Costumes In The Wetlands
It’s hard to believe it, but there was a time when there was photo meet up every weekend. Sometimes even during the week. the community was so large and vibrant that it would naturally attract more and more people every month.
It was getting so common, that even people came with smartphones to shoot and be part of the scene. No one batted an eye at them, everyone was welcomed. It was full of happy and creative people and everyone just wanted to collaborate and network.
Covid wrecked it all.
Now we are lucky if we get 1 event every 6 months. Things have slowed down. A lot of the big contributors left LA during the pandemic and no one was able to step up to take on the role of setting up events. By the time that the city was open and people were free to socialize again, things had changed too much and the fire had been extinguished in the photo community.
Every once in a while we do have someone set up a free local meet up. Sadly, not a lot of people know about them. But the people that do go, are extremely happy.
This event was made by SelectModelsEvents. I’ve never heard of this Instagram page before now. StreetmeetLA posted their story up and that’s how I found out about it.
I didn’t know anyone from the meet up and had never been to the location before, so I was eager to go. I packed up my flash and asked a few other photographer to go with me. Only Alyza and Stoner had the time to go, so we all went.
The meet up consisted of an older group of photographers. All happy with their big chunky DSLR that still perform incredibly well, Alyza & I seemed to be the only one with a mirrorless camera, which made me think of my very first meet ups when I would take my tiny Sony a6000 and people would look at me funny because Sony was the new “toy” camera in the scene.
This gave changed so much. Everyone either has a Sony or wants a Sony and they are no longer taken as a joke, they are now the best.
The models were all an hour late, which made sense because of how complicated it was to get to the location. But as soon as they arrived they all began to pose. With Pirate lady and a Ghoul to begin with, we all started to take pictures as they worked from pose to pose and location to location. We got 2 more models by the end of the shoot who were also really into their costumes.
We had a few costume changes which added to the variety. The locations were ok. The last one was the best because it went perfect with the witch.
Since I only had 1 flash and 1 trigger, I was passing it between Alyza and I as we’d take turns with the models. Unfortunately I missed 2 models but that was ok.
I talked to a few photographers while we waited. Most were local with the exception of marriage couple who drove all the way from San Diego. They were really cool people.
As the sun began to creep into the horizon, we decided to leave a bit early and go for dinner. The models still wanted to do 1 more outfit change, but Alyza’s camera was critically low on juice and I was exhausted.
I really hope they continue to have events like this. It ended up being a lot of fun, and a different vibe than the shoots that I was used to having in Downtown LA.
