February 2nd Sunday

Late last year, the city of Charleston decided after the success of the “Do the Charleston” festival to regularly close King Street to traffic on the second Sunday of each month so that the pedestrians could take over (you can read more about the origins here). Today I was finally able to bring the family for an afternoon downtown and also to do some street photography.

The diptych above was a group of people watchers in Ye Ole Fashioned Ice Cream and Sandwich Cafe. They were having a blast commenting on what everyone was wearing, and I told them I was turning the camera on them next!

February 2nd Sunday
1/100th of a sec | f/4.5 | 62mm | ISO 200

It didn’t take long for me to start looking for some decent light and interesting people to shoot. It was mid-day, so the light was harsh and three quarters of the street was in shadow. I found that the slivers of light between buildings was a great side-light opportunity and looked for opportunities to use it.

February 2nd Sunday

I also looked for people who were doing just ordinary things, like eating some lunch…

February 2nd Sunday

…or drinking some coffee…

February 2nd Sunday

…or talking on the phone…

February 2nd Sunday

…or walking their dog…

February 2nd Sunday

…or flipping me the bird while double-fisting some beverages…

February 2nd Sunday

…or looking as happy as can be…

February 2nd Sunday

…or just as pretty as can be.

February 2nd Sunday

I was hoping to get a lot of shots of people dressed up as characters from the “Where’s Waldo” series as there was an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the most people dressed like Waldo in one place (more info on that here). Unfortunately, they fell quite short of the record. I did grab a shot of these two festive Wandas:

February 2nd Sunday

As with any outdoor Low Country event, the dogs were out en masse. I think the next time I attend one of these Second Sundays I’m gonna focus on capturing the dogs – there were so many awesome dogs out.

February 2nd Sunday

Getting down to the dog’s perspective makes for an interesting composition:

February 2nd Sunday

These dogs looked really excited to be out and about:

February 2nd Sunday

I also made some black & white shots – I knew when I shot this one that it would be perfect as a monotone image – the contrast and negative space are just shouting to be devoid of any distracting colors.

February 2nd Sunday

All in all, I had a blast and cant wait to do it again. I have a hefty set of photos on my Flickr stream if you want to see some of the other shots I made today. Street photography is a fun and exciting way to exercise your creative mind, and you end up meeting interesting people in the process.

February 2nd Sunday