Lifespan of a Chennette

I recently participated in a photo walk in the vicinity of the Queen’s Park Savannah in Trinidad. For those who may not be familiar with the term, Wikipedia defines it -

“Photowalking is the act of walking with a camera for the main purpose of taking pictures of things that the photographer may find interesting.”

This particular photo walk was part of Scott Kelby’s Third World Wide Photo Walk. A mouthful, I know. But it’s a great concept – on the same day (in this case Saturday 24th July), all around the world, people with cameras gather together to walk and take photos together.

Lilandra heard about it, tweeted. Marc Seyon got interested and ended up creating a walk for Trinidad (one of two that occurred on the day). And since I happened to be able to be in Trinidad on the very day, passing through, I joined up. Yes, I did. I signed up for an activity where I had to meet people IRL.

And I went!

You can visit the Flickr group for the World Wide Walk to see photos people took from all around the globe on July 24th. To be honest, it’s better than trying to navigate the main website to see the photos! The Walk is also a competition – each photo walker (33497!) submits one photo the website, and the walk leader chooses the best photo. Then the overall organisers choose the best photos from all 1111 walks that took place this year. The previous best photos are pretty cool.

Our walk started opposite the BP Building (formerly the historic Savannah hotel) and went along the Savannah up to Whitehall then back down to Tragarete Road through St Clair, returning to Victoria Avenue to meetup at TGI Friday’s. I admit I was exhausted having arrived in Trinidad 11 p.m. the night before after a loooong day of travel and delays. Plus we were all heading out to Guyana the next day for a family vacation…so after we were done with the Magnificent Seven, our splinter group headed down Maraval Road across Marli Street back to Victoria Avenue, and early consumption of appetizers and dessert

I had planned to walk with both my lenses to allow me to zoom into some of the building features, or get some nice wide shots of the Savannah or one of the Magnificent Seven. I packed up my stuff in Guyana since 30 June when I started traveling, and I carefully packed my polarising filter, lens hood etc for my 18-135mm lens. Got to Trinidad realised, I never packed the lens… Ah well, another outing with my faster Sigma 50mm f2.8, which is also a macro lens allowing me to take macro shots on the walk I’ve been using this prime for so long now that it feels odd when I use a camera with a different focal length!

I loved the photo walk primarily because I rarely walk through Trinidad, my homeland, taking photos. It’s as bad as living in Guyana and not having photos of Georgetown until I have a visitor! I got decent photos of the newly snazzy Queen’s Royal College (with which my clothes were apparently coordinated), the dilapidated Mille Fleurs and Boissiere House, the pristine Archbishop’s Palace and the gorgeous fretwork and louvres of the gingerbread houses on Marli Street.

In the end, I had to select one photo for submission – very difficult. Especially since I only put my photos on the computer the day of the submission deadline and I had almost 200 photos. Sigh. I ended up posting the one with the Anglican Church on Marli Street – something about the glass and metal and brick appealed to me. But I can never be sure if it’s my “best” shot!

Trinigourmet, Lilandra and I have started discussing a foodie photo walk in Trinidad – with ideas ranging from Debe (the market and indian delicacy vendors) to Wasamaki Permaculture.

Any takers? Suggestions welcome!

World Wide Photo Walk Trinidad Flickr Group

My Photo Walk Flickr set.