A group of girls from the Mayatan Bilingual school in Copan Honduras show off their donated TOMS Shoes. For every pair purchased TOMS will donate a pair to a child in need. Megan Jae Riggs/Montana Kaimin

If you’ve ever wondered where that other pair of TOMS Shoes went after the promise that an additional pair would be donated, Copan, Honduras, is one of many places around the world where the shoes are being distributed. After TOMS founder Blake Mycoskie traveled to Argentina and noticed many children didn’t have shoes, he decided to start a company that would donate a pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair purchased under the motto “One For One.”

The Mayatan Bilingual school located in Copan received their donation after a nonprofit in Honduras called Caminando con Amor, which translates to Walking with Love, teamed up with TOMS to bring children at the Mayatan, as well as orphanages and surrounding villages, shoes. Children from the orphanages and villages often received their first pair of shoes ever when they got their TOMS Shoes. Originally, TOMS planned on only giving shoes to the Mayatan students who were on scholarship, but decided not to single any children out and gave shoes to every student who wanted a pair.

Since it was founded in 2006, TOMS has donated over 1 million shoes in more than 20 countries worldwide. 

meganjaepearl@gmail.com

Politics have never been a huge interest of mine and truthfully I find them very hard to understand, but I was eager for the opportunity to try my hand at shooting politicians.  I’ve seen some amazing shots from campaigns, where there is almost no one else around the candidate, or they are perfectly framed by a media swarm.  They looked calm, easy, and glamorus.  I was excited to take one of those pictures.

The reality of getting a nice clean candidate picture however was far more complicated.

Conveniently poltico.com listed where and when every candidate would be during the primary campaigning season.  I decided to begin my primary experience with a Jon Huntsman sign wave in downtown Concord.  With no idea what to expect I had my boyfriend drop me off before he went to work at eight in the morning.  That particular day’s high temperature was still below freezing and downtown was cold.  Though it didn’t take long to find the Huntsman supporters I was surprised that I didn’t see any other media around.

I chatted with a few Huntsman supporters as well as a few Ron Paul supporters (who seemed to appear everywhere) while I waited for the former Governor to show. All at once a black SUV stopped in the street and suddenly the media was there, more still shooters as well as videographers.  Huntsman moved easily through his supporters shaking hands.  It was happening so quickly I hardly knew what to so I just started shooting blindly, and of course froze (I was also adjusting to a new lens) as he passed right by me.  He amped up his supporters for a few short moments before quick comments to the media and fleeing back to his warm car.  He drove away followed by chants of “Join the Hunt! Join the Hunt!”  He was there for probably less than ten minutes, which was exactly how long it look the feeling to leave my fingers even though I was wearing gloves.

As overwhelmed as I was at the first event I was even less prepared for the next event where Newt Gingrich was addressing a small (but packed) room of people at the Holiday Inn.  Despite arriving over half an hour early the room was already filled with media and supporters.  It was tight but there was some room to move.  I stationed myself in a corner (like I always do at speech type things) and waited for the event to begin assuming I’d have the ability to move about the room during the speech.  However people kept piling in and before I  knew it I was stuck and barely able to see around another tall photographer.

Behind me was a family of actual New Hampshire voters, who wanted to listen to Gingrich.  I let the little girl stand in front of me, since I could see over her until she was eventually blocked by that tall photographer.  I did what I could from the angle I was at leaning around people and unable to get closer.  This was my first and one of my most mild media circuses.  As soon as the speech ended and the room began to clear he was swarmed with media.

That’s how long it took me to discover that the media had taken over events that were really supposed to be for the voters. Being shoved out of the way by press only created a greater distain in voters for the media.  I quickly became appalled at myself for contributing to the chaos of events.  I didn’t really need to be there.  No one was paying me to get photos of the candidates, but no one was stopping me for credentials either.  And I wasn’t the only one either, who was shooting just for fun.

While I’m glad I was able to be there, and have the experience of dealing with such a chaotic situation I found myself wishing that there was more control over the media, not something I would normally want.  Or (more importantly) that the media would have some respect for the voters–the people they were supposed to be serving and not be so freaking obnoxious.

While I still went to events armed with my camera and with the intention of getting pictures after I made my “you stupid other press giving us all a bad rap!” realization, I tried not to be part of the problem and hang back looking for images… working up to the front lines when I could be as unobtrusive to the voters as possible.  (I was probably still part of the problem.)

Ironically I found that sometimes when you hung back the images would come to you, and the situation became a lot less stressful.

Photos by Tim Goessman