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A Message From The Walk Leader

[[[ Saturday 1 August 2009 ]]]

This is a copy of an email I sent to participants Saturday morning, announcing my selection of an image to represent our Winter Park group.

Good Morning All;

This has been a most difficult process for me – there were so many worthy images presented (over 40), and I’ve spent many hours looking at, thinking about and considering the merits of each one in order to decide which to submit as our representative to the WorldWide competition.

Sunny Florida Reflection

This entry by Rey Villavicencio in the Winter Park, FL Photowalk competition really stands out in a crowd, and my eye kept returning to it as I viewed all the images. Congratulations to Rey!

The simple composition with the portion of a circle, the diagonal placement, and the striking blue sky quickly lets you know it is a Florida image.

The blue sky and upside down trees draw the viewer in to see what is going on and the various details to be discovered invite the viewer to linger and explore this image. The fact that it is a man hole cover provides the clue that it an urban area; then one can see the name of the city in the casting, giving us another clue as to where we are; looking closer we see the image of the bird emerging from the water - this further adds to the theme of Florida; the water tells those who live here or have visited in the summer that rain has recently fallen, The Sable palms seen in this image are the State Tree of Florida, and are represented on the Seal of the State; the upper left portion of the image begins to blur and fade away moving the eye back to the main elements of the composition.

All in all a very striking image and one that well represents the State of Florida, the City of Winter Park, and the spirit of the Worldwide PhotoWalk. The photographer is Rey Villavicencio http://www.reyvilla.com/

My congratulations to Rey and a very big thank you to all who participated.

Head over to the Flickr group

http://www.flickr.com/groups/florida_photowalks/

where you can add comments about images, and if you have not already done so, add some of your images from this or other Photowalks.

Let’s all keep in touch and plan another photowalk!

Charlie Howse

[[[ Wednesday 29 July 2009 ]]]

Hello fellow photowalkers!

This is a copy of an email sent to the folks who signed up for the 2009 photowalk. If you want to be added to or removed from the email list that I am maintaining about the Winter Park photowalk, let me know. I will be planning more local photowalks independent of the Kelby Group and I will probably volunteer to lead a Kelby PhotoWalk next year if they have one.

A quick update about the competition and an important note at end of this email.

I’m currently sorting thru the images and by Saturday morning will have picked one image that I feel best represents the spirit of the PhotoWalk in Winter Park. Once I’ve submitted the image to Kelby’s main site, I’ll notify this group of my decision.

In my opinion, the blog software used by the PhotoWalk site (WordPress) is a real pain to use to see the images. It takes too many clicks to get to see the image un-cropped, and several of our walkers have mentioned that their images are being incorrectly cropped – the images are not actually cropped, it is just not real simple to get to where you can really see them!

To help with that issue, I have copied all the submissions for the WinterPark photowalk to a Picasa album. The album is ‘un-listed’, so it is only shown to viewers who have the web address. Take a look at the creativity and vision shown in the images.

http://tinyurl.com/wpskpw

Charlie Howse

http://www.facebook.com/charles.howse

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=103257109842

=========== Important Note ===============

If you would like to be removed as a recipient of email from me
about this and future local photowalks, let me know.

I don’t want anyone to think I’m spamming your mail box!

=======================================

[[[ Sunday 26 July ]]]

As of Midnight 25 July, there were 45 entries with Alex Castillo making the last post at 11 PM. Thank you to all who participated in the walk, and a special thanks to those who submitted entries for the contest. My task will not be easy — I will be reviewing each of the entries to pick one for entry in the WorldWide competition!

[[[ Saturday 25 July ]]]

Final day for entries! We are now have more than 35 images in the competition.. If you have not entered yours, you have until midnight to nite, so pick ‘em and post ‘em!

[[[ Friday 24 July ]]]

A big Thank you to the walkers who have added new photos.. This is a real creative group!

One More Day to add photos, if yu haven’t done so already…

[[[ Wednesday 22 July ]]]

So far we only have 14 photos posted for consideration in the PhotoWalk competition.  I know there are many more excellent images that have been taken — I’ve seen some on various FaceBook and Flickr pages.  If it is not posted on this site by the deadline, it cannot be considered for the contest.

To those of you who have posted images on other sites, please post here also so our walk is well represented in the WorldWide event!

Come On folks! Post your images…

[[[ Tuesday 21 July]]]

This is a copy of an email sent to all registered participants in the Winter Park walk. If you registered, but did not get a copy of the email, let me know.

Thank you all for being part of the big event, whether or not you actually made it to the walk. The fact that you signed up and visited the various web sites associated with the walk helped to generate the very high level of interest and ‘buzz’ that surrounded the walk this year. Over 32000 people around the world had registered for the event and I personally appreciate all the local interest and participation - and I admire all the talent and creativity that is represented by this group. You are WONDERFUL!

If you did actually make it to the walk – I had almost 40 people sign in and I count 35 in the group picture – a special thank you! I’ve received some great comments about the walk and would really like to hear from each of you with your comments, impressions and suggestions for the next one. Let me know if you want to be kept in the loop about planning another local photowalk, and let me know if you can assist in planning it!

Now that you’ve had an opportunity to review the images you captured at the walk, it’s time to share  yuor 2 best images- but not more than 2! Here is a web page with instructions for uploading images:

http://worldwidephotowalk.com/uploading-your-photos/

If you have questions or difficulties, let me know soon; don’t wait till July 25, the last day, and then try to solve problems! Do it now!!

Here is the Winter Park web site:

http://worldwidephotowalk.com/winter-park-fl-usa/

Here is copy of official time limits from the Worldwide Photo Walk web page:

http://worldwidephotowalk.com/blog/2009/07/20/what-a-day/#more-554

July 25: This is the deadline for photo walkers to submit up to 2 of your best images to their location page.
These will need to be JPG files (not RAW or TIFF), and the size limit will be posted when you go to upload

August 1: This is the deadline for walk leaders to submit their choice for best image from their
walk to us.  More specifically, 11:59 p.m. EST on August 1

August 17: The 10 honorable mentions and 1 grand prize winner will be announced.

Locally, one image will be selected by me as the best image of the day, and the photographer will be awarded a copy of Scott Kelby’s newest book, plus that image will be entered into the WorldWide competition for “Best Picture” of the day, with Scott Kelby selecting the winner. The world wide Grand Prize winner will be awarded over $11,000 worth of prizes! There will be 10 Honorable Mention prizes each valued at over $1600. Only images that have been posted on the official Winter Park PhotoWalk web page (http://worldwidephotowalk.com/winter-park-fl-usa/) can be considered for the competition. As the walk leader, I am not eligible for the competition, but I do receive a copy of Scott’s book.

Here are some web sites that might be of interest:

I created a Flickr group for us to share images of this walk, and future walks, and to serve as a community of photowalkers around the state of Florida. Please join and post some images and comments to share what you learned during this event and help us plan our next local walk!

http://www.flickr.com/groups/florida_photowalks/

Scott Kelby has a Flickr group for the WorldWide event where folks around the world can share some of their images; let’s get some of our work represented in that pool!

http://www.flickr.com/groups/skphoto/

If you are on facebook, here is the group photo:

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30509896&l=911751f235&id=1337281252

Here is the group photo on my Flickr page:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chowse/3738951899/

Again, Thanks to each and every ne of you guys and gals. It was a pleasure meeting you and I hope we can stay in touch!

[[[ Saturday 18 July, again ]]]

I’ve created a Flickr group where you can add some of your better images from the PhotoWalk.  This Flickr Group will be used to help maintain momentum, by scheduling and participating in future PhotoWalks around this beautiful state, and to help keep this group of people in touch with each other.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/florida_photowalks

[[[ Saturday 18 July ]]]

It is  done! People started arriving 45 minutes before the scheduled time, and the networking and mingling began..  As far as I’m concerned, it was great. I hope you enjoyed yourself, that you got to make some new friends, and maybe created some memorable images.

I really enjoyed meeting and chatting with the people that I got the chance to talk with, and I appreciate all of you who made it out this morning. The weather was perfect, but began to get rather warm by 10 AM or so.  I’ll be sending an email to everyone in the WP group, but wanted to post something here.

Again, it was nice meeting all of you and I think we should start planning our next local PhotoWalk, but in a different locale!

Keep in touch!

Charlie

[[[  Friday, 17 July  ]]]

Tomorrow is the day and I’ve gotten confirmation from most folks who have registered, so we should have a good turnout.

With this many people, I’ll be asking for a volunteer or two to help out by taking a leader role…We may decide to split into a couple groups instead of all trying to stay together as one big ‘herd’ . We’ll see how it goes Saturday morning.

Don’t forget — take time this evening to charge the batteries and free up some memory cards! Pack your gear and be ready to head out early. Don’t try to bring too much gear… I will probably just have one body and two lenses, and a monopod, and a medium reflector set.

Remember you can submit two images for the WorldWide PhotoWalk competition, and one member of this WP group will be awarded a copy of Scott Kelby’s new book!

I have created a FaceBook group for WinterPark PhotoWalk:

http://www.facebook.com/photo_search.php?oid=103257109842&view=user#/group.php?gid=103257109842

Here you can upload additional photos of WP, and discuss the walk before or afterwards.

[[[   Thursday, 16 July     ]]]

I just found out today that Saturday morning in Winter Park will be more exciting and have more photo ops than I initially thought! The main shopping street, Park Av, will be closed to auto traffic - They are having a ’sidewalk sale’! Park Av will be a pedestrian mall with all the shops and restaurants spilling out into the sidewalks and streets. Should really add to the PhotoWalk picture potentials.

But, of course, that comes with some difficulties; There will be more competition for parking spaces, and there will be more crowds, but I don’t think it will be a problem, since we will be starting a bit before the street sale event starts.

Looking forward to seeing all you fine folks there!

[[[   July 16    ]]]

Here is a web page with instructions for uploading your photos after the walk:

http://worldwidephotowalk.com/uploading-your-photos/

If you are on Facebook, I’ve created a group for the Photowalk, so join up!

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/group.php?gid=103257109842&ref=nf

[[[    July 15, 2009 ]]]

Here is a blog entry by a Melbourne, FL  photographer, Terry Reinert

http://www.tkrphoto.com/2009/06/getting-the-most-out-of-the-worldwide-photowalk/

He has some good points as you prepare for the walk.

About the Winter Park Walk…

Come and Explore Winter Park with us. It is a really neat small city with lots of small shops, great architectural details, and oh-so-many great photo opportunities.

July is HOT so we will get a fairly early start, 8:30 AM. Bring some water with you!

AmTrack schedule has a train arriving at 9:54, so some of you might want to get shots of that.

We will finish up at the Farmers Market where the activity and vendors will be sure to provide some great images. It is usually a rather crowded area, so be prepared for that.

Prizes for PhotoWalk participants

There are over 24000 people worldwide participating in the PhotoWalk on July 18.. Scott Kelby and his merry band have lots of prizes  to be awarded for ‘Best of…’  images.  One person from our Winter Park group will be awarded a copy of Scott’s latest PhotoShop book so be sure to upload your best images after the walk. Here is the web page showing prizes that will be awarded to entrants from around the world:  http://worldwidephotowalk.com/prizes/

Scott Kelby has a blog entry with helpful hints about participating in the walk:

http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/2009/archives/5522