Wednesday, August 4, 2010

The Joy of Photography in Arlington


I recently went on another photo walk with a bunch of other photographers. This time I hooked up with a group in Arlington, Texas. The goal is simple, it is just to go out as a group and photograph whatever and/or whoever we come across. There is a plan for where to meet, the route to walk and where to meet-up again at the end but, that's it.

It’s fun to hook up with people who you don’t have to explain why you like to capture images then spend hours culling the many frames and editing the keepers to appear the way we imagined it when we took the frame in the first place.

Another one of the things that separates just anyone with a camera snapping pictures from those of us that are a bit more serious is our willingness to twist and climb and crawl to the right spot to get the angle on a shot that we have in mind. I had fun on this walk observing other photographers taking their pictures. Some folks did contort themselves a bit. It’s funny to watch only because I know that I do the same exact thing sometimes. I’ve ruined shirts and pants doing this. This time I didn’t ruin any clothes but did risk my neck standing on a wall probably 20 feet off of the sidewalk taking some shots of a waterfall at the University of Texas – Arlington.

I took some images of a few of the students who were out and about on a Saturday morning during the summertime. They were surprisingly very pleasant and agreeable to having their pictures taken at that hour.

There was one guy in a pickup truck that saw us and was telling us to take a picture of him. The photo that I got looked like he was angry and yelling at me but, he really wasn’t.

One of the photogs with us had a thing for photographing trash. What was even funnier was that he would shoot a trash can then other people would just join in and give it a try for the heck of it. I photographed them shooting a boring trash can. I have to admit that I’m as guilty as them though. I took one shot of an outdoor cigarette ash tray that I wouldn’t have otherwise.

A shout-out goes to Michael at Arlington’s Main Street School of Music for being cool and letting us get cool inside his school and letting us shoot him there.

Check out the whole slide-show here.