Tag: amateur

2018-09-02

Photowalking through a Festival

It is time for Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photo Walk, again. This year, our local walk will be in Ashland’s North Mountain Park during the Bear Creek Salmon Festival. These photo walks are always a good chance to step outside of our normal or comfortable shooting environment. That is my first thought as I look through my own photos below; I was experimenting.

My hope is that this year’s photo walk will really set up a good opportunity for us to stretch ourselves in an area where so many of us struggle: people photos. This is a festival: lots of people will be out and about, cameras will be plentiful, and everybody’s guard will be down. We should have ample opportunity to catch photos of people without the awkwardness of us wondering if they mind us taking a photo. I am looking forward to the opportunities.

Enjoying each others photos after the photo walk.

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2014-03-23

Learning the Ways

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2013-05-06

Shoot What You Shoot

young teenager finds his voice through his cellphone — Budding Photographer

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2012-08-15

Worldwide Photo Walk in Salado

It is time for the Worldwide Photo Walk. It will be on October 13th, and our local group will be walking the quaint Village of Salado. Salado should provide plenty of interesting shooting, since it hosts of variety of artists itself, everything from musicians, to painters, to glass blowers. On top of that, Salado boasts quite an old and storied history for this part of the world. The buildings themselves tell a story which goes back many generations. If you are wondering what a “photo walk” is, it is really just a good excuse to get out and take some pictures. I have never taken anything earth-shattering, but I have had fun, which tells me the photo walk is more about the people than the photos themselves. You can talk gear to folks who will not roll their eyes; you can ask questions about types of photography you have not…

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2011-11-11

Belton Photo Walk Winner Featured by Scott Kelby

One of the fun parts of the Worldwide Photo Walk is the contest. That is not why we go, but it seems wherever photographers gather there is sure to be a contest to follow. I always love browsing the photographs Scott Kelby picks as the winners. He also does something a little out of the ordinary with the contest, though: he posts an extra set of photos that do not technically win anything, but were just photos that left an impression on him.

Well, the winner of our Belton photo walk, Hylas Kessler, was featured in this extra set of photos, and it well deserves such recognition. In this extra set of photos, Scott Kelby picks photos in a witty set of categories, such as “Best Shot of a Bird Crying” or “Best Shot That’s So Obviously Seattle, but Still Really Good.” Among such outlandish pseudo-categories, the category for this photo was what I would consider core to the art of photography: “Best Simple Composition (and use of color).”

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2011-10-01

Here the Photo Walk Comes, Belton

The time for this year’s photo walk has arrived! If you are local to Belton, including Temple, Killeen, or Salado, this is your closest opportunity to join the Worldwide Photo Walk. We will be a nicely mixed group of local amateur photographers, high schoolers who heard in their photography class, readers of Scott Kelby’s books, local camera club members, and some totally unknown to me who just appeared on the sign up list. The list has actually grown by several more walkers just this morning. If you want to sign up and join us tomorrow morning, go to the Belton photo walk page. Hope to see you there.

2011-09-11

2011 Worldwide Photo Walk in Belton

I just love the photo walk idea: getting together with other lovers of photography, going out, and having fun doing what we love doing. It is not talking about photography; it is doing photography. It is not really meant to learn, yet we usually learn something just by watching others and thinking about a different approach to a particular shot. It is not passive, but directly active. Last year, our Temple, Belton, Killeen, Salado area photo walk was in Temple. This year, we are going to switch things up a bit and try out a new downtown, Belton. Last year was a bit difficult to organize, because initially, our location was rejected because we were too close to other walks, in Austin and (I think) Waco. They finally gave in, but we had lost a lot of time that could have been used getting the word out to interested photographers.…

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2011-06-14

$500 Camera Budget

We are back to that recurring question: what camera should I buy? I am often asked, but having recently put some work into finding the best options for a coworker who was buying a first camera setup for her son, I thought it might be helpful to share what I found and suggested. I worked quite hard to stay within a $500 budget, though some of the options below rely on used gear, and availability certainly can change quickly.

My chief aim was to avoid the kit lens which comes with all of the entry level digital SLRs. Not that they are rubbish, necessarily, but you will constantly be fighting their limited aperture, your photos will have the same feel as everybody else’s, and more than likely you will be more satisfied with a cheap, fixed-length lens with wider aperture. So, here we go…

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2011-05-04

New Workshop on the Basics of Photography

fundamentals of photographic technique

Do you see good photo ops, but just cannot seem to make the camera capture it like you see it? Photography is half creativity and half technique, and without a firm grasp on the technical side of how our cameras capture photographs, we can only hope our cameras take the photo we want. We will learn about light, how our cameras capture it, and the limitations and creative potential unique to photography.

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2011-03-16

Stop and Smell the Diesel Fumes

Pumping diesel for heavy machinery, sporting a hardhat and safety goggles, using a unique but most likely purposeful grip, and even providing shipping containers for a background: this is the kind of photo I throroughly enjoy finding. I see them a lot more than I have a chance to capture them.

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