Photography Volunteer

Help MhIST to improve mental health in Bolton through assisting our marketing efforts, helping us to create compelling photographic stories highlighting the great work that MhIST does and helping people to understand mental health better.

MhIST (Mental health Independent Support Team) delivers a range of community focussed mental health services such as counselling, Cognitive behavioural therapy, bereavement support groups, anxiety support groups, depression support groups and many other group-based support opportunities, to people in Bolton who experience poor mental health. We are urgently looking for a photographer who wishes use their photography skills to help us. Specifically, we want people to help us create a stock of photographs that make our organisation look appealing, attractive and appropriate. Importantly these photographs will need to be sensitive to confidentiality, often not showing faces and create a feeling / mood that matches how we operate.

We would like the volunteer to:

• Support and work with our CEO and Team leaders to visually plan our photography needs.
• Work with our social media volunteers to provide the right imagery.
• Create photography that can be used online as well as hard copy.
• Create exciting and attractive photographs and graphics for Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn posts.

The CEO of MhIST will provide assistance, guidelines and support to complete the work.

We are looking for an enthusiastic and committed individual with an eye for detail. It would be a benefit if you were;

• Familiar with manual photographic techniques, including exposure, shutter speed, aperture and ISO settings
• Possessed an understanding of digital photo file formats, saving, handling and online transfer and basic knowledge of photo file metadata.
• Have access to a digital SLR or high spec Bridge camera with minimum 1-inch sensor and minimum 16 megapixels (preferably 18pm to 24mp). Volunteers must provide their own equipment.
• Camera able to shoot in RAW or TIFF file formats
• High degree of proficiency with a camera.
• Candidates will be asked to provide samples of their work.

The volunteer should also have/be

• Creative mind
• Understanding of social media and communications
• Good personal relations skills
• Dynamic and adaptable
• Accuracy and attention to detail
• Understands the resource constraints of a small charity and is able to work with these.
• Open to feedback
• Good time-management and organisational skills
• The ability to communicate and network effectively.
• Planning and scheduling

There are a number of reasons why you might want to consider this role, the main ones being that it gives you the opportunity to play a part in helping to spread the word about MhIST locally and helping local people understand the difficulties of poor mental health among the local population. In short you have the potential to help MhIST change lives. Becoming a volunteer photographer is also a great way to build on experience and skills learnt within university or elsewhere, which then enables you to progress onto more senior roles or roles within other parts of a business.

Your input will shape how we develop mental health services for the people of Bolton in particular, as well as the wider general public. With your help we will be able to continue to work with our service users to create and develop the services that they want and need to keep them and their families, friends and carers mentally well. Of course the most important thing is to ensure that that the services that people use continue to be available and accessible to everyone in our community.

You would become part of our small, friendly team and you have the opportunity to use your time to make a real difference in difficult times. For those people that want we will be able to provide an employment reference. We will also be able to provide a variety of training related to our core activities. Of course you will have the opportunity to use your time to make a real difference.

Please contact us via Reach with any questions.