Local Wandering is a Photographers Tool
How Urban Wandering is a Cool Thing to Do
I’ve always been one to get up and go. Preferring to spend time outdoors utilising the much-overlooked everyday slow travel: walking.
Suburbia can be seen as quite a dull environment, lined with sidewalks and fences blocking entry to private property, and lots of grey.
In North America, it is often made more bland by the rigidity of the grid system loaded with intersections comprising at least 1 of the 5 main banks. But despite this, in any urban setting, there is so much to gain if you take the time to walk.
I am not referring to the Saturday morning stroll to the high street to grab a coffee or brunch (although this is still a good walk), I am referring to the replacement car journey, the walk to a new brewery or a loop taking in a ravine you have yet to explore.
Not every walk requires the extremities the external world suggests we need to have. Big vistas, wild woodlands and cliffside views are options for walks, but you can also walk straight from your front door. Side note: condo residents, I know you have to navigate elevators and the like, but treat this as a mild inconvenience…
The world feels like a constant treadmill with everything expected to accelerate without undue pause. Existence is exhausting at times.
By doing something so simple like walking I am allowed to drop a couple of gears as well as achieve multiple other benefits like exercise, finding new places (good coffee shops I be coming for you) and continue working on small photograph projects…like chairs in the wilderness.
Walking an average of 40KM per week doesn’t sound like a lot, but that’s comfortably 2,000KM per year, and this is in/ around full-time work plus life. At my usual ‘pace’ is roughly 400 hours of walking, or 4.5% of my time every year. Now if I compared this to my phone screen time report we would start to look a bit silly; motivation engaged!
But I am not here to provide ‘5 Things that transformed my life in my mid-30’s to turn me into a 3% body fat, ripped, tanned, social-media influence with 3 PhD’s and a billion dollar company’, because you can probably find the secret to all that in matcha.
I am here to share that I feel urban walking is very cool and time well spent. Well, erm, I think so.
Here’s my take on why urban rambling should be incorporated into everyone’s life:
It’s free. Let’s get the easier one out of the way. Depending on the duration or distance I’ll typically be with water, extra layer (do check the weather before you go), phone, camera and maybe a snack. My research before I set off will include: weather, coffee and/ or beer stop and emergency public transit links.
You will find somewhere new that will be interesting and worth revisiting. How cool would it be to find that Vietnamese-French fusion small plate restaurant before an Instagram account? You can also find sneaky parks, ravines, little green alleyways or cut-throughs by going wrong, being curious or through pure circumstance; you have to put yourself in position to score. I love ‘collecting’ new places. We are not here forever and I don’t want to collect the inside of the same shopping mall or car interior.
This is low maintenance, low impact, rather more enjoyable exercise (having done Ironman’s, long-distance cycling, running and the like I have some license to say this!). Cramming in a pavement punishing run is great n’all, but I do think walking is a more sustainable solution in the long-run (ha!). Banging the headphones in and pounding round the block, I mean, are we even trying to slow down at this point or still chasing infinite growth?
4. You see things and you process them. All 5 senses can be stimulated with a variety of triggers in a single 30-minute walk. Food being cooked in a first floor apartment wafting into the street turning you into a dog of Pavlov, while a construction worker takes a saw to concrete underneath a racoon tip toeing along the fence line. A minute or so later you hear cheers from a sports bar at the Blue Jays score (Let’s Go!), or a naughty squirrel sounding agitated as a streetcar pulls up alongside you just as the future love of your life disembarks.
5. You can do things with the things you notice. For me, this is photographing them - and apparently now writing about it too. You might meet a new friend, find a new bookshop or get an appreciation of those other humans we co-exist on this planet with. As the world becomes increasingly polarised, the value of community continues to increase.
6. Finally, you actually start to really know the place you live
Now I am a someone who will look after my possessions and keep them forever. I still wear - to some people’s annoyance! - t-shirts I’ve had 20 years and jeans with holes in. I do buy new things, but I’m hesitant to comply with consumerism in anyway. I have also moved to live in different places and whilst I wouldn’t necessarily have some sentimental attachment to any one of those places, I certainly want to treat them with the care and attention they deserve.
Walking allows me to do that. I find new places to spread my disposal income across, to take friends and family to when they visit. I notice demographic changes diffusing prejudice and local stigma. I find short cuts but still get to keep fit, completing many and several walking challenges along the way.
The local environment is never going to be the extreme wilderness like the public-use city bikes are never going to be the carbon fibre machine used in the Tour de France. But how often are you riding Le Tour?
Everyday walking can and is interesting, you just need to lac cup your shoes and get out there (and if compelled, take your camera with you)!
Thank you so much for reading, if you’d like to reach me on Social Media, please do hit the link below and say hi!
