Urbanna, Virginia

As promised yesterday, here are my photos from the World Wide Photowalk on October 13th in beautiful Urbanna, Virginia. As I did last year (which I just realized I never blogged about! So, it seems I was even less with it last year than I was this year!), I again used the incredibly fun lens, Muse by Lensbaby, which I spoke about here. It bends the light in so many delicious ways. 

This was the most gorgeous day, and I had so much fun just wandering around the town with my best friend. aww. sap. ;) 

 No,  he's not forgetting something. Jason made his own pinhole lens out of a camera body cap.

I had no idea I would love the below picture so much until I started processing it. The focus on the textures of the greens and blues and yellows on the bottom of the boat, and those bright yellow jacks (or whatever they are called) holding up the boat, just make me smile. The blur all around the edges with that blue shadow on the bottom left. I just love this photo, which is why I chose it for my entry in the contest.

Alas, I did not have the winning picture for my city.  Oh well. I guess it's not about the contest, really, is it? You can click here to see all the submissions from our walk as well as the winning photo. 

5th Annual World Wide Photowalk

This year it seemed it was all around more of a low-key event, from the Scott Kelby World Wide Photowalk website, down to our walk leader, and even with me. I usually post about it long before the day of the walk, but it seemed that there was less communication from the official walk site this year, so I even forgot to sign up for it until the week before the event. 

As you might know from the previous 4 years, the World Wide Photowalk is an annual event that takes place in cities around the world one day of the year. This year it was Saturday, October 13th. Folks signed up to join a photowalk group in a city of their chosing.  On the walk day, the groups met at a time designated by their walk leaders, and for two hours we walked around and took pictures of our cities. Afterward, the groups usually gather together to sit around and talk photography and look at everyone's shots from the day. You don't have to meet up afterward, and personally, I never stick around for the social event, as I'm not that social. ;)  We then have a week to process and edit our pictures, and chose our favorite shot of the day to enter into the photowalk contest.  Our walk leaders then pick a winning picture from our cities, which goes on to be judged by Scott Kelby himself for the grand prize winning photo of the day, from the over 1300 photowalks around the world. 

Below is the grand prize photograph chosen by Scott Kelby. Tell me what you think.

2012 Grand Prize Winner

Photo By Lars Anshelm

Lund, Skåne län Sverige

"This is my all-around favorite, and Grand Prize winner, because I simply fell in love with it. I could point to how the texture, color, lighting and composition are just absolutely spot on, but what I love is that I want to know more about this image." 

-Scott Kelby

Stay tuned and I will post my pictures from our walk in the lovely little river town of Urbanna, Virginia. 

In the meantime, you can see the honorable mentions chosen by Scott Kelby, here, and click the image below to visit the official site and see all the winning city photos from around the world. 

That's my favorite part of the walk, seeing the world in one day. 

One Last Time

I just wanted to show you the winning photo from my city's photowalk in Yorktown, Virginia. You can click the picture to go to the photowalk site to see the rest of the entries from our city.

photo by Kristina Johnson

And here is the excellent entry of my photowalk mate, Miss Poo:

Another friend of mine, 3,000 miles away, participated in the walk at Descanso Gardens in La Canada Flintridge, California. Here's his lovely shot:

As of this posting, his walk leader hadn't chosen a winner yet, so he's still got a chance! Sorry, strike that. I just went back and saw that his leader has now picked someone else as winner. boo.

See ya'll next year!

Oh, and in case you were wondering, my (losing) entry was the cyclist. Ah well, better luck next year.

I'm A Vicarious Winner!!

Remember that photowalk I went on? The decisions are in. The walk leaders have made their choices and I am a winner.....vicariously! My SISTER, who participated in the Leesburg, Virginia walk, won for her city!! And I feel like a winner, too!

Here's her winning photo:

(click on picture above to go to her city's walk page.) 

Do you want to know what the best part of this win is? Do you know why I, too, feel like a winner? It is the fact that this picture was taken with a Canon Elph. A little point-and-shoot camera! She beat all the big guns! Just goes to show, and they even stated this in past years on the photowalk site; "Gear is good, vision is better."

Congratulations, Deeroo!! 

World Wide Photo Walk

This past Saturday, I participated for the 2nd time in the 2nd annual Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk, "a social photography event where photographers get together, usually in a downtown area or trendy section of town, to walk around, shoot photos, and generally have fun with other photographers." Oh, and there are prizes, too.

According to their site, last year's photowalk, which was held on August 23, 2008, had:

- 8,324 photographers register for local walks
- 47 Countries had participating cities
- 44 States in the US had Photo Walks
- 36 cities worldwide
- More than 1,017,125 photos were taken on walks that day

This year, Saturday, July 18, more then 32,000 photographers went on photowalks across the globe.

You can view the photos as participants load them onto the photowalk flickr page at: www.flickr.com/groups/skphoto/pool/ and watch the main site http://worldwidephotowalk.com/ to see who the winner's are on August 17th.

You can check out the rest of my photowalk photos at my flickr page.

Update: Did I forget to mention my photowalk was in Williamsburg, Virginia? Well, it was.