Several years ago the local food bank (The Welcome Centre, Huddersfield) put out a plea - they needed photos to populate their website, for stakeholders, social media and general external comms use. Brilliantly they had several offers, and as they liked my positive style (and they’d seen me around when I’ve been dropping food in over the years!) they asked if I’d help them out with what I’m calling a “skills donation”.

A skills donation is a way to help a local charity achieve their goals by using your “special set of skills “ (sorry, Taken quote - couldn’t resist!) which would usually have cost them a pretty penny or two. I would encourage you to think about how you could perhaps give a few hours a month, or just a one off “help” to a local charity - you really could make a huge difference in your community.

I’ve been in several times doing a wide variety of photos including team headshots, lots of “day to day what we do” images and bits and bobs of video. As Lockdown hit, we’d just started getting the large sponsors in to have promo shoots - I reckon it’s a nice little thank you from the foodbank and has the added bonus that the sponsors can use the fab photos in their promotional activities too - everyone wins!

Lockdown has a huge impact on every one in lots of ways - and The Welcome Centre has had to operate on a skeleton staff whilst providing record amounts of food packages. They are truly fabulous folk. It also meant that as I am “non essential” I couldn’t go in to photograph or film - so when they asked for a video to thank all the people who’ve supported them in sending out record amounts of food parcels, I put my thinking cap on.

I already have all the footage and stills I’ve created for their website, press releases and previous video’s - but this had to be special. Grounded in our new pandemic reality, and showing the humans who have been working at a phenomenal pace to make sure other humans can eat. I came up with something straightforward and simple to shoot which would utilise only things they already had - and their phone.

After a bit of direction and a couple of emails we were on! I set up an easy way for them to transfer the shots and I edited them to music, take a look below.

There are so many worthy charities out there who could really use a Skills Donation - think what a help we could be...