Photowalking.org

Well, we had a decent turnout for the first VC Strobist Meetup. I’m really not quite sure what to call it. I’ll most likely continue to blog about these events here, even though they’re not really photowalks. Since all the same people are in attendance, and I use all the same promotional methods, it just makes sense.

It was great to see many returnees, and all the new faces. I’m horrible at remembering names, so if you attended, I’d really love it if you’d comment and include a link to your photos from the event.

I learned quite a bit from this event. The largest lesson was in my planning failures. Now, I still feel like the event was a success. However, I did drop the ball, and it wasn’t as good as it could have been.

The largest issue was with the models, or the lack there of. If Patricia hadn’t brought her friend, and co-worker, along, we’d have been shooting each other. Speaking of Patricia’s friend, her name is Stephanie Hoops. Stephanie came prepared to model and she even had a few props. She obviously has had experience in modeling, and her own contribution aided the rest of us in getting better shots.

If you attended, make sure you email Stephanie at least one of your best shots. That was her deal. If you don’t have her email address, just comment here and I’ll get it to you.

Thank you to all who attended, and to Stephanie for allowing us all to photograph her.

VC Strobist, at Flickr

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I know this is last minute. I’ve discussed the possibility of an indoor, studio lighting based event on the Flickr forums for a few weeks. I just now secured a location and so I’m going to go ahead and try to make this happen.

The location details are at the Upcoming page for this event. We’ll meet at the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department, East County Station, at 1:30pm, this Saturday, April 26th, 2008. If you think you can make it, please try. I’d love to have more than a handful of people.

We’ll all bring any lighting gear we have. The goal is to have us all set up our “studios” around the room and practice shooting. I’m going to try and get a couple of volunteer “models” to help keep everyone busy. The real learning will come when we can help each other learn a bit more.

Even if you can’t attend, please spread the word to anyone in our area!

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Several photographers in the Boulder area will be meeting on Saturday, May 3rd at 9:00 AM for a photowalk of Boulder, including the famous Pearl Street Mall. We will meet at the East end of Pearl Street Mall, corner of 15th and Pearl.

The route is about 2.15 miles long. Our path takes us through Pearl Street Mall, an outdoor, open-air mall with brick walkways, flower beds with Tulips, store fronts, sculptures and people (though not at 9am) and Boulder architecture. Check out this link for a sampling of the Tulips on Pearl Street.

From Pearl Street, we head south for a few blocks to Central Park where there’s more bike paths, sculptures, flowers and Boulder Creek.

Then further South to University Avenue. Turning East takes us into the Northwest section of the University of Colorado - Boulder (CU) campus. We’ll have views of the campus architectures, bridges, Old Main, Mackey Auditorium and various other campus buildings, grassy areas, creek paths, etc. plus views of the Flatirons almost the entire route.

From CU, we’ll head north back to our starting point where we’ll stop for lunch, conversations and I’m sure lots of sharing.

Contact information: gregg (at) lowrimore (dot) com and Gregg’s cell phone: 303-356-4575

Additional information can be found at Upcoming.org.

Google Map of Our Route

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This summer, I’m taking my wife to Europe to celebrate our 10th anniversary. We’ll be in London for several days, and I’ve decided to join Phill Price in organizing a photowalk.

On Saturday, August 16th, 2008, we’ll be meeting at the Wellington Arch, in St. James Park at the Hyde Park Corner. (just look at the map below). Be there by 1 pm, or you might get left behind.

This will be my first time to photowalk in London. I’ve been there before, years ago. However, I’ll also be meeting a few of my online photography friends for the first time.

I really hope you make the effort to attend, if you can. Please comment below if you’re going to make it. Also, head over to the Upcoming event page and indicate you’ll be attending.

Upcoming link.

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…but I upgraded the blog software to Wordpress 2.5. Isn’t it just grand?

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Join fellow photographers on a photowalk of the streets of Gettysburg PA. We will be meeting at the tour bus parking lot on Baltimore Street (across from the Gettysburg National Cemetery.) We will be meeting at 10:00AM and the walk should take about two hours.

The route is about 2 miles long and we will be walking downtown Gettysburg and a loop through the National Cemetery. After the walk we will meet at Spiritfield’s Irish pub for lunch and a chance to share some photos.

