Photo Walk in Oaxaca

En español

I've lived in Oaxaca since 2007 and photograph Día de Muertos every year. These days the city is full of altars, marigolds, candles, and people painted as catrinas. This walk is for you to photograph it yourselves, with someone who knows the streets.

What we'll photograph

Altars and sand rugs. Altars go up in homes, churches, and shops, and in some places people lay colored-sand rugs on the ground. Every one is different.

Streets and murals. Doorways framed in flowers, marigold crosses on the walls, and skull murals. By day you get the colors; at night, the lights.

Two routes

The Centro. The streets of the Centro Histórico and its neighborhoods, with their altars, sand rugs, and murals, ending at the Panteón General.

Xoxocotlán. Santa Cruz Xoxocotlán, just outside the city: the town's murals and one or both of its cemeteries, the old and the new.

You pick the route when you book, and I'll send you where we meet. In the cemeteries we go respectfully: we photograph the paths, the flowers, and the candles, not families at their graves.

The lesson happens along the way

There's no set lesson plan. I teach to whatever we find: how to shoot in low light, by candlelight, in a crowd, and how to compose when everything is color. Phones are fine. If you're bringing a camera you're still getting to know, we start there.

Want to see the city's literary side, too? Take my Literary Oaxaca walking photo course.