Kyle Hepp

March 6, 2010

I was really impressed with the response to the photo print fundraiser for Chile. I never cease to be amazed by how generous my family is, how kind my friends, and what huge hearts the readers of this blog have. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you, from Chile. Here’s a video of me donating the amount we raised so far, and we should have some more donations coming in over the next couple of days (if you’ve bought an Etsy print, and haven’t Paypaled the money yet, as soon as I receive payment I will ship your photo and then add that amount to the donation. If you already paid, your photo has been ordered and you should have it within two weeks!). As long as people continue buying prints and this country continues to need help, I will continue donating the money.

As you can tell, between being smack in the middle of full on wedding season, one of my best friends getting married this weekend, shipping out prints for the earthquake fundraiser and taking video footage of Santiago, I haven’t had much time to sleep. I’m slightly incoherent in the video, but you get the point — we raised a lot of money in less than three days and I’m really happy. Goodnight.

Thank you from Slarco on Vimeo.

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March 5, 2010

Hi guys. Just wanted to say a quick thank you as I run out the door for Emily’s rehearsal.

We have raised almost enough money to build one entire Techo para Chile house (similar to Habitat for Humanity). I am feel so blessed to know such generous people, who generally care about helping fellow man kind.

If you’d like to donate through me, please go ahead and buy yourself a nice little print — 100% of the proceeds go to the earthquake victims. If you would rather just donate money through paypal, use my email address: kylehepp@gmail.com and I will deposit directly to the Telethon. And if you would rather help in some other way, you’ll find links in my past three posts about where and how you can help. Just help. Chile needs you.

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March 4, 2010

My friend Lucho Plaza’s dad is the Alcalde (Mayor) of the comuna (neighborhood) of Cerro Navia here in Santiago. Cerro Navia isn’t the poorest comuna in the city, but I’m not going to beat around the bush — it’s pretty poor. I told Lucho about the video project I am trying to do for some big non-Chilean charities, so his dad gave us permission to walk around and talk to the people who had been hit by the earthquake. Driving in absolutely shocked me. In Estacion Central, there are still small neat and orderly piles of rubble lining the streets, and every one or two blocks you’ll find a house that’s roped off with “danger” warnings because it’s on the verge of collapse, or you’ll see a house that has no roof. In Cerro Navia, every other house is nearly destroyed.

Lucho is an architect and had been to the comuna the day before. He is volunteering his services to go around door to door and basically give people advice on which walls are still strong enough to keep holding up their houses and which ones need to be completely rebuilt from scratch. And then he authorizes the permits they need from the municipality to do the re-construction, or in many cases, the demolition.

We walked around for a couple of hours. He told people how much of their house to knock down. I have never felt so helpless in my life. Because I was with Lucho and another guy from the municipality, people thought we could help them. Everyone needed something — help from the social assistant, rebuilding their houses, food, or just a space to cook it in — and there was so little we could do. The worst was when we met people whose life — their house and all their earthly possessions — is now nothing more than a pile of rubble. And they’d ask, “How am I supposed to re-build? Where will I get the money for that? Everything I have is gone.”

Watch the videos. The first is a house that survived the actual earthquake, but then caught fire immediately afterward when a spark from a telephone pole nearby landed on it. The second is a family of 8 whose entire house collapsed. Today they started knocking down the rest of the remaining structure so that the government can come put up “viviendas,” or a type of temporary makeshift housing. I believe they said that the viviendas would be around 2×4 meters. They’re made of two by fours and look pretty not sturdy to me, especially with these strong aftershocks that we’ve been feeling. But then again, this family is currently living in a couple of tents. Something is better than nothing.

More Earthquake Damage in Chile from Kyle Hepp on Vimeo.

Earthquake damage in Chile from Kyle Hepp on Vimeo.

After seeing these videos, I urge you — donate now. You don’t have to do it through me, but do it in any way that you can. Because if you are sitting here reading this blog post, trust me, you’re better off than 100% of the people that I talked to today, by far.

