Carty Photo Walk
Early in the week I saw a post on Steve Carty’s Instagram page that he would be hosting a photo walk on Sunday starting at Trinity Bellwood's park and walking though Graffiti ally, with the focus on people and street portraits. Now I'm not much of a street photographer and admittedly I'm not that confident as a portrait photographer but I enjoy going on photo walks with like minded people, and when the a photography master is hosting a walk where he might pass on a little knowledge, I'm all for it!
Now the first mistake I made was going out the entire day. The walk wasn't until 4pm and I left went out around 11am. The goal was to get a few time-lapses though out the city and the water front and by the time the photo walk started the day had heated up and it was getting humid. For context I don't do well in hot weather.
Let’s get into the photo walk.
In the photo from Right to Left - Luis, Julia, Steve
It was a small group containing of Steve Carty the host, Julia, a lady he works with and Luis and Sara two of my classmates. at Centennial College. We started by walking around the south side of Bellwood's park and Carty talked about how to approach people and ask permission to take their photo and then demonstrated by asking then taking several photos of people just hanging out in the park.
Julia Seemed a little nerves but she's worked with Carty before so she had the confidence and experience to walk up to strangers as well, Luis is vary confidence and I imagine he would have no problem walking up to strangers to ask for a photo, Sara seemed a little nerves but she's a vary outgoing person and by the end of the day she said she had tried it a couple of times. I am an introvert, I try to avoid interactions like this at all cost and today was no different. I should probably work on this skill but not today.
Our first group stop was just outside a church on queen west just down the street from where I use to work. We stopped and Luis became our model for the moment, the lesson was on framing so I made sure to take three photos. Bad, acceptable and good.
The bad one being the first where the stairs go though the subjects head and the good one being where the background is just the stairs. I feel this is one of those common knowledge things but it makes a difference seeing it in a side by side comparison.
Our next stop was the west end of graffiti ally where Carty talked about framing the subject in a background. Graffiti ally has a lot of colourful art work that makes for great backgrounds and can really make your subject pop. I also haven't been down Carty was nice enough to act as a model while giving ideas of how to frame him. I didn't take a ton of photos but I did listen to what he was saying and watched what everyone else was doing and what angles they were looking at.
During the final part of the walk Carty gave us all a challenge to take five portraits of strangers. I talked about this quickly at the top about being an introvert so this is something I couldn't bring myself todo. I don't know how to just approach random person and start a conversation and ask to take a photo of them, so I photographed some people on the street with out them knowing just capturing the moment
An interesting end note, I felt a difference between this photo walk and others I've been on, this one was more interesting, more focused, it felt more like a class not just a group of people going for a walk. Probably because it was hosted by a teacher and the students were actual students not just hobbyist.