Heber Vega is an editorial and humanitarian photographer. Originally from Chile, Heber has been based in northern Iraq since 2003. He specializes in documenting the work of humanitarian organizations and also in portraits of people through editorial photography. Heber works primarily as a freelance photographer, working on assignment. He has been commissioned by various organizations, and lately by magazines as well. He is on Twitter and Facebook. You've got to follow him.

Photography is for the soul. It is therapy for the heart.

Zack Arias: Yes, the well known photographer that we hear a lot of these days. I respect him deeply and consider him an online mentor to many of us. I appreciate his generosity, sharing his insights of this industry, and building a community. He once said: “Those of us who make a living with a camera aren't curing cancer”. Actually he’s said that many times… and I totally understand what he means. Sometimes we take everything in this field far too seriously.

Without taking his words too far out of context, I want to propose the idea that photography can heal our own souls and the hearts of others. Photography can help us rise up out of whatever circumstances we find ourselves.

I love photography; I always have. But I’m from Chile, and the Chile of my childhood was a third world country. I never had the necessary resources to own a camera. My best option was to borrow any that I found. Once I became an adult, I totally forgot about those childhood dreams of becoming a photographer. I moved to northern Iraq (Kurdistan) nearly 9 years ago, and began to live and experience life as a humanitarian (NGO) worker.

Kurdistan is an autonomous region filled with people who sadly know too well the meaning of words like pain, genocide, persecution, death, gas attacks, etc. These people have been under every imaginable hardship, yet have been able to survive. Resilience is what has formed their character as a nation and today that resilience has allowed them to create a new era filled with peace and hope, where they have become self-sustainable and finally respected as a nation. The experience of learning about the Kurds, just like experiences I had back in South America, introduced me to the stories of people and places worthy of filling hundreds of books. The frustration of coming across so many important but untold stories led me back to photography. It has become my tool for telling stories, for expression, for giving dignity and for giving (if only for a few minutes) freedom to people with chained souls.

Since then I’ve been pursuing this passion. I’ve been able to work for other NGOs and charities in Iraq, as well as my home country of Chile. Today I’m specializing in portraiture as a way to understand and reveal more of the souls of my subjects. A year or two ago, I had a dream of using photography for people trapped in difficult situations. Why? Because through the years I’ve witness the power and freedom that a camera can give, in the right hands.

This dream led to the creation of The ONE-SHOT Project. I regularly see the healing that can happen. I want to share some of those untold stories and give you the chance to experiment yourself, and perhaps to help empower someone else with the liberating
experience of owning a camera. The names below have been changed, but the stories are very real.

Felipe: I met him through the internet; he was desperately looking to own his first camera. I helped him, gave him some advice, but then I asked the important question “Why? Why a camera?”

His answer hit me. He said, “I’m a cop and I deal with a lot sh** every single day. I’ve been severely depressed for 2 years, and I need to focus on something else. I need to breathe; I need to find myself and spend some time alone.”

Within a few weeks, Felipe got his first camera and is doing much better. He’s taking weekends off and spending them making landscape images…

Muhammed: He is one of the children we have worked with through the ONE-SHOT Project. He’s an orphan and dealing with a lot of pain from his past. Muhammed took part in a photography workshop with us for a couple months, and during the closing ceremony he approached me to speak in private. “Am I good enough? Am I good at all? Did I do a good job? Am I good enough?” He was so insistent that I had a hard time answering back. Why? Because I knew he’d been labeled as a “problem” many times in his life. He struggled at school and was probably a difficult child to deal with. But you know what? Over the months of the workshop, he was one of the most talented students….

A camera, an opportunity to explore and express his curiosity, plus the therapy that comes with caring was all he needed to do well. That day I told him honestly “You are brilliant! You’re one of my best students. You did an incredible job!” Those words are still resonating with him today, in part because he’s so rarely heard those words.

Rasheed: He was a problematic child, more than anyone in his class. I thought it was going to be difficult to keep him in the class; he didn’t pay attention, he was constantly moving, and sometimes was aggressive with the other kids. After a few classes with a camera in his hands, he found focus. He was all about photography: creative like no one else, finding new angles and perspective that only an artist could see. A camera and the experience of making images has made him into a new child. He went from being the most problematic student to the one that arrived 30 minutes before each class, organizing the space so that everything would work well…

Ana: She’s a beautiful person, but after knowing her for a while you can tell that she’s been dealing with a lot of baggage from the past. Behind her warm, candid smile and all the friendship she’s able to share with whoever may happen to need company, she hides pain and problems with self-esteem. Photography for her has been huge. She now advocates for other people with the same problems, especially women. She’s been using her camera to empower people, and today she’s able to share her story knowing that it may help others as well. Step-by-step she is learning how valuable she is for the rest of us….