If you do want to donate through me, I added pictures of Chile to my Etsy store. 100% of all proceeds will be donated to the Telethon on Friday that’s raising money for the victims, to help rebuild the parts of the country that have been devastated. For those of you in Europe/Australia/anywhere else, if you’d like, I will sell you the high resolution digital image for the same price as the prints. I know that is generally frowned upon in the photography world, but if it helps raise money for the cause, I really don’t care if someone makes 10,000 copies of a boat in Chiloe.

Donate or help in any way that you moves you. Just do it. Fellow human beings are suffering, they need your help.

Also, if you are still looking for missing people, the expat community is doing there best to help find anyone they can over at the All Chile forums. And Gina has Red Cross international and national donation info up at her blog. So if you have donated yet, find a way to do so.

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March 2, 2010

(video via Marmotitas)

Currently my inbox is overwhelmed with emails (sorry if I haven’t replied to you yet, I will this weekend!) asking about the Earthquake in Chile. There’s one repeating theme — people want to know how they can help. So I started a little Etsy shop selling prints of some of our travel photographs. 100% of the profit on any photograph purchased between now and 8pm EST Friday will be donated directly to the Telethon on Friday being held to benefit Earthquake victims and help rebuilding.

If you are in the U.S. can you order directly off my Etsy site. For now, European readers will have to donate on their own — I suggest Red Cross. And if you’re in Chile, I’m sure you’re already inundated with places you can help, but if not, check out Leigh’s blog list of where you can donate/volunteer.

If you’re a client and you’d like to purchase a print of one of your own wedding photos for the same price as listed on the Etsy stores, that can be arranged — please contact me directly. However, those photos will not be delivered until July when I come back from the U.S.

So if you are looking for a way to help, buy a pretty picture! And if there are any of my photos that you’ve seen and would rather buy a print of, let me know, and I’ll add it to the Etsy shop. Don’t forget to buy before Friday, 8pm EST.

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I am currently trying to take some videos for a charity relief effort, but in the mean time I thought I’d share a couple of them here. Basically I just walked around Estacion Central today shooting the general state of the streets. I have been in Vitacura/Las Condes/Providencia since the earthquake, and I can tell you that they look nothing like this. For a little context, Estacion Central is not one of the wealthier neighborhoods in Santiago (though not the poorest either. Not by a long shot). And Vitacura/Las Condes/Providencia are all considered to be “barrios altos,” or wealthier neighborhoods (direct translation is “high neighborhoods because the way Santiago grew was that the richer you are, the higher up into the mountains you are).

Anyway. All the barrios altos that I’ve seen have barely shown signs of earthquake damage. I mean, you would really have to be looking for it to know that such a calamity just happened. I’m not sure if this is because construction is higher quality on the houses and buildings so nothing fell down, or if the neighborhood municipality has already came around and cleaned up all the rubble. It may be a combination of both. Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against rich people. In fact, I very much aspire to be one of them some day. I’m just saying that Chile is one of most unequal countries in the world and this disaster has really highlighted the difference between the Haves and the Have Nots. AKA, the Haves still have houses and the Haves Nots…not so much.

Haiti = poor = destroyed. Concepcion (South of Chile) = not as poor as Haiti = destroyed, but not even closed to destroyed as Haiti. Santiago = not poor = not destroyed. Well, some of the poorer neighborhoods of the city were hit much harder, but still. Simple math. Poverty and inequality blow.

Earthquake in Chile: Damage from Kyle Hepp on Vimeo.

