Beginner Street Photography with Meetup

One thing I knew early on that I wanted to do in London is photography. When you’ve lived in small towns your whole life, it is easy to recognize some of the benefits a large city provides to you. Notably, greater access to learn a variety of photographic techniques – and at lower costs. So my first foray into Meetup was just a free get-together for a beginner street photography walk themed “What Tourists Do.”

We split into smaller groups of three and just went around taking photos together. It did get very busy and thus difficult to keep track of each other – but mostly it made it much more difficult to take photos because you’d always have someone walking through your shot! The theme was a lot of fun to work with though and I noticed some of the most common things done are photos, just sitting off on side alleys exhausted, and perusing the different market goods specifically targeting the many tourists who come through.

I found that getting photos with a lot of people in it was often difficult because it was not possible to tell exactly what I was trying to express in the photo. At that point I switched to mostly close-up photos of certain people or groups. I did miss two shots I really liked: a woman trying to figure out what the different coins she had were worth and a couple both downing large glasses of wine – stems straight up in the air.

Of course, one of the highlights of the meetup was the people I got to meet. I was first to our meeting spot so I was introduced to pretty much everyone and had some small talk, but once we got into smaller groups I made friends with three main people: Christelle, Vincent, and Pete. It was just nicer meeting new people that live here and enjoying the conversations that we had. It’s different than going out with the people from your flat (and country), and the conversation topics are very engaging. :)

Here are some of my favorite photos from the day: