Walter Mayes: A Senior Profile Portrait by Zipporah Alcaraz (2015)

Walter Mayes is the librarian of the Girls Middle School in Palo Alto and a professional storyteller who goes by the name of Walter the Giant Storyteller. Aside from this, Walter also directs and acts in several plays within our community, and is currently directing the Sunnyvale Community Players adaptation of Evita. As a young child, Walter has always had a passion for theatre, never going four weeks without being part of show, and even majoring in it for college. In order to pay off his college tuition, Walter worked several jobs in the publishing industry, leading him to write and print his own book called ''Walter the Giant Storyteller’s Giant Book of Giant Stories.'' When asking Walter what he plans to do in the future he replies '' ''I will stay at GMS until I die. It’s the perfect job for me, I’ll never go anywhere else.''

Photographing Walter’s portrait was a very fun experience. He’s very comfortable in front of the camera, knows what angles he looks best in, and is easy to give directions to. I think the hardest part about taking his picture was focusing on him and blurring the background. I’ve always had a hard time messing with my aperture and shutter speed to make the picture the way I want it, but I was still able to get shots that looked good during our shoot. Some things I tried to do during the shoot was try to make Walter seem like a friendly, but powerful personality by taking pictures from lower and straight facing angles with him smiling, lifting his eyebrows. This was a great experience for me because I was able to practice shooting in RAW and directing a photoshoot, which was very entertaining for me.