Raglan Photo Walk with Up An Adam

So, my mate Adam who is an all-round cool person and is always up to something great has a plan for this year, he wants to help 1000 people understand photography better, one way he is doing this is by holding photo walks all over the country. He’s also put together a free email course which you should sign up to over at his website Up An Adam

What is a photowalk?

In a nut shell a photo walk is where a bunch of people that are keen on photography get together, take photos, and learn.

Why you should go on a photo walk

Firstly, they are great fun, don’t worry about what gear you have, or don’t have, your experience or lack of, because none of that matters and you will learn something on the photo walk.

There is a huge range of people at a photo walk, all from different walks of life and all with different sets of skills. Adam (and his partner in crime, Nancy) was great at helping out people with the questions throughout the night, explaining photography concepts and teaching new skills to people, along with that everyone was helping everyone else, people don’t know what they don’t know, so you never know, something you might take for granted might be the piece of information that can help someone else out.

The Raglan Photo Walk

Adam’s had a couple of photo walks in the past in Hamilton (plus other parts of the country), but I’ve always been busy and not been able to make those, I was determined to get to the Raglan one.

Raglan is a coastal settlement well known for its surfing and is a great place to check out if you haven’t before.

Around 30 people turned up for the photo walk and as the night progressed we meandered our way from near the information centre down to the small jetty past the bridge. One of Adam’s passions is night photography and as the evening got darker we had great opportunities to get photos of the bridge lit up as well as get some cool shots of the bridge with its lights on.

Things I learnt from the photo walk

Firstly, while there are some great resources out there on the internet allowing you to study by yourself from the comfort of home (make sure to check out Adams course on his site) there is something to be said for getting out of the house, meeting up with other like-minded people and learning together, even if 99% of them are complete strangers.

I’m also feeling better about being on manual mode now, for a long time I was using aperture priority, but after playing around and seeing what other people were doing it helped cement in my brain what was going on and what I could expect, luckily for digital photography you can easily change settings on the fly and take lots and lots of photos to see how they turn out.

I also picked up some more tips and way to do some photography with light, I’ve done this before mainly with fireworks on my head, this time I managed to write my name. I’m going to do some more of these in the future.

In Conclusion

Photo walks are great, I highly recommend them whatever your skill level, so make sure to check out what Adam is up to and where you can catch up with him

Next week Adam is doing a photo walk in Rotorua, I’m hoping to be there for that one, so if your making your way there, make sure to say hi.