SFP hosts free portrait sessions for the holidays

The MSU School of Film and Photography (SFP) was packed with families of all sizes on Saturday, Dec. 4, as they hosted their 11th annual MSU Portrait Day.

Portrait Day is an opportunity for families to have professional grade, free, quality portraits taken when they otherwise wouldn’t have the means to pay for them. 46 families had portraits taken at this year’s event, thanks to the students in the photo program’s Advanced Lighting class, who organized the event.

Interim SFP Director Alexis Pike described the process as “a well-oiled machine,” and said the faculty and students have gotten a good handle on how to have the event run as efficiently as possible after over a decade of experience hosting. “Our photo studio is one of the nicest in the state of Montana. It’s a great opportunity to share with our community,” Pike said.

Portrait Day is the major project for students in Advanced Lighting, and work for the event begins early in the semester, nearly three months ahead of time. The list of necessary preparations is quite exhaustive, and includes contacting and raising funds from local businesses and community groups, designing graphics for posters and t-shirts to promote the event, decorating and preparing equipment (just to name a few). On the day itself, students rotate between various jobs — photographing, editing, making prints for families and working the check-in booth, for example. “It couldn’t happen without the students,” Pike said. “They organize it, raise donations, put on the event, it’s student-centric. It’s about what they’re able to pull together. It always amazes me.”

Erin Brush, a student in the class, said she enjoyed her experience. “It’s been good. It’s always a good experience to work within a group and pull an event together,” Brush said. Brush also spoke about the community service aspect of the project. “I think that service learning projects are a super important aspect in college because it instills a service mindset for when they go into the world. Makes you think about serving the community and how to best do it,” Brush said.

The call to serve the community during this time of year was not only heard by the SFP. Funding for the event came primarily from generous local donors and the students raised over $2,400, exceeding their initial goal of $1,000. Using the donations, the students were able to give each attending family a $40 gift card to the Great Rocky Mountain Toy Company.

It’s hard to imagine that students working Portrait Day didn’t garner some sense of fulfillment from the wide, genuine smiles on the families who were able to have their picture taken in the studio.