Umbrellas of Unity Photo Shoot

Umbrellas of Unity is an initiative, created by Ellen Pospishil and supported by the Westchester Community Opportunity Program, fostering unity in the face of the many divisive attacks against minorities. UoU wants to engage in a positive conversation on how we can all work together to foster compassion, openness and equality and resolve the hateful negative attitudes the divide us.

VisuaLiving offered a variety of creative services from creating their launch video, portrait photography, and interviews as well as a website and Facebook page. Sherman and I spent a Monday videotaping everyone who was in the video. Next we took individual portraits to use with their personal interviews. We have used these photos in various ways to promote Umbrellas of Unity. Toward the end of the day we gathered up all the employees with their umbrellas and went outside for a crowd picture. It was a wonderful experience bringing everyone together to smile and laugh and work together for this project. You can see a timelapse of this at the end of the launch video.

Stay tuned for our post about the shelter portraits — another very moving project.