Worldwide Photo Walk 2010

Last year’s Worldwide Photo Walk was one of the first photography related events I ever attended. I was nervous. I had only owned a camera for 6 months, and though the literature on the photo walk website said that you could bring a point and shoot camera, I figured I’d be the only one who didn’t have a SLR on the walk. Well, I was right about the SLR thing, but I ended up having a great time. In fact, one of the images from that walk is currently hanging on my wall. Also, It made me really excited for this year’s photo walk.

This year, I chose to attend the Cary photo walk instead of the Raleigh one. I have spent some time in downtown Raleigh, but I was looking for something a little bit different and thought there might be something in Cary that would catch my eye. Also, I brought someone along (Elyssa, who some might call  a ringer, with her photojournalism degree and all) so I knew I’d know at least one person on the walk. I also figured that my buddy Eric, who I met on last year’s photo walk, would be there; a back injury kept him from attending.

I was once again brought my trusty Nikon P6000 but I wasn’t too worried about being the only person on the walk with a point and shoot (which I was). I did bring my ZipShot tripod (I think I was the only one with any type of tripod) to do some HDR work though. The area we shot In felt almost like a ghost town (I think we saw maybe 2 or 3 other people the whole morning) but I guess 90 degree heat at 8 am on a Saturday morning will do that. Unlike last year where I ended up with one of my favorite all time pictures, I didn’t get any shots that I thought were top tier. I did end up with a bunch of shots just below that though (I’ve already posted one of them, and I’m sure that I’ll be putting up more as time goes on).

Part of the experience in these photo walks is the social component that comes along with it. After the walk, we met up at Chatham Street Cafe. I’ll start off by saying their French Toast is delicious, and I figure I’ll drive back out there purely to have that again. The conversations that were had were a mix or photography and, strangely enough, computer programing. Apparently a number of the other photo walkers worked at SAS and all had a programming background. There was also some light discussion about legal issues since one of the walkers was a prosecutor and both me and Elyssa are currently in law school. I’ll leave out the details of the cases that were discussed, but let’s say that they were something right out of Law and Order:SVU. After about an hour / hour and a half of conversation, we all headed back to our cars. Luckily, a train was coming by as we were walking back to the parking lot and we all managed to get a few more pictures. It was a well timed ending to a really great morning.