Photowalks...not just for exercise

paints & brushes, originally uploaded by Rob Weiher.

I pretty much did my 365 Project alone. I was either in my garage at night or out walking alone taking photos the entire year. It wasn't until I was almost finished that I discovered a local photowalk group. Would it have been helpful to my project if I had found the group earlier? Probably would have helped with the learning curve.

I've only had the occasion to go out with them twice so far and most recently was last week. A small group of us ventured out to the Monterey Farmer's Market that is every Tuesday and is the largest in the area. I've gone alone a few times but felt so self-conscious that I only took a few photos. I was still a bit shy about taking photos with the group but not as bad.

What was more fun was being able to chat about photography and to answer questions that a few of them had. The questions asked were all the same questions I was trying to find answers to myself when I was first starting out, like how do you use the f/stop correctly and why do the numbers change when I zoom in and out. It felt good being able to answer those questions.

Besides having people to talk photography about it was also really interesting to see how we each looked at the scene. Not a single shot looked identical and I had several, I never would have thought to look at that that way, moments. While I will still go out and walk around myself the majority of the time I highly recommend finding a photowalk group to join, or starting one yourself.

Here are a few more shots I took.