As some of you may know…

About half a year ago I decided to take the time to pick up my camera and make more of an effort to exercise my creativity and invest my time into photography and videography. I had bought a Canon T6i from the store which up until that point had sat unused aside from the occasional photos on a vacation. I didn’t really know what shooting in RAW format was or anything about how to arrange a gallery or use Adobe Lightroom or even what all the different functions on the camera manipulated. I had a lot of learning to do. Since I made the decision to figure out how to use all these tools, I’ve found so much joy in connecting with my creativity and the amazing community of creators that have inspired me to push my content forward and evolve my style. However, growth doesn’t happen without a little discomfort and that has most recently come in the form of straying outside my normal photo subjects to something I have almost no experience with- photographing people.

“growth doesn’t happen without a little discomfort”

I really wasn’t sure how to get started with this. I was a bit nervous to reach out to my connections via social media and just randomly hit them with a “Hey can I take pictures of you so I can practice?” I didn’t know all the intricacies of how to make a person pose for pictures or where to go to showcase them in the best way. Other than the few YouTube videos I’d watched, I was in the dark on how to get started. However, I got a little luck when I saw the first ever photo-walk event pop up from a group called Bay Shooters on Instagram.

Bay Shooters is a community of Bay Area creatives, photographers, and videographers. The community is over 16 thousand people strong and the photo-walk event (the first of its kind for the group) was organized by Andrew Wille and Paul Clark. The idea behind the walk was to get all the followers of this community out from behind their digital identities and bring real people with a similar passion together to share it with one another and get some great photos along the way. The event consisted of a walk through the Financial District of San Francisco, starting at Pier 7 and ending at the local Icicles Ice Cream shop. Along the way, various models who volunteered to pose throughout the shoot would meet the group at designated locations that the organizers had picked to showcase them in the best way. When I parked and strolled up to the event, I was guessing that there would be 15 to 20 people tops. To my surprise, I was completely blown away by the huge group of people who had come together for this event. Over 40 people amassed together, clad in nametags with their Instagram usernames, had assembled at the mouth of the pier. There must’ve been well over $100,000 worth of photography firepower in the group alone.

When we began the actual walk and photography portions at each location, all the photographers were very friendly, considerate, and really showcased their unique methods to capture creative portraits. Watching how others went about getting angles, lighting, and direction of the models was incredibly insightful for me as a newbie to portraiture. In addition, as someone from the South Bay, it showcased some really cool locations in San Francisco that are super versatile for photography as they are just as good for portraiture as they are for moody urban shots.

All of the models were so incredibly friendly and provided their contact info should we have a desire to contact them in the future and I connected with some really great members of the community who have some stunning work. I’m counting down the days till the next meetup which has already been scheduled. If you’re seeking to join an awesome community of creators with all levels of skill, check out @bay.shooters on Instagram.

I want to send a huge thank you to all the members of the Bay Shooters team, the models, and the amazing photographers and videographers who turned up to get this newbie into shooting some portraits that I’m pretty psyched about. Can’t wait to get out and continue to push myself with more portraiture in the future.

To see more of the portraits I captured on the Bay Shooters photo-walk, check out the “Portraits” story highlight on my instagram profile.