![\"Marin](\"http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/images\/seconddraft\/TweetupHorizontal.jpg\" "\\"Marin")
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I show up with a big light, a step ladder and a lot of attitude<\/strong>, hoping I can herd all these cats in front of the camera long enough to make something to illustrate a story about Marin’s twitterati. Yep, this is a tweet-up and these are the tweeps of Marin.<\/p>\n I’d rather photograph 10 kids than 10 adults. The kids will pay attention to me, out of fear or curiosity or the simple habit of listening to adults, but the grown-ups won’t stay focused <\/strong>for more than 10 seconds at time. They chit-chat, they get bored, they fuss. And when you throw in the cell-phone-in-your-hand factor, they check email, texts and tweets.<\/p>\n That all means that this kind of shot is lot of fun. As I shot away using almost ridiculous exposures<\/strong> — 1 or 2 seconds to burn in the ambient light while hitting them with the strobe — there was lots of joking, which I pretended wasn’t directed at me. Hey, they were laughing with<\/em> me, right?<\/p>\n The group shot was done in five minutes, but the editor also wanted some casual, non-posed shots<\/strong>, so I gathered several of the tweeps together in a “non-pose,” moved the light in above them, put the 17mm\u00a0 on the camera and encouraged them to act it up as I shot. They did. And I did. The result is the vertical shot you see here, which ran full page in Marin Magazine as a section opener.<\/p>\n Thanks to Mimi Towle (@mimitowle) for organizing it and the tweeps: Sally Kuhlman (@Sally_K), Sarah Houghton (@TheLib), Suzanna Stinnett (@Brainmaker), Maria Benet (@Alembic), Toni Carreiro (@toniCarr) and Marilyn LoRusso (@fun_master).<\/p>\n And I’m @timporterphoto.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Put 10 or 12 people in a dark coffee shop, add in a freelance writer, a magazine editor, a roomful of customers and a couple of homeless people in the back, and you’ve got a scene. I show up with … Continue reading ![\"Marin](\"http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/images\/seconddraft\/TweetupVertical.jpg\" "\\"Marin")
Put 10 or 12 people in a dark coffee shop, add in a freelance writer, a magazine editor, a roomful of customers and a couple of homeless people <\/strong>in the back, and you’ve got a scene.<\/p>\n