Broadway Photo Walk with
Zach Weston and Jake Thomas
The Weston Collective’s Photo Walk is a new art series by Zach Weston and Jake Thomas as a way of working on seeing. It is important every so often to slow down and actually look at your surroundings. You will be very surprised at what you see; we definitely were. Usually during a normal outing, going to work for example, the street you are driving to get to work is just a means of getting to your end goal. The oddities about that street are almost always missed. We are either thinking about other things or just focusing on driving and obeying traffic laws/trying to not get into an accident, etc. Our photo walks down Broadway Avenue have really opened our eyes to everything the place has to offer, wether it be a storefront we never knew existed or a short conversation with a local walking down to get some lunch.
Not only are we just looking at our surroundings, but we are capturing it on film. Part of the practice is to each start off with a film camera with either 24 or 36 total exposures. The goal is to photograph half the roll by the time we reach the bottom of Broadway. We then switch cameras and finish up the rolls as we walk back up. It is amazing how not just the light affects what you see but the camera that is in your hands. The feel of the camera body, length of the lens, and even the sound the shutter makes all has a final impact on your end result. We see these photowalks as interactive art. It is not all about getting the final image, but the process of seeing in a new way. We hope you continue to follow our journey as we move through this process and report back to you with our findings. We would love to hear what you think about the project and if you have any similar experiences.