Eva & Cyrus’ Photo Project
Cyrus McEachern collaborated with Eva Markvoort to take these beautiful photos we are using for her organ donation campaign. Now you can buy these images as art cards in the USA & Canada! The cards are 5 x7 and printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper.
Photos of Eva by Cyrus McEachern
Cyrus on Photographing Eva
Cyrus with his illustrated photo of Eva.
I’ve been known to change hobbies and interests almost as frequently as my underwear, but photography’s been a favourite of mine for the past few years. I made the switch from point-and-shoots to an SLR about 3 years ago, took an intro to photoshop class at a community college, and have spent thousands of hours toying on photoshop since. In my first year of medical school, one of the cardiology professors hosted an annual heart-themed photo contest titled ‘Heartfelt images’.
One of my ideas was to do a portrait and overlay an x-ray of a heart over the chest. I had gotten to know Eva over some lunches at UBC and I knew she liked photography and modelling, so I asked her to be my model – she enthusiastically obliged. When she showed up to my place she realized she had her face-paints in her car, and we figured we could use them somehow. Without much of an idea of what we were doing (it was my first-ever portrait shoot), Eva painted a heart on her chest in the mirror with an image from google as her guide. I took hundreds of photos that afternoon, but the one with her arms over her head stood out to me like none other. I stayed up all night editing it, and came up with the image that has been featured in many newspapers, magazines, and of course Eva’s blog.
We were so happy with how it turned out that we did a series of images in the same style: organ transplant recipients with their new organs painted on their bodies (including Eva and her second pair of lungs). These images also turned out very well, and are going to be used in an ad campaign by BC Transplant, aimed at recruiting as many new organ donors as possible. This whole experience has given me hope that I can combine my love of photography and training as a physician to create a unique career in which I can make large-scale changes in health care issues through art. That is my dream 
peace and love,
~cy