Here is the upcoming link: upcoming.yahoo.com/event/466081/

The editors of Celebrate Gettysburg will be writing a story about the event and photos from the walk may be used in an upcoming issue of the magazine.

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The Utah Photowalking crew will stop standing around on its next ‘walk, and take to the rails on March 29th. Salt Lake City installed light rail just in time for the 2002 Olympics, and the stations along the east-west line are festooned with public art. We will meet at the eastern terminus, buy our all-day pass ($4.50 in cash), and speed photograph as many stops as we can stand. March 29, meet at 4 pm. Ride until your ticket runs out. More details on our Flickr group; same info at upcoming.org.

P.S. Next month we will return to walking, weather permitting. Tomorrow’s forecast is snow in the morning, 44 deg F by the afternoon.

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I just posted a huge list of upcoming photowalking events scattered around the ‘net. Well, I also just joined several southern California flickr groups, in the hopes of finding some more events to attend.

In so doing, I found out that it’s really not that hard to find many large photowalk-like events. Just search through the top Flickr groups in your area. So, even though they’re mostly in the Los Angeles area, I’ll link to a few more below. If you’re interested, join a few local Flickr groups in your area, and then scan the discussions. It won’t be long before you start seeing people planning some kind of event that you could easily photowalk. Good luck!

• Getty Center Sunset Meet
  • Saturday, April 5th, 2008, at 4:00 PM
• Descanso Gardens Flickrwalk
  • Saturday, March 29

I hope that you follow my lead, and find some fun photography events in your area. Please, come back here and share with us how it went. Hey, if you’re willing, I’ll probably let you recap it right here yourself.

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As most of my regular readers know, I’m always trying to recruit new authors here at PhotoWalking.org. This past year we’ve heard from a variety of authors. Each one is working hard to keep us informed about the photowalks they’re helping organize in their own local areas.

Many of the photowalks, however, don’t just use PhotoWalking.org to help communicate the details. Based on my recomendation, most also use Upcoming.org and our Flickr group. Most also have their own Flickr group too.

However, photowalking has taken off so much that there are groups forming all around the world, many who have not even heard of PhotoWalking.org. That’s not a problem for me. I’m just excited that more people are out photowalking. Of course, there are many who are photowalking, and they don’t even realize it. Photowalking isn’t new. People have been doing it as long as we’ve been able to drag our camera around with us.

On occaision, I wander around the internets, searching for anyone else who might be interested in using our little community to help get the word out for their own events. Today I compiled a small list of upcoming events that could easily be announced and followed right here. Below is that small list…

• Flickr Scotland March Meet
  • Saturday, March 29, 2008  -  Sunday, March 30, 2008
    11:00 AM - 5:00 PM
• London Markets : Bayswater Market and Park Stroll
  • Sunday, March 30, 2008
    11:00 AM
• Birmingham Flickrmeet
  • Sunday, April 13, 2008
    2:00 PM
• Big UK Flickrmeet #3 - Nottingham
  • Saturday, April 19, 2008
    10:00 AM
• 8 hours in Venice
  • Wednesday, June 11, 2008
    12:00 PM - 8:00 PM
• Omaha Flickr Photowalk
  • Sunday, April 6, 2008
    1:00 PM - 4:00 PM
• Laguna Beach Photowalk
  • Sunday, March 30, 2008
    2:00 PM - 5:00 PM

If I’ve missed any upcoming photowalks, please let me know. Just comment below and I’ll get the details from you. If you’re one of the organizers of these photowalks, or any other photowalk, please know that you are welcome to have an author’s account here and I’ll do whatever I can to support your own local photowalks.

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Recently I’ve had several people request some form of a calendar here. Not liking the built in calendar, for Wordpress, I kinda didn’t take those requests seriously. (Sorry if you were one of them.)

Then, today, I was wandering around the features of Google Calendar, my personal calendar solution. I found out that I can not only share my calendars, but I can actually embed them on any website. They even let me customize the colors and size. Google rocks!

So now we have a calendar to manage all our upcoming photowalks. There are several features that I need to learn how to use. So in the short term, I’ll be adding all the events. I think if you click on the Google tile at the bottom of the calendar, you can add it to your own Google Calendar.

Sweet!

Oh, you need the URL. Go here. Or you could just click on the “Calendar” tab at the top of any page.

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