Tried a New Group

On September 13^th, I attended my first MDStreetMeet Event, which was held at Glen Echo Park.  This was a low-light event focused on low-light photography and capturing the neon signs at Glen Echo.

Street Meet is all about street photography with a few models thrown into the mix and is supposed to be about collaboration and meeting other fellow photographers.  It really wasn’t my thing, as I’m introverted and have a hard time integrating myself into groups, especially groups that already seem to have their own internal clicks.  I’m also not a street photographer; I lean more towards portrait and studio photography.  I did take a few images but not enough to say it was worth my time. You can see a few of those below.

 My other observation was some people brought a lot of gear for something that is supposed to be geared towards street photography. My thought of street photography is simple setups; maybe a single light stand at most, not carts full of lights.  The other observation is, the group tends to do “paparazzi” style shooting of models, so the poor model is receiving instructions from several different people at once and it make it difficult to set up a shot.  I prefer to work with model’s one-on-one.  The paparazzi-style shooting might be because only a few models come, and this group is supposed to be focused on street photography, not portrait photography. 

Overall, it really wasn’t my thing and I felt out of place. Not sure if I’ll give it a second chance.