Last year, in 2021, we volunteered at the Cuenca Soup Kitchen by offering professional portraits of all the kids they help, to give to their parents. We came back to Cuenca this year just in time to do it again. The Cuenca Soup Kitchen has grown to support some 250 families, and we ended up photographing 197 children this year. Each child was photographed, and the parents are receiving a print, as well as an electronic version of each portrait, for their phones or social media.

Above are a few of the staff that helped put this program together. In the middle is Des and Bill, two of the three main organizers of the group. Pam (lower-left) and Joseph (middle-left) were amazingly skilled at getting the kids attention while Burt was photographing them.

A photo studio was set up in the living room of Cuenca Soup Kitchen. A Christmas tree was used as a backdrop, and a variety of chairs to help accommodate children of different heights. Professional lighting was used to help assure results that both the parents and kids would be proud of. Above is a small sampling of some of the portraits being provided to the parents.

Some of the children were too young to sit alone, so their parents joined them for the portrait. In a few cases, the children were thrilled to have their picture taken, but they wanted to sit with their siblings (center).

Shooting portraits of children is tough, as kids have short attention spans. Also, some did not grow up around mobile camera phones, so are not natural hams in front of a camera. The center photo above was such an example of what needed to be done to pose those kids. Though we never really got a Big Smile from this child, she did finally settle down for a pleasant mother-and-child photo.

While Burt was busy with the formal portraits, Evelyn roamed the various rooms and captured impromptu photos of the families and staff, as well as capturing the family portraits around the larger Christmas tree (top row plus bottom-center), that will be distributed by WhatsApp or email to the families. Each child in the program also received a Christmas gift from their wish list (bottom-left and bottom-right). The gifts varied from clothes, toys, a riding car, even a chess board.

Franny Hogg, another volunteer, set up a “temporary tattoo” station for the children and it was a major hit. Many kids proudly showed off their new tattoos. At one point, Fran had to do “sidewalk” duty, as one girl missed getting the tattoo the first time through, and she was outside on the sidewalk near tears.

This was two long and tiring days of working with the families, followed by more than a week of intensive editing to create images that the parents will hopefully treasure for years. We finish here with a few more photos of the staff that helped put this all together. Some of the volunteers include Kiki, Sandy, Evelyn, Suzie, Sharyn, and Alberto, the security guard.