After seeing Elise’s photo walk posts last year, I knew photo walks were a creative adventure I wanted to try. To be honest, considering I see myself as more of a photo-taking memory keeper than a photographer, I was a bit nervous about tackling such a photo-centric challenge. But it seemed easy enough in theory so I decided to go ahead and give it shot earlier this week.
Creative Adventure #7: Neighborhood Photo Walk
On Tuesday evening after Adam came home from work, I grabbed my trusty Canon Rebel XT and we headed out for a short stroll around our neighborhood. In total we were out for about 30 minutes. Here were some of my favorite shots:
For anyone interested in trying their own neighborhood photo walk here were a few tips I learned from my walk:
- Look up, down and all around you – the most interesting textures and elements were rarely right in front of me.
- Get in close, then get closer – pretty much anything looks more interesting when bound by a tight crop.
- Key an eye out for interesting patterns and textures – these photos were my favorites.
- Take someone with you – that way when you’re doing crazy things like setting your camera down in the street you have someone watching out for cars for you. Plus then you don’t look like the lone weirdo wandering around the neighborhood with a camera, haha.
To be honest, I really wasn’t sure what to expect going into this creative adventure but I LOVED it. In fact, it may even be one of my favorite ones I’ve done so far.
It was simple & easy but I loved the way it made me look at the world differently than I do when I take photos for memory keeping purposes. This format really forced me to slow down and look for things like shapes, details and textures or patterns which was awesome. Will definitely be doing more photo walks in the future, for sure.
For anyone interested in the technical details: All photos were taken around 7:30pm with my Canon Rebel XT and Sigma 30 1.4mm prime lens. Aperture was set to f4 and ISO was between 400-800 (I increased it as the sun went down). All photos were edited slightly with Aperture but almost all cropping was done in camera.
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ABOUT THIS PROJECT
In honor of my 30th birthday, I’m challenging myself to go on 30 creative adventures before the end of 2013. This is Creative Adventure 7 of 30. You can read all the details behind this project here and find links to all my completed adventures here.
I know you posted this forever ago, but I just wanted to say that this is always such a good idea. I did this both around Benicia and Hollister and now am glad I did. I have some great photos from home that will help me remember once the parents move. These are pictures I use everyday on my computer backgrounds as a reminder of home and warmer weather.
I didn’t realize at first this was you and I was like wow, someone else knows Benicia and Hollister? LOL! That’s awesome and you’ll have to share your Hollister photos with me since I don’t have too many of those.