World Photo Walk Day

As a member of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, I was able to take part in a really cool event on Saturday, August 23rd. It was called "World Photo Walk" and was organized by Scott Kelby. The main purpose was simply a social event for photographers to get together and share their trade, along with walking around a designated area to shoot some artsy images. This was happening all over the world and the images will be able to be viewed on FLICKR. I was fortunate enough to actually get into two of the walks. One in Hyde Park in Tampa and the other in downtown Clearwater. It was cool to be able to smooze with a couple of the big names in the photoshop industry. My walk leaders where Matt Kloskowki and R.C. Concepcion. We even had a cameo appearance by Scott Kelby. Now if your not a photographer or a photoshop user, those names mean nothing to you. If you are, you know that these guys are some of the most talented people you ever could meet in this field, so obviously it was a real treat for us "underlings" to get to chat & shoot with them. It was a lot of fun...no one had attitudes...no one flaunted equipment...as a matter of fact, we would help each other out, like when I held a flash for a few shots for another photographer. So...We would spread out and look for interesting things to shoot like this purple door. I was walking through an alley and spotted this door. I got some closer shots of just the purple door, but I kind of liked what was going on in this shot. The other colors, the sign of the Luxury Apts, and the alley. As I moved up toward the purple door, other opportunities opened up. Red brick walls...cafe tables...reflections in abandoned buildings windows. I hooked back up with some of the group and lead them to the purple door. Some took the same shots that I had, but then there were some variations of the same shot. That's a cool thing, because it opens your mind up to doing things in different ways.

Although we did have to dodge a few rain showers, it didn't really hold us back. I was able to walk the old district of downtown to get the images that caught my eye in the the old abandoned buildings and then move to the waterfront. While looking for something interesting, I came along this big white heron. So I switched from artsy to wildlife images. Using the Canon 70-200 I was able to get close enough to get a pretty nice shot. I was please with the sharpness of the image. Enlarged, you can see great detail in the feathers and a nice sharp eye. I attended a photo show a few weeks ago and there were several wildlife shots. One of them won an award. One thing I noticed was the great sharpness of the image and I think that's what swayed the judges as well.

We did the Photo Walk for 2 hours and then we all met back together and stopped in at an authentic Italian Pizza place, Cafe Milano Pizzaria. The pizza was really good and the trick to that was a good old fashioned brick oven. I lived in Italy as a kid and we only ate wood fired oven pizza. We all sat around and talked about our shots and other shop-talk. Just down the street, we had discovered another little find early in the walk. It was a coffee shop and after checking it out we decided to stop back in after diner for some coffee.

This is a nice find in downtown Clearwater. Located at 34 N. Fort Harrison Ave, Pangea Cafe' is a nice place. Open until midnight and at times they have entertainment, it's a great little coffee shop. We hit it off right away with a lovely girl named Gab. She actually came out on the side walk earlier and invited us in to check the place out, so when we came back, she and the rest of the staff took good care of us.

So, that was the first World Photo Walk and I hope not the last. Hats off the Scott and all of the people that acted as leaders of the Photo Walks all over the world. I can't wait to see the images that are going to pour in.

Until next time... cya!

The Light Show

I have always wanted to capture some great lightning photos and this evening I got a chance. A heavy storm was moving toward the Tampa area. I have been studying weather patterns that involve lightning. I have several weather radars and lighting detector programs on my computer. Lightning is nothing to take lightly. It is dangerous and you can be seriously injured or killed by even an indirect strike. The Tampa Bay area is the lightning strike capitol of North America, so one of the things I do is finding a relatively safe place to shoot from. In these images, I shot from an 8 story parking garage, using the covered 7th floor. Even so, I was prepared to bug-out if the storm got to close. After all, I was still somewhat in the open and standing next to a heavy duty metal tri-pod. I was pretty pleased with the results, but would have liked to have been closer to the downtown area so I could fill the frame with the shot.

Image this...I was approximately 6 or 7 miles from this shot. Awesome power isn't it?

I got several multi-shaft strikes like this one below. The shading around the bolt is heavy rain.

This one is a favorite of mine. It has that science fiction look to me.

For you photo buffs, I used my Canon 30d with my Canon 70-200 IS F2.8 lens on manual focus set on infinity. A few of the shots were with a Tamron 28-75, f2.8. I had the camera on a heavy Gitzo tri-pod. Camera motion is critical when dragging the shutter, that is, shooting at very low shutter speeds. In this case, I set my speed on bulb and controlled the time with a Canon electronic shutter release. I would shoot about a 5 second exposure and when I caught a bolt, I would release the shutter release. If you don't, the bolt is going to act like a flash and over expose the image. My ISO was set at 320 and the f-stop for most of the shots were at 5.6 or 11. I got about 10 "keepers" out of about 100 takes. You just have to be patient! Hope you enjoyed them! C-ya!!