On the morning of Saturday, July 30, I went on a self-assigned photo walk on Fulton Mall in downtown Fresno. My good friend and colleague, Gosia Wozniacka, joined me. It’s the third time I’ve photographed Fulton Mall — I shot it once on black and white film in 1992 while in a photojournalism class and once on color digital in 2005 with my wife. Fulton Mall remains one of my favorite places in Fresno to make pictures because to me it always simultaneously represents both life and decay.
This was my second photo walk with my newly cobbled together digital camera outfit, a completely borrowed kit of random parts. Thanks to the generosity of friends, I shot Fulton Mall on color digital with a Canon EOS Rebel XT and an EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 lens. Most of these photos were shot with auto settings, with the flash turned off. The photos appear here mostly unedited.
The most interesting thing to me was that my experience turned out completely differently than Gosia’s experience. We went to the same place and saw different things, which I would have expected. But I also immediately noticed, as we were walking, that each of us had a completely different idea about the image gathering. Gosia spent a lot of time talking to people, whereas I spent a lot of time looking at landscape. The different stories we produced made me think a lot about something my old photojournalism professor, Greg Lewis, used to say: “Photojournalism is pictures of people doing things.” It’s a valuable reminder for any kind of storyteller, myself included.
Jefferson Beavers 