The Starkey Hearing Foundation gives the gift of hearing to children and adults throughout the world. In a single day on their hearing missions, as many as 350 hearing impaired individuals are fitted with hearing aids and perceive sound for the first time…through my lens, I capture this moment of first perception, this moment of hope, literally an instant where life changes before me. Often, as the volume is turned up, it is like a switch turns on, eyes alight, tears flow, and we all understand that nothing will be the same from this point on.

I have joined the SHF as a photographer on missions to India, Malawi, South Africa, Egypt, Romania and just recently Haiti. Miley Cyrus and her mother, Tish, joined us on a late February mission to Institut Montfort, a school for the deaf, in Port au Prince. One of my portraits of them with a young Haitian boy they fitted was recently published in People Magazine. Here are a few moments from the fringes, away from the action, where I frequently find the “real” pictures.

To see more of my work with the Starkey Hearing Foundation, featured as a cover story in NEED magazine as well as Time.com, please look at the hearing around the world gallery on my site.

On a recent Sunday morning, I went to a children’s home in Haiti’s capital city, Port-au-Prince, and experienced true hunger and desperation. As young boys and girls picked tiny bits of bread from the cracks of wooden planks serving as tables and put the crumbs into their mouths, I felt extreme sadness and powerlessness over the situation before me. These little ones, over 50 children, live together in rubble under the watchful eye of a pastor who lost his wife in the devastating earthquake that shook their small island to it’s core. They eat, sleep and pray beneath a roof that feels as though collapse is imminent.

If you are interested in helping, World Wide Village, a Minnesota-based and Haiti-committed NGO, is doing real life-changing work in the lives of Haitians. Please donate by going to their website http://www.worldwidevillage.org/ and finding the “Meals for Faith in Action Home” on the donation page if you would like to have a direct impact on the boys and girls in the photographs. There is so much to be done.

My hope is that this work from my brief journey to Haiti elicits gratitude within all who see it. Gratitude for the bounty we enjoy, for our own homes, for the support of our parents, for personal and public cleanliness and safety, and for our good leadership. It is not perfect, nor will it ever be, but truth be told: We are the fortunate ones.

I intend on posting a more extensive selection from Haiti on my website in the near future.

This will be an ongoing conversation, one that regularly changes course and grows in new directions. A forum to share new work, stories from the road and insights…in relation to photography, life, and beyond. Shall we begin?

Mexican Vista, Oaxaca, December, 2010.

After many years shooting digitally, I have recently been working with Kodak negative films in my Mamiya 6 and slowing down. I simply love the richness, depth and color palette of these films, as well as the broad dynamic range offered by medium format. But, beyond mere aesthetics, I work and see in a very different manner. Film forces me to move at a more conscious pace, to really tune into the light, to have discipline and choose the moment among moments…never wasting a frame…trusting myself, and yet not knowing what I’ve got until I get back the processed film. Digital offers a myriad of benefits…so does film…

Haitian Orphan, Port au Prince, 2011.