Street Photography Tips, Interaction, Travel, Guides
After Izmir and a stop at the Brussels Street Photography Festival, came major city #64 Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic on the Major City project. I’ll be discontinuing this 33 photos series on the blog soon, but I’ll explain why along with exciting details on some new things I have planned in an upcoming post. For now, though, I’ll share a last few additions of this long-time series here on Shooter Files.
So here’s 33 photos from my time covering Santo Domingo…
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic came in as major city #64 on my Major City project and here I’ll share a few first impressions covering the city with my camera.
The Carribean makes for an interesting region for street photography. The colors, light, vibrant island life, colonial history and more make for a complex and unique atmosphere. When it comes to photography, Havana attracts the most attention, but I wanted to cover other big city life in the Caribbean too. With Santo Domingo, you get the biggest city the region has to offer so it was a must for my project. Most people visit islands for the touristic beach towns so I always find the more urban offerings an interesting dynamic when mixed with the island lifestyle. Santo Domingo provides plenty of urban atmosphere, but around Zona Colonial, you’ll feel its long history as the first city of the New World when Colombus called it home. Today, the historic surrounding is filled with tourism, but it still manages to keep some local flavor too. While most won’t leave Zona Colonial and the Malecon, mostly for safety reasons, I made sure to explore as much of the city outside the walls too, where things do change quickly.
So here are my first impressions of Santo Domingo, from my personal Street Photographer perspective…
Time for the New Year’s tradition here and share some photos from the old year to bring in the new.
While 2016 had been my busiest year yet on the road working on my 100 cities project, 2017 was even busier. I was on the road non-stop, clocking in at over 5,000 miles walked while covering 33 cities, including 26 major cities for the project. I started in city #41 Quito, Ecuador and finished in #66 Mexico City, Mexico, leaving 34 major cities left to do. I’m attempting to make 2018 even busier so I can get most of it finished before I start working on the book in 2019.
While focusing on the project, I was still able to make it to a few street photography festivals this year, including the London SP Festival as a judge and the Miami SP Festival as a guest artist speaker, which were great experiences. In addition, I led some successful workshops in London, Budapest and Havana, and plan on doing more in 2018. All in all, it was an extremely busy year with its share of downs and setbacks, but it’s only made me more determined to make this all work. The blog had a busy year growing too, as it’s now ranked #2 in the world in the street photography genre on feedspot. I have more plans for the blog this year, which I’ll share soon, but for now, thank you to everyone that’s been following along!
One thing I did decide this year was not to share all of my favorite photos yet, as I want the future book to be at least a third never seen work. Still, with such a busy year of street photography, walking an average of 15 miles/22km per day year-round, I have more than enough to share now too. So, here’s 50 photos from the year that take you through all 33 cities I photographed in 2017. It’s not a top 50 of my favorites, but some selections to share for now in bringing on 2018. So, I hope you enjoy.
Happy New Year to all and Cheers to 2018!
– Forrest
(in order of capture date) [Read more…]
