AP Article Leads to "Helping Husbands and Fathers" Photo Project

by Tom Johnson on Apr 1, 2009
categories: technical-writing • web-design

Many of you may know I was recently featured in an AP article calling attention to the deadbeat role that many husbands and fathers play in keeping up the house and helping with the kids.

Actually, although I was featured, it was more of an example of the positive possibilities about the role husbands and fathers could play, not the negative.

Here are a few newspapers I was featured in:

• The Northwestern
• Alabama (al.com)
• The Island Packet
• Tennessean
• Courier Post Online
• Independent Tribune
• Oregon Live
• AOL.com
• Courier Journal

That's just the first page of Google. You can see more if you like.

Anyway, the number of newspapers is not really the point. The AP article was syndicated. Since then, I've received at least a dozen inquiries from people who opened their newspaper and happened to see photos of me helping my children get ready for church.

Last week another AP photographer contacted me with a new project proposal. In an attempt to raise awareness of helpful fathers, he wants to create a multimedia project titled "Helping Husbands and Fathers."

The project will attempt to portray, in as many nations and cultures as possible, husbands and fathers lending a helping hand with chores, laundry, garbage, bug disposal, dinner, dishes, sweeping, vacuuming, gardening, and countless other duties that fathers so easily neglect to the detriment of their wives and children.

The project will include a wall calendar, displaying a photo each month of a father candidly helping out around the house. (The months will focus on different encouraged actions.) Additionally, the photos will be collected in an overprint size coffee-table book, which fathers can conveniently flip through while watching sports or lying on the couch.

A web collage, set to music (probably Chariots of Fire), will continuously loop through a series of photos on a new website, helpinghusbandsandfathers.com (not yet launched). Post-it notes, pens, and other image-laden paraphernalia will come out of the project as well. And a book on tape or podcast (the decision hasn't been made yet) will include a series of interviews with fathers and the struggles they've overcome in their journey to become helpful.

To kick off the project, the photographer will be staying several days at my house to catch me in candid moments when I happen to be helping out. I will be the first stop in a three-month long photo journey that will take him around the world!

It's an exciting project to be involved in. I only hope I can set the pace for his expectations.

If you would like to participate in the project, either by contributing photos or by volunteering to have a photographer stop by your house, please leave a comment below.

Post April 1 Note: The AP article is true, but the whole "Helping Husbands and Fathers" photo project was an April Fool's day joke.