One of the cool things about launching the YouTube channel at this time in my life is that my credential program has me constantly thinking about accessibility and culturally responsive teaching.
And that’s bleeding over into the channel! I close caption each video by hand, I listen to the voiceover with the ear of a beginner so I can define more technical or industry-specific terms for newbies to the field and for people whose first language isn’t English. And the whole point of the channel is to make photography financially and practically accessible to pretty much anyone, which I’m pretty excited about.
Accessibility is something I care so much about. Having another outlet through which to make this world more accessible for everyone makes me happy.
Tajreen and I love going on road trips, and sometimes the pressure to take good vacation photos can get a little stressful. Over time, we’ve come up with tricks to get awesome adventure shots without sacrificing our sanity. Check them out in our latest video, 5 TIPS FOR BETTER ROAD TRIP PHOTOS!
Tajreen and I have been shooting together for about four years now. (Which, by the way, is CRAZY to say.) It started with weddings, then fun little portrait workshops to sharpen our skills, and soon one of us (if not both of us!) were slinging a camera over our shoulder every time we hung out. We’ve traveled all over California for forest shoots, desert shoots, and “that’s a pretty shrub, how deep are you willing to shove yourself in it for this picture” shoots.
All this time, we’ve been learning as we go. Tajreen has a master’s in film from UCLA, whereas I’m almost entirely self-taught. We realized that between the two of us, we have a lot of photography know-how to share. And because we’re piecing this together ourselves, it would be easy to break it down to teach to others.
We also noticed that it’s hard to find models who look like us and our friends in photography tutorial resources. Hiring a model and shooting them is a completely valid experience, but it’s not the only experience by any means. Tajreen and I have a diverse friend group who we love to take photos of, and sometimes the tips that work for shooting professional models just don’t work as well when you’re shooting with your friends.
We want to make photography accessible to everybody, regardless of their skill level. With that goal in mind, today we are launching a project we’ve been working on for months: Tajreen & Co, a photography channel on YouTube. We’ll be uploading videos almost every Sunday, and our first one, THE EASIEST WAY TO SHOOT JUMP PHOTOS, is out RIGHT NOW!! Check it out! If you like what you see, subscribe to our channel to follow our photo adventures. We’re really excited about what we have planned for this project moving forward, and we’d be delighted to have you along for the journey!
queerlybeloveds 