Myself: For years I wasn’t able to speak in public or a class. I was frightened about what other people would think of me. I was afraid to try new things; afraid they would become the next new failure in my life. I had very poor self-esteem and was incapable of believing that difficult things could be made possible. I was deathly afraid of meeting new people, engaging in conversation. In some ways this is still me, but more and more it describes the stage in life before using a camera broke down those walls.

We are all dealing with a lot stuff. That “stuff” is reflected in our daily lives, in our businesses and in our relationships with the rest of this world.

My call today is to grant you permission to allow your camera to lead you into new situations, and to push out the boundaries of your own life; to allow yourself to experiment with life in a new way. I know that cameras don’t talk, but our souls do. Take a moment (an hour, a day, a week), GO ALONE with your camera, and let it go free. Unleash the talent in your heart. Go somewhere else, maybe the other side of the world as in my case, and allow that camera to discover your surroundings. Allow that camera to discover your true self. Don’t let fear drive you. This is time to connect with ourselves, and to live in the moment with a new pair of eyes.

Travel, seek, analyze, observe, connect, admire the world around you. If you step out so far that fear fills you again, HIDE! But hide behind a viewfinder, until you gather the courage to try it all again. Keep your eyes there, gazing through a lens… and breathe. Breathe deeply.

Ask questions, ignite your curiosity, be gentle and keep doing this, day after day. Don’t worry about all the technical details; learn how to take one photo at a time. Then add something. Ask the next question of your subject; challenge yourself with a new technique or experience. Before you know it you will be immersed in this new world of frozen moments, a world of beautiful details, a world with a window to the souls of those you meet. Photography is a license to get rid of fear. Photography cures, not cancer, but our souls.

Be the next story on the list. Be who you really are!

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Today's guest post is by Don Giannatti. In 2011, PDN named him one of the best photography workshop instructors.If you didn't catch his CreativeLive programs, read on. You can find Don on Twitter, his websites: Lighting Essentials, Learn To Light, Now This Is Cool … and Project52. He is thoughtful, opinionated, controversial and funny. Check out Don's first guest post as well.

Portraits.

Photographs of people. People in spaces. People in environments. People in places where the light doesn’t cooperate.

People in studio settings where the photographer has ALL the control – and all the responsibility – to make the light the way it must be to capture the subject.

People.

One of the most interesting and fleeting of all photographic subjects, the portrait can show us a beauty unseen, a glimpse into the soul of the subject, or a simple smile that will last a lifetime.

Or more.

The good folks at UDEMY.com asked me to discuss portaiture on their education site and it became a full course in no time. That sort of thing happens to me when it comes to teaching.

I absolutely love to teach.

This course is for the beginners – the guy who wants to do more fashion like headshots or the gal who wants to make better location photographs. Intermediate photographers who are a bit uncomfortable with their strobes may also find some choice nuggets in the class.

I want to help photographers see exactly what I see when I am planning a portrait. The goal is to not only understand how the light works, but WHY the light works the way it does. Knowing why the light works is the best way to figure out where the light goes in any situation.

The class is currently at 5.5 hours and will grow to nearly 7 hours of video by the end of the year. I am planning new shoots for each month until January, 2013. I hope to incorporate some of the questions and comments of the students in the next four shoots.

We have also set up a Flickr page (currently invite only) where we will critique, offer suggestions, help deconstruct and have an open conversation with the students. In addition, UDEMY offers a way for live lectures and Q&A with the instructors. I plan on having a live show twice a month – two time slots so we can get involvement from folks who may be in way different time zones.

As I stated, the course is for beginners and early intermediate photographers. They should have a working knowledge of their cameras, and how to work the flash mechanically. There is a suggested gear list as well, but it is small and basic. No need to spend hundreds of dollars when simple gear can get the job done.

I am including the low-res version of the workbook as it currently stands. I expect it to nearly double as we answer questions, discover some new and interesting tricks, and add more shoots/demos/discussions to it. However, that workbook is for the students only.

Please feel free to download this low res workbook to see the images we are looking at in the course. If you are comfortable with the style, and would like to know how to repeat these lighting situations, this course is for you. If you are totally sure how to do these images, it is not the course for you. (I don’t want advanced shooters being disappointed. However, two pros who have reviewed it said they learned a couple of things … heh.)

