Group photo of the workshop attendees with Sue in the middle

Last year in November, I was lucky enough to attend one of my mentor’s, Sue Bryce, portrait workshops in LA. Ever since then it’s been uphill with newly acquired knowledge and skills. I learned so much more about posing, lighting, people skills, branding and so much more to add to what I knew before. But another thing that was really valuable was connecting and networking with the other photographers there. Since it was a workshop for guys, it was a bunch of dudes from different cities and countries with the same determination to hone our craft and business sharing their stories of where they’re at with business. Yeah, we had one heck of a time all together. A few of us found out that we were actually at 2 hour driving distance of each other so we talked about doing a get-together. And so we did last month 🙂

Taken by my girlfriend as she watched the live streaming of the workshop on her computer

It was me, Neon Engfer and Joshua Pheneger. Neon was kind enough to offer up his beautiful home studio in Modesto as the meeting spot. Our objective… shoot and have fun.  We had three lovely models and Joshua’s very talented wife, Katie, providing gorgeous make-up and hair. So thus the day began.

 

While the models were getting ready, us three decided to start photographing each other because what’s greater joy than three guys creating portraits for each other?

Photos of me by Neon Engfer

Photo of me by Joshua

Photo of Neon by me

Portrait of Joshua by me

Time flew by and soon enough our first model Val was ready. The great thing about all of us coming together was the sheer amount of tools, outfits, backdrops, lights, and all bunch of stuff at our disposal. So we all put our creative minds together to style the different looks. Yeah… we collect dresses too…

Photos of Val by me. Make-up and hair by Katie

We had a little station thing going on where Josh would be photographing Neon while I’m photographing Val and we would switch every 10~20 minutes. Next up was the gorgeous Veronica that I didn’t get as much time to shoot with :l Loved the dress she had on with the shimmery texture of it and the faint gold accent.

Neon working his magic and posing at the same time

Portraits of Veronica by me. Make-up & Hair by Katie

Last but not least, our third model and family/children photographer Carly Mynear. Quite frankly… I was nervous and thrown off guard with Carly because I found out she was a photographer herself and… photographing other photographers is always a little different. Photographing the guys, it was chill; we talked and had fun with it so it wasn’t bad but I was getting nervous with Carly. I felt like under-performed a little but thankfully by the end we were able to share some conversations and get some great portraits 🙂

Annnnnd that’s a wrap! Joshua and Neon carried on to shoot for a little longer but I was dead tired. It was so nice being able to get together with other fellow mentees of Sue and just have this day to shoot, chat, learn, and have fun. I learned so much from just being to able to see the different workflows of these two guys and also how Neon setup his studio. Can’t wait to do this again and thanks again for hosting Neon and thanks to Katie for her awesome talent and thanks to Val, Veronica, and Carly for dealing with us three guys!

Photo of us three by Carly