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February 28, 2010

Yesterday, after all the earthquake madness happening all over Chile that I saw on TV, we stayed inside pretty much all day. At one point we ventured out to buy pop and water, but the only store that was open had a line around the block and the gas station, which was also open, but had nothing left — no beverages of any kind, and no food whatsoever, even though they only sell candy! On our street, there’s some kind of plumbing problem so there are rivers of water running on either sides of the sidewalk, but it’s not flooded or anything. By the looks of it, a couple of our neighbors lost their roofs, but the walls are still standing. Most of the places near us are mechanic shops or big warehouses, not residential, so we haven’t seen too many people to ask.

We had a wedding to attend last night so that was the first time we ventured out. I was surprised to see that the streets looked significantly — not Port Au Prince like. At all. In fact, if I hadn’t felt the 8.8 level earthquake less than 24 hours before, I wouldn’t have known anything happened. Sure, there were a few buildings that had rubble at their base from chunks of the facade that had fallen off, but we drove from our house, almost at the end of the red metro line, to metro Los Heroes before getting on the highway, and we didn’t see a single building that looked structurally damaged. I mean, obviously Santiago has areas that were hit very hard, but dude, this city was built to last.

The news has made things in Santiago look worse than they really are. Concepcion and further South where the epicenter hit is where the real damage is. But up here, life is shockingly normal. At the wedding last night, I would guess probably 120/160 people were in attendance because a lot of the major highways leading into Santiago are still blocked so people from out of town couldn’t get in. But it wasn’t like nobody came. The ceremony was moved to outdoors since the church they were going to have it at had crumbled enough of the structure to be unsafe. But the event center for the reception was totally intact. The real chaos is in the supermarkets where people are panicking and stocking up on everything.

But anyway. Speaking of normal. Here’s the latest family session we did. Aimee, Felipe, and Evan, are visiting from the U.S. Didn’t they pick the perfect moment?!? I guess the one benefit of the earthquake is that their flight is delayed since the airport is closed at the moment. Seba and I photographed their wedding in Chile last year, so we were happy to head out to Maitencillo and get some family portraits of them too! I think Aimee has done almost every single session that I have to offer. And Felipe’s mom found us the apartment that we’re going to buy. Best. Clients. EVER.

When Aimee and Felipe came down for the wedding, Evan was too little to come down, but now he’s a very mature 6 years old and he’s a world traveler so we finally got to meet him. I was a little nervous because 6 year old boys can be a total handful, but in the end, I couldn’t even believe how awesome Evan was in front of the camera. Aimee, you are seriously a supermom — it is rare to meet a kid like Evan that’s so well behaved and so much fun!

EWWWW, kissing is GROSS!!!!

Seba always captures the most amazing silhouettes.

Afterwards, Evan was rewarded for his good behavior with a plastic toy gun. I didn’t realize that it really is that easy to make a six year old boy that incredibly happy!

And just because I couldn’t decide on which one of these was my favorite from the session — I adore them all — I made this cool little doohicky so you can see each one

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February 27, 2010

Holy shit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That was the scariest thing I’ve ever experienced. And we’re on the ground floor in a house — people up higher in tall buildings got rocked way more than we did.

I’m posting to let everyone know that we are ok. Thank you for all the concerned emails. Our whole family is good and I’ve heard from most of my friends who are also good.

So here’s what went down. I’ve been averaging about 3-4 hours of sleep a night this week. This morning we were supposed to have a session at 7:30am when the some came up! So I decided to do something unthinkably out of character, and go to bed before midnight. Of course, that means that I woke up around 2:30am feeling like I had just taken a nap and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I was awake for the whole thing.

At first, I thought it was just a tremor. Honestly, up until this point, I’ve slept through almost all of the tremors that have been strong enough to be felt. But the tremor felt strong so I started trying to wake up Seba.

“Seba, Seba…Seba, Seba…Seba!”

He wasn’t waking up, and all of a sudden the earthquake was so strong that the house was completely rocking and I heard cement and glass smashing to the ground. That was when I started to realize it wasn’t a tremor.

“Seba!!! ES UNO GRANDE!!!” or, “Seba!!! IT’S A BIG ONE!!!”

