First of all, I can’t believe that Halloween is almost upon us again! Feels like just yesterday that it was Labor Day, no?
In the spirit of Halloween, I got together with some friends last Saturday night, and attended the fourth annual Silver Spring Zombie Walk in downtown Silver Spring. For those who don’t know, a zombie walk is an event where people dress up like the undead as commonly portrayed in works of fiction, and then walk through an area as a group, in character. In addition to people dressed as zombies, you also have people dressed as “zombie hunters”, who dress up like commandos and carry Nerf weapons and other similar faux-artillery.
In Silver Spring, my friends went dressed as zombies. I went straight and had my camera out. My goal was to get some photos and have a good time. I’d dare say that both goals were accomplished. The zombie walk gathered at approximately the intersection of Georgia Avenue and Sligo Avenue outside Jackie’s, just north of the point where the Red Line crosses Georgia Avenue (you know, that bright pink bridge). Once we got going, we walked north on Georgia Avenue as far as Ellsworth Drive. Then we made a right turn, walked east on Ellsworth Drive through the “Downtown” development, made a left turn, walked north on Fenton Street for two blocks, and then turned left and walked west on Colesville Road to the AFI Silver theater. There, the theater was showing two horror movies, and was the formal end of the zombie walk. We didn’t go to the movies, and instead continued on to Georgia Avenue, and then went back to the “Downtown” development on Ellsworth Drive, where we got to hang out for a while. Not bad!
The folks dressed as zombies were a lot of fun. You had so many different interpretations of the zombie theme. There were lots of people – kids, teens, as well as adults in their twenties, thirties, forties, and beyond. This truly was fun for the whole family, and in fact, whole families dressed up together, all looking for brains. It was awesome. Only thing that annoyed me was when people were trying to both take photos and also be zombies. I understand that you want to do it and take photos of it. But we have friends for a reason. Get a friend to go to the march straight and photograph you and everyone else being zombies. It’s hard to stay in character when you’re also trying to photograph others in character, after all, and no one wants a bunch of photos of people dressed up as zombies taking photos of other people dressed as zombies.
And as mentioned, I took lots of pictures…
Four kids dressed as zombies. These four kids certainly knew how to ham it up for the camera, all right, however, the smallest one (wearing pink) didn’t quite know how to handle photographers, in that she reached out and touched the camera.
When it comes to touching the camera, I was not worried that they would harm the camera. The worst that they could do would be to maybe get the lens dirty, and I’ve cleaned the lens in the field before. However, if you get too close to a photographer’s camera, you do ruin the shot. This is what happens if you get too close to the camera:
Oops. Thankfully, though, the kids figured it out once I told them that they needed to keep a slight bit of distance away from the camera so that it can see them properly.
This group (plus one more) went as a group of undead senior citizens. They not only behaved like a zombie would be expected to, but also played the stereotypical “old person” bit.
Tongue. I can’t imagine how long this took to put on, and how much effort it took to keep it in place. Realize that you’re looking at a prop mouth over his real mouth…
What, brains for dinner again? (It’s really a head of cauliflower.)
Nice neck wound! That really looked pretty disgusting right there. Loved it.
Zombie with an axe – and yes, that was a real axe!
Charlie Brown walks again! The Charlie Brown zombie was saying, “Sno-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-opy!”
Zombie hunter.
Normally this would be illegal (like in this case), but this time, they actually set a sign board up and rotated through several messages: “ZOMBIES!”, “ZOMBIE ALERT”, “THIS IS **NOT** A DRILL”, “UN-DEAD AHEAD”, and “HIDE YOUR BRAINS”. Classic.
This was adorable, with a child dressing up as a ninja. Meanwhile, the father appears to have found something far more interesting on that BlackBerry tablet than the zombies in front of him.
Even Waldo has come back from the dead!
Some people played on current events just a little, putting a spin on the “We are the 99%” concept from the ongoing Occupy Wall Street demonstration.
I loved the makeup and blood job on these three, especially the two boys’ makeup jobs with the skin-falling-off effect.
I got a lot of great photos of the event, but I’m going to end it here for now. I should do a full photo set of this or something, because there were a lot of really funny shots, and people really had no problems hamming it up for the camera.