The Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital Team @ a recent NAMI Walk in Los Angeles, CA (image by author)
My wife and I have been involved with an organization called the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) for well over a decade. As a career-long psychiatric nurse, her involvement has included coordination and collaboration on outpatient care for patients with mental illnesses, fund raising, event planning, and leading hundreds of UCLA healthcare workers, former patients, and patients’ families over the years on NAMI’s various community wellness events. This is a cause that she firmly believes in and willingly supports.
My involvement … as you might guess … has been narrowly focused on capturing some of NAMI’s public events in photographs and video when asked. NAMI’s Westside Los Angeles Chapter uses the photos and videos that I create in their public outreach campaigns. They get free coverage of their events and I get additional experience in photographing dynamic events in a wide variety of locations and lighting challenges. I’ve met a lot of people that I wouldn’t have ordinarily met had I not been involved in these events. Covering these events has also given me plenty of additional photographs that I can use in my event photography portfolio and has given me plenty of experience that I’m able to convert into actual paying clients.
In my mind, that’s the best kind of volunteerism. Your gifts, time, and energy are channeled into something that is positive, life-affirming, and community-based. The organizations you support are made a little more financially solvent because their budget isn’t being taxed unnecessarily, and the community benefits from the combination of your support to the organizations that help them in their struggles.
Participants at the May 2022 NAMI Westside LA Wellness Weekend, Santa Monica, CA (Image by author)
There is a lot of back and forth on photography websites and blogs that discusses the positives and negatives of photographers working for free. Volunteering for these kinds of organizations (especially if they’re non-profit) isn’t simply working for free. Volunteering is certainly a higher, more altruistic cause than simply shooting that band, model, or restaurant menu for free simply because you’re not able to convince those entities to pay you to do it. The benefits of volunteering have been well documented and so NAMI is an organization that I’m happy to continue to support in whatever small ways they need.
If you’re a newbie (or even an established) photographer, I encourage you to occasionally use your talents to assist similar organizations like I do with NAMI. You’ll be helping your community in ways you may never even fully know … and … you never know in which positive directions those donated hours will take you.