At that point we both got out of bed to try and go out into the patio so the house wouldn’t collapse on our heads. The fan had fallen over though and the cord was blocking the door, along with a piece of furniture that had shifted. Standing there, I felt like there was an ocean moving under the Earth, I could feel the ground move me as if I were riding a wave. We couldn’t get out the door so Seba shouted at me to get under a doorframe. Me, being the prepared little Gringa that I am, had just happened to read an Earthquake survival guide after Haiti. In it, it said that almost all the people who had been found alive were crouched next to large pieces of furniture, like the bed or a dresser, because that way when the ceiling falls, it hits the furniture and then a little triangle pocket of space is created next to it. So yelled back, “No! Remember the guide?”

Then it stopped. And Seba, being the prepared little Chilean that he is, found his flashlight, with batteries in it and everything, and turned it on right away. We ran to Seba’s parents room, and the Earth was still moving, but now it was like surfing a much smaller wave. Actually, I just felt really drunk, like I was about to fall over.

His parents were fine, just shaken. Seba’s Mom and I sat on the bed, while Seba and his Dad went upstairs to check on Tia Pacha, who lives with us. They walked away with the flashlight, leaving us in complete darkness, because at this point, the entire city of Santiago was without power. We could hear their feet crunching over broken glass through the kitchen and the living room, and at that moment, I got really scared. Up until that point pure adrenaline had kicked in and I’d felt very little fear. But sitting there alone in the dark and silence — that was terrifying.

The silence lasted for maybe two minutes, but I realized how odd of a sound that was. Santiago is never completely silent, there are always cars driving by, honking, busses passing, drunk people on the streets. The two minutes without those comforting noises felt like forever. And then one ambulance’s cries broke the silence. And then another, and another. We could hear cars moving again and sirens, a lot of sirens.

Seba and his Dad came back. We sat there with his parents a little while longer and then decided to try and go back to sleep. Laying there, aftershocks kept coming and some of them felt pretty big, and lasted quite a while. About two hours (or maybe less?) after the quake hit, the power came back on. Since we still weren’t sleeping, we got back up to go see if the news was on. MAD kudos to TVN. All the other channels were dead, but they had a newsgirl who looked like she had just rolled out of bed, no makeup on, wearing a crooked shirt, broadcasting the news as it came in. At first it was reassuring. One dead. Two dead. Five dead. We didn’t think it was that bad. They didn’t have their full video teams on the street and everything was still dark in most places, but eventually images started coming in — a church entirely caved in, a highway that fell. Thank goodness this happened at night and that people weren’t out on the streets driving. The number of casualties would have been far higher.

On CNN they say that the Earthquake was an 8.8 and that 122 people are dead. I hope that number doesn’t get much higher.

Aside from mad kudos to TVN, mad kudos to the entire country of Chile! Santiago has been in chaos, but at least it’s been a relatively organized chaos. The power came back on quickly. President Bachelet was up and in the main offices of the earthquake experts by the time the news was broadcasting, and less than three hours after the quake hit, she was in a meeting with her disaster relief team. Roads are now safe(r) to transit. I feel like we’re in good hands here.

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February 25, 2010

The other day, someone innocently asked, “What happened to your knees?”

That question catches me off guard every time. The accident was probably the biggest thing that ever happened to me in terms of major life markers so I forget that not everybody I’ve met recently knows about it. That’s weird to me. When I go back home and see people that I was close to back in the day, and they don’t know, I want to get up and shout, “Do you know what happened to me? I could have died! Can’t you FEEL how different life is is?” But life really isn’t that different. Not for anyone but me, not even for Seba.

For me though, the accident crosses my mind at least once a day. I’m not saying I sit at home and dwell on it or walking around like a loony thanking my lucky stars and screaming. It’s just always there in the back of my mind — wondering if I’ll ever be able to drive by that corner without seeing myself laying on the street bleeding, wondering if I’ll have knee problems when I’m older, wondering if I’ll ever get skinny again, wondering if the allergic reaction that started with the bandages on my knees will ever stop, wondering if I’ll ever go back to not knowing how good it feels to exist and keep existing.

