This Saturday I went to Denver’s annual Zombie Crawl. Last year, they had 4000 zombies roaming their downtown walking mall but then Seattle beat them for the world record with about 4300 zombies. This year apparently was no contest: there were at least 7300 zombies wandering around, searching for brains. Obviously, this was a great place to go take pictures….
I chose to go as a zombie instead of a photographer because I was worried that being behind the camera all the time would make me miss out on some of the zombification. After all, isn’t zombification the point of a zombie crawl? So I brought my baby camera (I was worried about getting fake blood on the DSLR – that stuff gets everywhere it turns out) and gurgled down the street with the mass of zombies, snapping pictures as I went. This little shark zombie (today’s picture) is one of my favorites. I found him just as the crawl was starting and we were all ambling slowly towards the street.
It turns out I still learned a surprising amount about photography, even as a zombie. There were a LOT of professional photographers there with their HUGE cameras (I was drooling) snapping tons of zombie pictures. So… I got to watch their photography techniques.
I recently took a creative digital photography class at The Boulder Photo Center. In class, we talked a lot about how to take candid pictures of people in public and how to address your subjects. I caught myself watching the photographers using those techniques in action. People would either politely ask if they could take your picture or they would just candidly snap a few and then wander away completely nonchalantly. If we addressed them, they would ask us if we wanted a copy of the picture and then jot down our e-mail addresses so that they could send us one. It just seemed so easy. Can’t wait to try it out myself now!
I actually got to experience a little bit during the crawl because I took a picture of one of the zombies near me and he REALLY liked it. So I got his e-mail address and, after a bit of fixing the photo in Photoshop, sent him the picture. I hope he liked it.
Photoshop
As for our little zombie shark in today’s picture, I actually didn’t do anything to him. He is as shot. Craziness…
I think that is all for today. I hope you all have excellent Mondays! :)
Potassium Photography 
Zombie shark! Nice shot, ‘rah :)
This is awesome! We talked about photographing people in my photo class and how difficult it can be if you’re too shy to ask for permission; but once you do it can be worth it because you can get a much better shot!