes dozens, hundreds, thousands… and that’s when we start to see the benefits.

So, with that in mind, today’s Snapshot is just a reminder that, no matter how small we feel, we can effect change and have a positive effect on the people and community around us. This is a young girl–smaller than a lot of us who are reading this–who took time out of her day on a drizzly Saturday, to join her family in doing some community cleanup at Lane Elementary School in SE Portland. In just a few short hours, this girl, and a few dozen volunteers from Portland own Education Northwest, cleaned up the school and its grounds, and made a HUGE difference for all the kids who go to school there.

 

Enko Photography – event, portrait, and artistic photographers in Portland, Oregon