Last night I went to my first Flickr Meet up. It was a hot donkey time at a kick ass location. The BigFoot Lodge is a bar on Polk street with not only a 15 foot Sasquatch but some other really great taxidermy and lighting ideal for night bar tripod shooting. It was great hanging out with a bunch of people who you could feel comfortable photographing and it was fun finally meeting some online people in real life. For my photos of the event see my Flickr meet up set.
Flickr truly has some brilliant photographers and some of those at the meet up have been some of my favorites for a long time. It was nice to finally meet Cate a super fun Flickr addict, who organized the event. Lizhurley whose work I greatly admire was there as well.
John Curley is not only a great Flickr photographer but he’s also an understated kind of big deal guy at the Chronicle as well. I hadn’t met John before but when I looked him up on Flickr I realized that he was the guy behind this shot, one of the best shots I’ve ever seen of the Bay Bridge.
Ropeboy (Sam Bloomberg-Rissman) actually works as a professional photographer and having sold my first photo recently I really enjoyed talking to him more about how he makes a living as a full time photographer. He had some great advice on working with Getty and Corbis. His work is really quite stunning. His Flickr site is here but you should also definitely check out his blog as well.
One of my most favorited photographers on Flickr is Aqui-ali who was also there as well. Aqui-ali, whose real name is Eddy, does some of the most amazing things with color that I’ve ever seen. We talked about his camera of choice (a four year old Nikon) and when hearing that he didn’t even shoot with an SLR it makes his work even that much more impressive.
I met a lot of other people but am embarrassed to say that I’m not very good with names and having met all of these people for the first time last night I’m fuzzy on the names. If you were there stop by the comments and say hello.
Although Flickr is less than a year old I’m told, it is amazing for it’s ability to in a very short time bring together a diverse group of individuals who share the common bond of photography. For year’s I’ve seen great photographs in magazines, in galleries, on blogs, but through the community aspects of Flickr it is great fun to finally meet some of these really great photographers in person.
One other thing that was very different about the Flickr Meet Up was that the male/female ratio was pretty much in line. Most geek dinners that I’ve been to in the past are dominated 95% by men in attendance. Perhaps photography is a more gender neutral sport than tech but it was a nice change. One more reason to pick up a camera guys and hop on over to the next Flickr meet up.
Update: Oh and then there’s Courtney’s great photo of the BigFoot Lodge sign.
Ah, the great thing about Flickr is that the contacts keep rolling in after the meet up (or I probably should correctly refer to it as the drink up). Former Yahoo! employee Jonathan Koshi was another Flickr contact that I met up with and had a great time talking to and getting to know. Jonathan goes by the Flickr id jkoshi and his blog is here. For a great thumbnail collage of bikes check up his Fixed Gear set.
Sugar Booger was also another Flickr contact that I met as well. Her and Cate are a great combo and bring a lot of fun to the whole drink up process.