Paul Lester Photography

This was the second year for Scott Kelby’s Photo Walk. Last year, they did not have one in Charlotte, so I didn’t attend. This year’s Photo Walk had quite a few more cities, including Charlotte, NC; However, I signed up for the Charleston, SC walk.

I believe that the Charleston walk had 46 of the maximum 50 people signed up to walk. We met at Riverfront Park in downtown, milled about for bit introducing ourselves to one another, did a group photo, then the walk began shortly after 9:00 AM.

Periodically during the week I had tossed around the idea of shooting film during the walk, then back to the idea of shooting digital, then back to film. As I arrived at the parking garage, opened the trunk, reached my hand in to pick one or the other bag, I chose to shoot film just for the novelty of it. I had a feeling that I wasn’t going to be shooting a lot of photos. I figured that I’d be doing more talking and walking than anything.

As it is Charleston, the weather was warm and very humid. It wasn’t long before I and the other four guys that I was walking with, were starting to perspire. The guys that I walked with were named: Chrys, Kip, Robert, and Kazu. Mostly, we walked through the various streets, alleys, and parks and talk about a number of topics. Three of the guys knew each other. They get together once a month on Friday and go to a different barbecue restaurant to sample the fare.

Kazu, who is from Japan, was shooting film as well. He was shooting an Olympus XA and a Holga. Believe it or not, this was my first time seeing a Holga. He said that he really liked the Holga because he’s always surprised by what comes out of the camera. Surprised in a good way and lots of time in a bad way. He told me the camera can only shoot at 1/125 second at f/8 or f/11. That’s it. There is no way to focus it either. Talk about bringing things down to their simplest! I’m not so sure that I want to go that simple! He said that he was shooting Portra because it was so forgiving with exposure and that you need that when shooting with a Holga! As a side note, he is a local sushi chef and the restaurant that he works in is about 15 – 20 minutes from where I work. I told him that I’d stop by and visit him one day. I will!

We continued walking and shooting for the next 2.5 hours, finally ending at Tommy Condon’s, an Irish pub/restaurant. Most everyone from the photo walk joined up to sample some of the beers and the cuisine. Myself, I was not interested in beer, but all of the water that I could consume! My shirt was pretty damp from the humid morning and I was feeling pretty thirsty! After I had chugged back a fair amount of water, I had a local Southern favorite, Shrimp & Grits. It was quite tasty. Four of the five of us sat together. Kip had to leave. We spent the next hour and talked about cameras, films, family, photography, and whatever else came up.

As I figured, I didn’t take many pictures. I took about 3 rolls, or 45 pictures. I’ve not developed them yet and I’m not expecting much, truthfully, but I will share them later on this week. Then again, this was not about the photography, it was about getting out and meeting new friends, potentially. These photos are from my personal photo walk of downtown that I did back in March.