Teen Face: Sonoma Academy junior shoots pics to benefit juvenile diabetes research

Cristian Isbrandtsen is taking a passion for photography and using it for the good of others.

“Shooting for a Cause,” is the name of the nonprofit he formed to take photos of people at social occasions to generate money for charity.

Over the past year, Cristian has chronicled attendees of fashion shows, theater productions, private parties and winery events to raise funds, mostly for his chosen cause, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

Since the summer of 2013, Cristian has been taking portraits of people at events as varied as the Sonoma International Film Festival, the Sonoma Valley Education’s Foundation’s Red and White Ball, and Fashion in the Vineyards, an event for the Girls and Boys Club of Sonoma Valley,

He’ll set up a booth with a backdrop and take a couple’s photo for a $10 donation, crop and post it on his website cristianowenisbrandtsen.smugmug.com where his subjects can access and save it. Or sometimes he’s paid a fee to take photos of the whole event.

He estimates he’s raised $2,000 for charities.

“It’s time-consuming, the downloading and editing process of all the photos,” he said, but “it’s not too hard.”

“I really enjoy doing photography,” he said, “growing up, I always loved taking photos.”

Now a junior at Sonoma Academy, the private high school in Santa Rosa, he said he was inspired by a premiere that he went to last year at Pixar Studios in Emeryville, an opening for the film “Monsters University.”

The event was sponsored by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

“I was touched by the stories presented at the event,” he said, and the positive impact the foundation has made.

“I wanted to find a way to give back to charity through photography,” he said.

One of Cristian’s teachers, Nancy Morales, said she isn’t surprised by his altruistic endeavor.

“He goes out of his way all the ?time for myself, for other students,” she said of her stellar Spanish class pupil. “He’s thoughtful, kind, powerful, positive, supper funny, exuberant.”

Not only does he have a 4.3 grade point average and the best in his Spanish class, Cristian is also an “All Star” at Sonoma Academy, a student ambassador serving at school open houses for prospective students and their parents.

He also is photo editor for the yearbook and tutors his peers in Spanish and math. In addition to his proficiency in Spanish, he’s starting Mandarin lessons.

“”I’d like to probably major in business,” he said explaining that knowledge of Mandarin is helpful wherever he ends up going to college. He also would like to do a travel program to Shanghai or Beijing, or perhaps study abroad in Spain.

He’s already been on a road trip to check out colleges in Southern California and liked Pepperdine University, Claremont McKenna, and Chapman, but has only just started his search.

He’s thinking about a profession in business or engineering, and although he wants to keep up his photography, Cristian doesn’t envision it as his main vocation.

“It’s really competitive,” he said. “I’d like to do it in my free time and continue it in college.”

You can reach Staff Writer Clark Mason at 521-5214 or clark.mason@pressdemocrat.com