2020 threw us all a real curveball. No one could have anticipated a global pandemic raging across the world. For me, the impact was swift. In between my work at the hospital and larger commercial shoots, a lot of my day to day work was photographing events. But just like that, *POOF*, events were cancelled and the mid-summer surge here in Houston had most businesses re-evaluating budgets and their workforce.

MD Anderson HomePageMD Anderson's commitment to patient safety is communicated effectively through use of our PPE portrait project on the website homepage

The hospital was no different. Our jobs changed overnight. We were sent home and teams were instructed to begin creating strategies around a remote workforce. As an optimist, it was an exciting time. As a manager it was - and continues to be - a unique challenge to engage staff and maintain the open and transparent communication we've always relied on.

The photography team has risen to the challenged and prospered. At the outset of the pandemic, our requests for photography naturally dropped sharply. Days filled with my running from one end of the hospital to the other were suddenly empty. But i could never sit still. The first thing I did was create a project: i wanted to highlight our institutions response to the pandemic and measures we took to keep our patients safe. Our patient population is the most immunocompromised population in Texas, so we took our PPE seriously. I wanted to highlight that in photos.

Modeled after our marketing brand photography style, we setup a portrait station in a common area and shot every staff member that walked by. It was a huge hit! The project has been used by teams across the institution to help communicate our commitment to patient safety.

We photographed this project back in May 2020. Since then, it's been used in internal communications pieces, public relations projects, and in marketing materials.