Walter L. Griffin was a founder of the American Society of Cinematographers. Griffin started working in pictures in 1912 and spent a year and a half in the lab before he first cranked a camera for Universal Pictures. In 1915, he joined the , official cinematographers of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, where he headed photographic and lab operations. When the exposition closed in 1916, he spent four months in Colorado, making scenic films for the Denver Tourist Bureau.