The Putnam Museum, in Davenport, Iowa, was celebrating their 150th anniversary. They chose to kick it off with our ONE by ONE Community Portrait™ experiences. They did a great job of publicizing it…newspaper, TV stations, radio, celebrity visits. A great job. So great that people came in droves! What was usually a 4 hour photo session still had a 2-hour line at the end of 4 hours. And that kept up for all 3 days!
Though he had planned for an entire section of their lobby wall to display the portraits, the overwhelming turnout forced Display Director Shawn Graves to McGyver some additional kiosks to display the images.
Everyone was encouraged to bring something of historic significance to them, which made the experience doubly interesting. Two of our favorites were Susan McPeters, who brought in her well-worn teddy bear. No wonder it was well-worn! She also brought in a photo that showed the teddy bear sitting next to her in her crib when she was brought home from the hospital as a baby.
Another favorite was John C. Anderson, man who came in with 2 sets of handcuffs!?! To explain, he also brought in a newspaper clipping telling about how he swam across the Mississippi River HANDCUFFED!
It was a long 3 days. 6 hours each day, for a total of 18 hours that our photographer, Tom Styrkowicz, was creating amazing portraits. There are no other photographers we know who could do that, and make every one of the images amazing.
