About Me

Nate Torres is a portrait photographer servicing the Orange County and Los Angeles areas. He specializes in portraits of individuals, couples, groups and headshots. Nate Torres is also a photography writer and content creator and educates other photographers on portrait photography. You can find his content on his personal website, social media, and YouTube Channel, as well as on blogs such as Fstoppers, Photofocus, and Imaginated. Being a former SEO consultant, Nate also teaches other photographers how to use SEO to grow their own photography business on his educational blog, Shutter SEO.

I became interested in photography at University (USC) and I started photographing friends and family, concerts, nightclubs, and events. I photographed anything and everything testing out different editing styles and niches to see what I liked. Eventually, I narrowed my niche down to portraits and their various types as I enjoyed capturing people and their stories. In terms of my editing style, it has changed slightly over the years, but now I strive for minimalist, cinematic, and natural-looking images. Images that look nice, but are not overly edited where they end up looking cartoonish and oversaturated.

While I am not active much on social media these days, I got my start photographing social media influencers, some of who have amassed millions of followers. The images I took of these influencers brought in thousands of likes and views to my images and my following grew like crazy, here are just a few:

While I wasn’t “chasing the likes,” the likes and engagement of these images I took brought me motivation and a sense of encouragement to keep going and to continuously strive to improve each photography session.

To be able to see how images I took of these individuals were able to bring more engagement to their own profiles and brands brought me joy. They would tell me “the photo you took got so many likes, so many people are commenting on the photo and I gained a bunch of new followers!”

It’s crazy to think because looking back on them, they weren’t even the “best” photos (in my mind). Some of my images spread quickly and you can even find some of my images when you Google “What is portrait photography.” You’ll find both an article I wrote as well as my images. I guess you can say I wrote the definition for “portrait photography.”

It was during these moments that photography became both a source of joy and self-fulfillment for me knowing that a “simple” photo can help improve someone’s life whether it’s having a nice lifestyle photo on your Instagram page to help you secure more brand deals or business, or a new portrait you add to LinkedIn that helps you connect with more people. Or maybe you won’t even post it publicly, and it’s just to have private and enjoy looking at every now and then.

These days, I enjoy capturing photos for my own pleasure, for clients, and for educational photography content on this blog and on my social media channels. If you want to work with me on a concept or need a new portrait or headshot, don’t hesitate to reach out on my contact page.