Dollar Portraits

The Lugarno Lions Club holds a Spring fair each year. I've been going because my car club holds their yearly concourse there among a bunch of other car clubs. It's a great day out and it really is held at a great time of the year as the weather in Sydney is just warming up enough to be comfortable in jeans or shorts and you know Summer is just around the corner.

I was there today with my Yashica Mat 124G taking portraits of a variety of people. There were all sorts of characters but I only took a few portraits. I just finished developing the roll and it's drying as I type. I'll get some scans done either tonight or tomorrow.

I wanted to thank Paul whose portrait I took. He donated $20 and as he said, 'It's for a good cause'. I also received a donation from Michael for $2. Those two donations along with the few portraits I need to donate for will take us to $30. Not a bad start.

For as long as I've been flushing out this project I never did think of or have the urge to go Googling for other projects of similar nature. I figured there will be others all with their own objectives and methods. As far as I was concerned it did not matter who is doing it or how they are doing it, I just knew it was a good idea and that there will be others.

Today I finally did go looking and found a few.

Thomas Hawk has started a project not long ago where he gives $2 to homeless people that ask him for money in return for a portrait. There are a few photographers that have taken to the idea and have started their own little project as a result. Justin Korn is one of them. He calls his project BW$P and has a few nice ones up already. There is also a Flickr group started by Thomas called $2 Dollar Portraits

I'm sure there have been many others over the years and many more to come. I will report on them as I find them. It's fantastic to see other photographers doing something good for their community. If you'd like to participate, it's as easy as grabbing a camera and clicking a shutter.

After developing this site for about a week I'm happy with what I have. Everything works as it should (fingers crossed) and I have all the features that I need. I've gone with a simple layout and look but it's pretty robust behind the scenes so I'm happy. I've been doing all my testing on a mirror site so you're not currently seeing all the functionality. We're going to need photos for that and some users I think. :) Please do report any bugs that you might come across. Either use the contact form or simply leave a comment here.

I have a nice gallery in place and a simple forum to kick things off. Coming soon there will be a newsletter system which I will use to send notification for my shoot locations so look out for that. In the mean time bookmark or add our RSS feed to keep up to date.

I can't imagine anyone reading this so I'll keep it short and welcome an empty room to Dollar Portraits. This site will be the home for a project I hope to see through to some positive end. I'm not entirely sure how far I will take this but with a bit of support, some zip ties and duct tape, I am certain to achieve a bit of success in my own little way. To find out more about this project please visit the about page.

Here we go...