Sometime the best ideas come from mixing a couple of existing favourites ... or so it struck me when, mingling with the Thamesside tourists outside Tate Modern, I came upon Ian P Hardy and Billy Hautot promoting their attraction to visitors.
There are lots of guided walking tours of London, and certainly lots of photos - so why not put these two popular activities together in a way that makes sure the walker-photographers get the best shots of the sites, and photo-walkers get a little professional help. Then get the photos up on the web.
That's the idea behind Photo Walks of London as Billy explained to me (click for video, right). It's early days, but there are already some examples up on their blog, with an outline of the different walks available around the main tourist sites (Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square etc) and also the increasingly popular south bank. Price £14 for a couple of hours. Advice ranges from the basics (avoiding shake, working out exposure) to the more creative.
I thought there was scope for encouraging uploads to Flickr, where a search on London currently shows 1,253,473 photos. London walks gives 12, 820. Easy enough for the Photo Walks blog to feature Flickr galleries, while learning how to upload to this photo-sharing site would be another useful skill for participants. Just take a laptop, find a wifi hotspot, and do an instant demo.
We have now got our own website at
http://www.photowalksoflondon.com
thanks
Posted by: Ian P Hardy | March 04, 2007 at 02:52 PM