And walking we will GO !

I was fortunate enough to be part of the http://worldwidephotowalk.com/ held in more than 100 countries. I was disappointed that none of my friends and colleagues could make it, not for the lack of interest, but as they were not able to wake up at 6.30 am on a Saturday morning.

The leader , who was a young kid, was fashionably  late .The group consisting of 31 gathered at Town Hall to start our 2 hour walk through the bylanes of Bangalore. I found it interesting that the group was mostly from the other states,like the Bengali currently pursuing his PhD at IISC, a couple of Android programmers from Pune, a lot of them from the IT bigwigs HP, INFY,WIPRO and IBM primarily from Tamil Nadu and AP.The number of Bangaloreans was less than 8 .It was funny when someone approached us and said that he was new in town and found out about our walk and wanted to know if he could tag along so that he could see the sights of the city, for free. Our leader smiled and said no , invitations were based on registrations only. Well out of the 50 only 31 turned up.

When we got the go ahead, I went along with this guy from AP, new in town and so I acted like the local guide telling him about the buildings and culture of Bangalore.Later we formed a smaller group consisting of a Bengali, a person from Andhra ,a Tamilian and a couple of Kannadigas ( including me). Talk about diversity ;).

I was surprised with the “group shot”. For someone who knew so much about camera’s, the dude who shot it completely ignored the photographers and was focusing more on the ‘building’.Sigh.

Taking snaps of unknown people is so much fun, especially if you are in group. I learnt that people tend to pose and smile naturally if prodded. The street was just waking up and it was fun looking for those small things that we usually miss. Most of them went for “portraits” and a few for those obtuse angle shots of people and animals.

The bystanders were caught unawares, but curiosity always wins . They approached us and asked us a lot of “pointed questions” like : Why this road ? What will you do with the photographs ? Are you from the Government? Are you from the Media ? and so on. It always ended up with ‘Take a photo of me” J

One passerby wanted to know the difference between Photo day and Photograph day J .  I still remember a cop coming up and asking what was going on and we had to show our bands ( Thank God) and explain about the World Photowalk.It seems some person actually shouted at a few of the “walkers” and asked them not to take photos of the drainage and filth and that they were showing Bangalore in a “bad light”. Reality Sucks. When we were waiting for others to join in, the owner of a nearby hotel approached us and asked why we were standing there with cameras :) , maybe he was afraid we would take photos and inform the Health department.

We ended our walk – tired and hungry- at the Udupi Sri Krishna Bhavan. Yummy Masala Dosa and sweet IdliVada Sambar .

Later that evening I saw the pics that were being uploaded and was shocked. The pics were amazing ! I have decided to take my friends on a walk too J