The ‘NCL Collective’ is a community of photographers, videographers, models and all sorts of content creators from the North East who enjoy sharing and viewing each others work online, mostly on Instagram. Founded by Michael Olatunji (@michaelolatunji), the @nclcollective account shares diverse range of content from street photography and portraits right the way through to star trails and drone photography.
The photo walks / ‘Insta-meets’ seek to be a bit of old-fashioned, offline social networking where people can get together, put faces to Instagram names and get to know a bit more about each other, as well as taking part in some photography, video-making or whatever it is that they do best!
This was the fourth meet up, and it is hoped that it is the first of the new quarterly events. The route was planned by Daniel McMillan (@dansformation) and saw the group taken through Newcastle City Centre starting at Grey’s Monument with a quick meet and greet followed by a short briefing and introduction to the BBC crew that came a long to see what we were up to!
The walk was planned to have several stop offs along the way to grab some more posed shots of some of our group, as well as taking moment to grab some shots of the city’s architecture, both old and new.
Towards the end of the walk, crossing the Tyne Bridge, my hands were freezing cold, but I managed to keep myself steady and produce a panorama of the frozen Quayside made up of 12 shots which I was pretty happy with!
Our journey ended at the delightful Arch Sixteen Café in Gateshead, where we got some well deserved hot drinks and snacks. I found that I didn’t take as many photographs as perhaps I might have expected throughout the day, but instead spent the time chatting and listening to other peoples stories and plans for this year which was just as, if not more valuable! I’m looking forward to the next event in April. Till then, you can check out some of my shots from the walk in the gallery below.
