In the fall of 2022, I was asked to take pictures at a big sales event in San Francisco, hosted by the coding giant, Twilio. I had two sets made to take portraits at their event. One was a red circle for people to peek through, and it branded the event. The other was a bank of LED panels. Each set was designed to allow the subjects to play and to make the set their own. We could change the light for everyone that walked in via an app. It was total immersion, and the line to get in snaked out the door and down the hall.

 

I reached out and held some of the subjects’ hands as they were swinging through the light, bathed in color. I had my camera in my right hand and their hand in my left. There was no way to control anything, and the movement allowed this total abandon and total beauty. 

 

To do a photo shoot like this in a “corporate” setting is wild. My goal was that everyone’s time in front of the camera made them feel special, like they were the center of the world.  Everyone was extremely gracious and played along. It was totally insane and so incredibly sweet. In the end, everyone had great new photos of themselves, and a new connection to Twilio. Everywhere the photos went out into the world, they connected back to that moment in that room and that day when we all got to have an experience together.