PERSONAL PROJECT
The Parenthood Shift
This is a project I’ve felt called to do for almost three years, combining my love of documenting families in tangible, photographic memories and diving deep into hearing others’ personal and unique life experiences. This project is focused on parents (with no gender restrictions!) who have decided to lean into parenting and away from their careers. I’m overjoyed that you’ve found your way here and hope you are excited to apply to participate and/or share this with someone you know who would love to be a part of it! I invite you to read on and learn more!
Who is this project for?
Are you a parent (woman, man, or gender fluid/non-identifying parent) in the WNY community (Buffalo and immediate surrounding suburbs) who has become a full-time stay at home parent or who is currently scaled back in your career after welcoming child(ren) into your life? Whether you chose this path willingly or if you had no other option but to go this route, I welcome you to share your experience and your unique why for leaving your job/career or scaling back in work to experience the shift of working less to provide more care for your child(ren). I invite you to share how this transition effected you, what you have learned, what you have struggled with, what your day-to-day is like and what you have loved the most.
After hearing more about your story, it would be my biggest honor to photograph you with your child(ren), doing your parent thing, documenting genuine moments of this time in your life. My hope is that sharing images with you that capture the frozen-in-time moments of the life you are currently living will show you just how beautiful, important and precious this time and journey you are on truly is. Even if that beauty is hard to see on the more challenging days.
At the end of this project, my vision is to have enough interviews and photos to fill the walls of an entire room or gallery space. I yearn to give parents a place to open up and share their stories, to be seen and to be heard and to shed light on this transition that happens in many peoples lives after welcoming a child into this world. In having a gallery night, I’m hoping I can bring parents from a wide array of backgrounds and experiences together in one room to mingle and connect, ultimately aiming to provide feelings of solidarity and community, as well as inspiration for others who might be on a different path.
What qualifications are needed to participate?
Please review the following points to ensure you might be a good fit for this project prior to completing the application below.
Must be a CURRENT stay-at-home parent or parent who has scaled back in their career. For the purpose of this project I’m looking for parents who have paused their careers to take care of their children full-time or who have scaled back to more of a part-time or occasional work schedule. This project is focused on parents who CURRENTLY spend most of their days caring for and spending time with their child(ren).
Must be a full-time resident of WNY. I truly want this to be about families in our community so the invitation to participate will be restricted to those who live in Buffalo, NY and the immediate surrounding towns, villages, suburbs on a full-time basis. I will not be accepting applicants who live outside of this area.
An initial meeting is required. Whether we meet in person for coffee or share a phone/zoom call during your little one’s nap or after school drop off, I’d like to invite you to share a conversation where you can tell me more about your why, what your day-to-day is like, your experience on this parenting path so far and even what you anticipate or look forward to next! As a fellow parent, I know time is precious, so we will aim to keep this initial meeting around 60-90 minutes in length.
A photo session with you and your child(ren). This is the fun part, and likely why you’re here! Ideally this session would be done in your home or a place you spend the most time with your child(ren). This will be documentary in nature, with the focus on YOU and your interaction with your children. For the purpose of this session, significant others or other family members will NOT be photographed, though they can be present if you’d feel more comfortable with them there. If you feel it will be a distraction for the kiddos, I’d prefer it just be us. The photo session will be up to 90 minutes in duration.
As a thank you for participating in this project, I will provide you at least TEN high resolution, digital images of you and your little one(s) to cherish for all the years to come, at absolutely no cost to you! The images provided to you will be images I select as the strongest photos from your session, and images I will hopefully have featured in a final collection with other parent images from this project. If photo prints or additional images are requested, I’d be happy to fulfill those requests at an additional cost, with proceeds benefiting a local charity.
Consent for image and story sharing is required. Since I am looking to share your story and images from your session, consent for sharing images is required for this project. Possible locations for image and story sharing would include: social media, my website, the news, and hopefully a printed book and/or hanging in a gallery exhibition. However, I am open to hearing and discussing restrictions and will NEVER share or discuss with anyone any images or part of your story without your written approval first. I value transparency and respect people’s privacy, so please rest assured that nothing will be shared without you knowing about it first.
Lastly, I kindly ask for your patience with me on this! This is a personal project that I’m feeling very pulled to do, however I do still have client work and am also a mom of two, watching my kiddos by day and working by night! So it is highly likely that images will not be edited right away. For this reason, I will not be sharing preview images and I cannot give a turnaround timeframe of when you might see photos from the photography session. When the final image selection and editing is complete, I will provide you a gallery link for viewing. Yay!
Entry Submission Form
ENTRY DEADLINE: FRIDAY, MARCH 15, 2024
Every reply in the questionnaire below is a stepping stone in the conversations I hope that are to come over the course of this project. Your time and willingness to share this information with me today is an essential first step in the selection process. So whether it’s with your morning coffee or after you’ve put the kids to bed in the evening, please be sure to set aside a minimum of 20-30 uninterrupted minutes to complete this entry form.
I value your unique perspective and experience on this parenthood journey and thank you in advance for your time in completing this to the best of your ability and desires. If you do not feel comfortable sharing something at this time, please write in as such and we can discuss later if you are selected as a participant. However, the more complete this form is now, the better I can assess if you will be a good fit for this project.
While not every entry submission may be selected, I will be reviewing each submission thoroughly and will respond either way to let you know if selected within 72 hours. Regardless, all of the information you share with me today will remain private and will not be shared with anyone unless you have given written approval for me to do so for the final project collection.
If you have any questions, feel free to email me first at info@dawnmgibsonphotography.com. And if you have an interest in hearing my own personal story before openly sharing your own, I invite you to read this post.
Thank you so much for your time!!