FOTO FUNDRAISER.

I bought my baby - Pentax K10D - about 3 years ago when I had just started dating John, right before our major 2 month backpacking trip around Australia and New Zealand. Images make me burst inside; I could stare at certain colors and patterns and compositions for hours and feel like there's an internal bubbling of warmth rising up. But unlike the camera, there's something about wet paint and tactile paper and globby crayons that turns my senses into the way God intended me to experience them. Unfortunately, I don't always have time (or sometimes the courage) to get out the paints and so my camera has become my quick expression. I always found it satisfying but it's just not the same as hours of touching and manipulating mediums with my physical hands. So in the past, I mostly put photography to the side as my mere springboard to other creative endeavors. Until I went to the Himalayas.


There's something divinely arranged about the stillness of the people in the mountain ranges of Nepal. And the instant connections I made with them because of my black accessory! There were hundreds and hundreds of photo-ops and really, my camera was my life-saver up there. I love to hike, but maybe a day's worth of hiking is plenty good for me. Ten days of trekking is really not something I would get paid to do; John - yes, me - not really. But with my camera at hand and the interactions I built with that black thing and the ethnic Tibetans, I had some exhilarating moments during those sweaty achy uphill days. And the stillness. Sigh. Yes, the stillness in them did something to my shutters that I had never experienced before with photography. I found and caught images that I didn't know that an amateur photographer could go near. And I guess that's when I started valuing my baby a little more.


But since coming back from the Himalayas, I haven't done a whole lot to nurture this find. Being pregnant and all, I don't exactly want to be holding another heavy thing on top of my bulging belly, or twisting and climbing places to get a better shot. UNTIL. Our great friends who we've known for about 3 years in Korea asked me to do their maternity shots. Beautiful belly. Beautiful couple. And of course I said yes! The heat, the hours, the manipulating of my pregnant body to find different angles, the hours and hours of editing and experimenting - they all seemed like a time-stopper. When I lose track of time, I know it's because of something I love. I loved the process so incredibly much that this 'project' was the spark to more creative usages with my camera. More portrait photography. Three other families are lined up... So I thought, why not invest the hours of photographing and editing as a FUNDRAISER?


So I'm making the official announcement: that during June, July, and August (the wonderfully humid summertime of Korea), I'm taking photos for anyone (while I still can before my real baby arrives in Sept) to RAISE FUNDS for our big move to Nepal in Dec 2010. Our hope is to raise enough for our set-up costs and airplane tickets to Nepal! So if you or anyone you know in Korea is interested (maternity, engagements, weddings, newborn, family, fashion, or strange arrangements of groups shots with your friends, whatever the occasion!), please contact me at soyon@mountainchild.org. I'm leaving it up to YOU to set the price, so whatever you can afford, it would be an honor!

It is a sweet thing when passions align, isn't it? Now for some wet paint...

You can view my photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/soyonamary/.