Photo Walking Again

Last Saturday I joined a big group of fellow photogs for the Fujiholics Liverpool Photo Walk. A free event that's designed to be a social event as well as an opportunity to take a few photos.I've taken part in these photo walks before and enjoyed them a lot, and this time I was able to bring a mate along too who is just starting out in photography and just happens to have a Fuji camera too. So he's off to a good start..... I know I know, enough of the "my brand is better than yours", it makes me sound like a Canon or Nikon photographer.Sorry.Right, onwards.Going back through my street photography photos I realised I was getting lazy. Shooting from the hip can be extremely successful and produce great photos, but I was using it as an easy way to take lots of photos, the "spray and pray" method, and then just pick the ones that worked. This time I wanted to go for quality over quantity and go looking for the right shots or at least be more deliberate in taking them. Most of all, I wanted to go back to looking through the view finder.OK, so this is not a shot of people on the street, but I saw it as an interesting shot and was early on in the walk so I had to warm up the camera a bit. I liked the shadows, the curved white building and the clean walls. Clean white walls in a city centre has got to be a rare thing. So it was something a bit different to start things off. A good start I thought.We wandered a bit more and to be honest, I wasn't seeing too many shots, but at least I wasn't just getting lots of normal people walking as I normally do.We got to lunch time and the group descended on the cafe by the "wig wam" cathedral. The draw of a beer at the Philharmonic pub beat the draw of cake, and besides, Matt and his fellow Fujiholics would have eaten it all at the cafe anyway.We found a table and the light was quite good. So was the beer. In between catching up on social media activity I saw an opportunity for a portrait of my mate Si, the new Fuji photog. Turned out ok I thought.One of the main highlights of the day was to crash a wedding. The idea was to get the whole group taking photos of the bride and groom. The bride, of course, knew we were coming as she is a Fujiholic herself. It was a great location, the big architecture of St George's Hall in Liverpool. We gathered on the steps and waited for the lady of the moment to appear.Now I have always said that I "don't do weddings", but for the brief time we spent there..... well maybe I could be the next Kevin Mullins... Ha, yeah I know. A guy's gotta dream right? I do like the candid style, whether it's event photography, street or portraits of friends and family.All in all, another successful photo walk. I can't wait until the next one.