The funny thing, is that I don’t even think my scars are that bad. If I saw them on somebody else’s knees, I think I would assume they had a bicycle or rollerblading accident. I don’t mind people asking though. I like seeing the look on people’s faces when I tell them how far in the air I flew. And I like being reminded that I’m lucky to be alive. I’m lucky to have fallen into a career as a wedding photographer, which I absolutely love. I’m lucky to be married to a guy that I’m crazy about. I’m lucky to be able to travel. I’m lucky, I really am.

Alright, I’m done being a cornball. Carry on.

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February 23, 2010

On Sunday I turned the big — two six? 26 isn’t actually that big. It’s not a major milestone of anything, but I feel the same way I did when the clock hit midnight on December 31st 2009 — this year is already so exciting and holds so much promise. This year is so much less runned over-y and way more free-Amazon-cruis-y. I like that.

We went out to Algarrobo to celebrate the day with some of our bestest friends in life who made the drive out on a lazy Sunday afternoon to help me blow out candles. I felt so blessed. I always do — it’s just rare that I have so many of my blessings in one spot.

Anyway, I’ll stop being a giant queso-ball now. I’ll put up a real blog post later on today with pictures from an awesome wedding we photographed at the Enoteca on Cerro San Cristobal Saturday, so check back!

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February 18, 2010

“You are the typical american girl who never could find love in america and so had to go south of the border to find it. Chilean men treat women like gringos did back in the 1800s. I am sure you never had success with love in america because you are a prude, shy, insecure etc.. and by dating someone and then marrying them didn’t allow these faults to come to the surface. Running to South america can’t erase your issues as much as you put the chilean men on a pedastle. Now to be fair you may have found a nice chilean man but look at tht statistics. Chilean men and machismo allows for a high rate of spousal abuse which is literally ignored and accepted by law enforcement. When the honeymoon is over look out for his hand coming at you when you have kids and he demands that you cook and serve him. The other thing is chilean men are notorius for cheating on theire women so please use protection for your sake.”

I continue to get random weirdo comments, mostly on my old blog. If there is any shred of coherence/rational argument and the commenter isn’t anonymous, I’ll email back. For the most part though, I ignore them. But sometimes they’re too good to ignore. I think I may start posting the funniest ones for blog enjoyment. Like the above. It comes from an old group blog, though any comments made over at the former JMCS no longer show up on these posts.. Since yesterday was our three year wedding anniversary. I guess I should apparently be preparing myself for Seba’s hand to start coming at me any day. Now might be a good time to enroll in a self defense class, or at the very least, sleep with my pepper spray under my pillow.

Actually, when I went back to link to that post, I found another funny comment. The topic of Chilean men is apparently a goldmine.

** IMPORTANT FEEDBACK ** Being an Australian Chilean (a chilean born in chile who grew up in Australia) I feel there is a lot of misconceptions out there..

Firstly, chilean really don’t want to spend their lives with a “gringa” they just want to have a sexual relationship with her (from experience). Chilean men don’t really have a liking of their ways just their different looks (try a blonde).

I have a friend from chile who just arrived in australia about a year ago. He is happy with his chilean-australian girlfriend but wants to try a “gringa” in the same way someone wants to drive a different model car.

We chilean men can never really be happy with a “gringa” because they are generally as dry and critically indifferent as their male counterparts. “gringa” women are generally better at grabbing our attention (being blonde helps) but don’t understand us in the long term. White women are as cool to “hang out with” as a dry leaf branch in death valley.

You are some disillusioned ladies out there..

Oh anonymous internet commenters, how dull our lives would be without you. What are some of the most ridiculous comments you’ve ever gotten on your blog?

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