Recap from the Venice Beach photowalk

Put your arm around her already
View on Flickr or Buy this print

With a few days notice and a blog post the day before, it was nice to hang out with six cool photographers this past Saturday.

Over the course of the afternoon, we wandered down the boardwalk, basketball courts, art walls, skateboarders and drum circle.

Mike brought a reflector and one external flash in case we wanted to experiment with lighting. If you know me, I try to use natural light…only because I don’t own an external flash yet. With his help, I tried my best to capture the skateboarders doing flip tricks.

When they got less acrobatic, we left and continued down the boardwalk.

A man was taking a photo of his girlfriend. Mike coolly approached them – with me quietly behind him – and offered to take their photo. While Mike held the reflector a slightly behind them, I took one with their camera, then another with mine.

A lovely couple
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At the drum circle, a woman was dancing at the perimeter. Mike asked if we could take some pictures of her dancing, explaining where we’d be positioned. She was very cool with it, so we backed away to position ourselves while she resumed getting into the music. Mike held up the reflector and I snapped some photos using his external flash again. Then he did the same. Before we left, I gave her my card in case she wanted some of the photos.

Whatever comes natural
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Once sunset began, we flocked to the shore to capture the golden goodness dipping into the horizon. The lame thing about Venice Beach is that its shore doesn’t compare to Santa Monica Pier, in terms of cool-looking landmarks. I think we managed.

Most of us were hungry, so we had dinner at The Sidewalk Cafe.

While waiting for our food, I tried Mike’s Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5, then Jay’s Tokina 12-24mm f/4 AT-X 124 AF Pro DX. I want! I love that Tokina lens because the quality is just as amazing as its Canon lens competitor – for a fraction of the cost.

For your convenience, I’ve included links at the bottom of this post if you’d like to check them out and buy one.

Smile Nathaniel!
View on Flickr

I don’t upload all of my photos at once, but you can view all my photos from this photowalk at my Venice Beach (10/25/08) Flickr photoset. Everyone else’s photos should show up under the “photowalking102508” tag – as long as they tag theirs like I told them to. 😉

Thanks for hanging out, guys!

Photographers

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*** Would you like to know where and when these awesome photowalks occur? I’ll post the more organized ones here at All Narfed Up, so please subscribe via RSS or email! The Los Angeles Flickr Group discusses future meetups, too. And don’t forget to subcribe to Photowalking.org, especially if you’re not in the area!

Published by

Bryan Villarin

Bryan works at Automattic. Cat whisperer. Sometimes, a photographer and card magician.

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