Every year, photographers around the world grab their cameras and head out for the KelbyOne Worldwide Photo Walk. Last year, unfortunately, I had to skip it because of work. This year, I was able to go again.
My first Photo Walk was all the way back in 2008, the same year I officially started my photography business. At the time, I obviously had no idea that photography would become such a huge part of my life or that I would still be participating in these walks two decades later. Over the years, the cameras have changed, the places have changed, and I've certainly changed as a photographer, but that's part of what makes coming back to the Photo Walk so interesting. It's a chance to step away from photographing for clients and go back to something much simpler: grabbing a camera, going for a walk, and seeing what catches my eye.
In many ways, my entire photography journey is tied to KelbyOne. (Or KelbyTraining back in 2008). Long before I knew what I was doing with a camera, Scott Kelby and the instructors he brought together were teaching me how to actually see and create a photograph. I can honestly say that Scott is one of the main reasons I know how to take a photograph in the first place, and so much of the technical foundation I have relied on throughout my career began with what I learned there. That's something I will always be grateful for. Over the years, some difficult circumstances in my personal life unfortunately affected my relationship with people and places that meant a great deal to me, including KelbyOne, and I deeply regret that. I can't change those years, but I can acknowledge them, learn from them, and never lose sight of the enormous role Scott and KelbyOne played in helping me become the photographer I am today. Two decades later, picking up my camera for another Photo Walk feels a little like coming full circle.
The last time I joined the Photo Walk was in 2024, in Toronto. This year I was home in Tampa, and I have to admit, it was a challenge.
There is something very different about photographing a city you're visiting versus photographing the city you live in. When you're somewhere new, almost everything catches your attention. Buildings you've never seen before, streets you've never walked, reflections, signs, people, textures, even ordinary things can seem interesting simply because they're unfamiliar.
Your own city doesn't always have that advantage. Add an overcast Florida sky to a place you've driven through countless times, and suddenly you're standing there with a camera thinking, Okay...now what?
And that's exactly the point.
Recently, I watched KelbyOne's documentary about the late photography legend Jay Maisel, and one idea really stayed with me: you can plan a photograph only so far. Eventually, you have to actually get out of your head and look around you.
That sounds ridiculously obvious. Photography is, after all, about seeing. But there is a difference between looking at something and actually seeing it.
Most of my professional photography happens in situations where I have a certain amount of control. In the studio, I can control the lighting, the position of my subject, the background, the angle, the expression, and countless other details. With real estate photography, after doing it for 20 years, I generally know what I'm walking into. I know what angles I'm going to need, what problems I'm likely to encounter, and what will probably need some attention in editing later.
But when you simply grab a camera and go for a walk, most of that control disappears.
You can't move the sun. You can't replace the sky while you're walking. You can't relocate a building because there's an ugly sign in front of it. You can't ask the clouds to cooperate or tell the light to come from the other direction. You can't rearrange the city.
For the most part, you control your shutter speed, your aperture, your lens choice, your composition, and where you decide to point the camera. Everything else is already there.
A few months ago, I saw someone on Instagram make a post showing what was in front of them versus what they saw. I don't remember who posted it anymore, but I've never forgotten the concept. That describes me to a T.
Two photographers can stand in exactly the same place, at exactly the same time, looking at exactly the same building, and come home with completely different photographs. One notices the entire building. Another notices three windows. Someone else notices the reflection in one of those windows. Another photographer sees the shadow falling across the wall, the repetition of a railing, the curve of a staircase, or the strange way two completely unrelated objects suddenly line up from one particular angle.
The subject didn't change. The photographer did.
And that became my challenge during this year's Photo Walk.
I am not a street photographer. I don't naturally walk around looking for dramatic interactions between strangers or waiting for that perfect split-second human moment. What I do love is architecture. I love lines, shapes, patterns, reflections, symmetry, and sometimes deliberately breaking that symmetry. I like finding pieces of buildings instead of always photographing the entire building.
Most of all, I like seeing familiar architecture differently.
So on an overcast day in my own city, the challenge wasn't really finding something spectacular to photograph. It was finding something interesting in what initially looked ordinary. Instead of waiting for Tampa to hand me a photograph, I had to go looking for one.
That meant looking up. Looking down. Moving closer. Stepping farther away. Looking through things. Watching reflections. Isolating details. Changing angles. Paying attention to shapes and textures that most of us walk past without ever noticing.
Sometimes the photograph isn't the beautiful skyline in front of you. Sometimes it's one tiny piece of it.
And that's what I enjoyed most about returning to the KelbyOne Photo Walk this year. It wasn't necessarily about coming home with photographs of extraordinary things. It was about exercising that part of photography that can become a little rusty when you spend most of your time shooting professionally: curiosity.
When photography becomes your job, you usually have an assignment. There is a client, a subject, a shot list, a purpose, and an expected result. You know what you're supposed to photograph. Walking around with absolutely no assignment other than find something is completely different.
It forces you to stop photographing what you're supposed to see and start paying attention to what catches your eye.
An overcast sky wasn't ideal. Photographing my own city wasn't as immediately exciting as walking through Toronto with a camera. And Tampa certainly wasn't going to rearrange itself just because a bunch of photographers showed up.
So I had to look harder. Photography isn't always about traveling somewhere spectacular, waiting for perfect weather, or standing in front of something obviously beautiful. Sometimes it's simply about learning to recognize a photograph hiding inside something you've looked at a hundred times before.
Because there is what was in front of me. And then there is what I saw.
This time, I also brought my son along. He studies art and has slowly become my photography buddy, which made the walk even more fun and considerably more challenging, considering we were walking through what felt like the worst humidity ever.
It was basically like walking around inside a sauna with cameras. It had been a minute since I'd spent that much time outdoors anywhere other than Disney, and Disney doesn't really count because when you've had enough of the Florida heat, you can escape inside a ride, a store, or somewhere with glorious air conditioning. Downtown Tampa doesn't exactly offer an air-conditioned escape every hundred feet, so we were hot, sweaty, and thoroughly defeated by Florida's humidity! We eventually made it back to Armature Works, where we grabbed something to eat, cooled down, and prepared ourselves mentally for the next phase of the adventure: the walk back to the car. Haha! And somehow, that might have been the most challenging part of the entire Photo Walk.
The following images are what I wanted to see regardless of what was in front of me. I am also not a journalist, for whom photographing things as they are is the primary objective.
Enjoy! I know we did!