A Student’s Point of View: Volunteering at the 2019 Special Olympics

Hey everyone, this is Ashley Crichton writing again for RIT Photo! For this post, I will be writing about my experiences shooting portraits at the New York State Special Olympics Winter Games! This is my second year photographing at this event and it has been amazingly rewarding both times. Here is a picture of the wonderful team I worked with our faculty mentor Clay Patrick McBride. The other students include Jessica Dils, Sara Collins, and Chase Gunner.

The day of the event, we went to the Valley Sports Complex bright and early at 8 am. We set up a lighting system that let us do two different backgrounds by just pivoting where the photographer stood. It was an interesting way to get different looking pictures without having to completely change the lights. It was also a lot of fun to interact with the athletes, learning their story and how they became involved in the Special Olympics. Most of them were very excited to be photographed and would show off their on-ice poses for the portraits. It was fun to get their personalities to come through in the photos and show who these athletes were.

Most of these athletes will never have access to a professional photographer. The photographs we made were really great and so to be able to make them feel special with our photography put us all in a good mood. A lot of the time, my work as an advertising photographer is purely making pretty pictures, not making pictures empowering the subjects as much as these did. I love making work like this and feeling like it was actually making a difference in someone’s life. Here are some of the final images:

At around 3 pm, we finished photographing the athletes at figure skating. We got a break until around 4:30, and then we moved over Riverside Convention center to photograph group portraits at the Closing Ceremonies. This setup was a lot easier for me to do. We created the exact same setup last year and knew what I was doing. At the event, we would take the portraits and then send them immediately to a little printer so everyone could take home a 4×6 print of themselves.

The biggest challenge about this part of the day was keeping our energy up after having worked a very long day already. We had to fix printing problems on the fly with a long line waiting to have their photo taken. It was popular and we had to make sure people felt comfortable while being photographed. It was challenging but these are skills I know I will use in the future. It was excited to be pushing myself and my work

At Closing Ceremonies, an entire wall displayed the printed images that had been shot during all the day’s events. A lot of the portraits my team shot were up there and it was exciting to see people’s reactions to our work. One of the parents of an athlete I photographed in the morning came up to me and told me how much it meant to them to have that photo of their daughter. It was so rewarding to see the real impact of our work.

All around it was an amazing day. I was so happy to have been a part of. It is a lot of fun to work with my friends on a meaningful project outside of school. I loved being a part of the larger team and seeing how all the pieces fit together. This is definitely something I want to be a part of next year
and an experience I hope all RIT photo students take part in.

Ashley Crichton is a third year advertisting photography student.