Now understand that I am not a ‘video’ guy, and the small cameras are not broadcast quality. But we do have good video, and good sound, so the information is imparted … and that is the goal.

I hope you will take a look at the materials and if the course looks like something you would be interested in, check it out.

Tiffinbox readers get a discount of $20 off the regular price of $50. I have given Seshu 50 discounts for the readers of his blog. Simply follow the link or enter the code: “Tiffinbox” into the coupon code when enrolling.

I attended Don's workshop some years back in Boston. He knows his stuff and his love for teaching is very obvious. I do hope you will take advantage of the discount and sign up for his course.

This is a guest post by Jen May Pastores, a lifestyle photographer and portrait photographer based in Los Angeles, California.

There’s a window by my desk and outside are two elementary boys peeking in with their smiles eagerly anticipating my returning glance. “Teacher! Study? 4?” is the question I heard everyday from them. “Chaa, chaa,” I reply with a nodding yes. The boys run over to their friends practicing headstands on the side of the center’s building and bring them over to my window. “Can I study, too?” asks a new student. “I’d love that,” I say to him. I check my watch to see I have only a few minutes to prepare the cameras for the next class, so I quickly download the rest of the memory cards to my laptop and head upstairs to the classroom.

This was my typical afternoon at the Tiny Toones center in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Three times a day 15-20 students met me in a classroom to learn and practice photography with each class split among age groups from as young as 10 to 24-years-old. The majority of the youth barely knew English, so the center hired a local translator to communicate for me. Imagine trying to explain f-stops and shutter speed to a translator who was new at photography, then having her explain it to the class! It was a month-long experience with lots of picture drawing on the chalkboard and grand gestures, but it led to creating images and capturing stories that no language barriers could trap.

One of my students once asked me, “Do you take pictures and get money for it?” My class knew I was a photographer in Los Angeles, but they were curious as to why I was there teaching them for free. “Yes, people do pay me to take their pictures. Why do you think they’ll want do that?” I asked. “Because they want to remember something important or special. They want you to tell their story,” answered a student. “So why are you here?” they asked. “Because no one wanted me to tell their story this summer. And, I love teaching others that photography is more than making money. It’s about showing who we are and what we care about.”

Last summer, I ran into my first season where I had no weddings or sessions booked. I decided to look at it as a season of opportunity instead of as a failure. I had never considered visiting Cambodia before, but–as timing can work out perfectly–I was invited by Tiny Toones to offer a photography program at their center. The only thing asked was that I needed to provide everything, including cameras and my airfare, and do it all voluntarily. I looked into who the organization was and discovered that Tiny Toones uses the elements of Hip-Hop like break dancing and djing as creative tools to empower the youth, especially so they could live healthy lives apart from drugs and violence. I then realized that photography could be a complimentary, creative class to educate the youth.

My decision to go happened only a couple months before my program start date. A season with a seemingly bleak outlook turned into one of the busiest, but fulfilling season I’ve lived out so far. My main obstacle was raising funds to buy classroom supplies like digital cameras, memory cards, rechargeable batteries, and chargers for the batteries. This led me to announce my first workshop held in L.A. (which so happens to be the same place where the L.A. Smug group meets every month) where all proceeds went directly to my endeavor. I also reached out to industry professionals requesting donations and out of this Shootsac, Dane Sanders, and local camera stores and photo labs gave items for my workshop and program in Cambodia. In less than a month I was able to raise enough money to purchase 10 cameras, my airfare, and other necessities to main the program for a month.

After the completion of my program at Tiny Toones a gallery in Phnom Penh invited to exhibit the student’s work where 100% of proceeds from sold prints were donated to the center. This began the international tour of what is now known as, “The World Through Our Eyes.” Since last year, the exhibit traveled to Philadelphia, is currently in California, and has plans to continue in Hawaii this fall. None of this would have happened if I didn’t take advantage of an opportunity to give back, especially during a time when I could have easily given up.

The program covered the basics of photography such as composition, lighting and finding good backgrounds for portraits. More importantly, the workshop encouraged students to exercise their voice in telling their story and how they see the world around them. A series of photographs taken during that workshop, “The World Through Our Eyes” is a vibrant statement by youth countering stereotypes of artistic, emotional and urban desolation in the developing world.

To further read up on this cause and how you can help please visit http://cambodia.jenmayphotography.com. You can also watch a documentary on the site that interviews students who participated in the photography classes and find out about upcoming exhibits to see the photos in person.