Photowalking – Thomas Hawk Digital Connection

April 21, 2015

Vintage Cars x Modern Sunsets SF Bay Area Photowalk This Saturday

Priime is hosting an exclusive photo event + photo walk that starts at a Sports Car Museum in Corte Madera, at the base of Mount Tamalpais, then moves to a fantastic vantage point to shoot above the fog from the top of Mount Tam.

The event starts this coming Saturday, April 25, 2015 at 4pm.

4pm – 6pm: food, photos, and photographers
6pm – 8pm: sunset on Mount Tamalpais

I’ll be making a few remarks about my own photography at this event, but am mostly just looking forward to hanging out with other photographers.

You can RSVP here, but there is limited space!

See you there! 🙂

October 24, 2014

Had a Great Time Photowalking Last Week at the Microsoft Store #MSStoreWalkSF

I had a great time out photowalking last Thursday night with a great SF crew around downtown SF. The walk was hosted by the always awesome Microsoft store in San Francisco (go check them out in the Westfield Centre in SF).

Thank you to everyone who came out for the walk. It was great to see old friends and also make some new ones. 🙂

We started out the walk in the center itself and got some nice photos of the great dome. From there we made our way up Powell Street, shooting some of the local color around Union Square and eventually made our way to the very top of Nob Hill. Originally we planned for the walk to take a turn down California Street and head towards downtown, but we were sort of distracted by the always imposing and always grand Fairmont Hotel atop Nob Hill.

We explored the lobby of the Fairmont and an elevator of us also somehow found our way to the top of the hotel with some of the most amazing views of San Francisco that exist.

After our fun at the Fairmont we headed back down California and cut through Chinatown to shoot this distinctive SF neighborhood.

Finally we finished up our way back up Market Street back to the Microsoft store where our ever so gracious host treated us to a spread of food and drinks to finish up an eventful walk.

During the walk folks uploaded their photos from their mobile phones directly to a OneDrive account and we got to watch them in full high res glory on the Microsoft store’s 110 inch LCD display while we refueled on artichoke hearts and chicken skewers.

I was super impressed with so many of the great shots that people got on the walk. If you want to see some of what was shot check out these photos on Flickr here.

I shot with two cameras on the walk. I shot with my trusty Canon 5D Mark III and on mobile I shot with one of the Nokia Lumia 1020 mobile phones.

All of the photos that are in this blog post were shot with the Lumia 1020. The camera on this phone is the best camera on any phone at present. The phone has a 41 megapixel(!) camera that actually shoots in RAW! It’s got a Zeiss lens and I was super impressed with what it was able to do. I liked that the camera could be used in 100% manual mode. Having more granular control over what I was trying to do with it was really helpful. You can pick this phone up for $49 with a contract here.

*Disclosure: this walk and post were sponsored by Microsoft and I received compensation for working with them on it.

May 8, 2013May 8, 2013

Come Photowalk in the Biggest Photowalk In History with My Pals Trey Ratcliff and Robert Scoble — We’re Giving Away Google Glass!

Next Tuesday evening, May 14th at 5:30pm, my good pals Trey Ratcliff, Robert Scoble and the awesome team at Google+ Photos will be joining me for an historic and truly epic photowalk in San Francisco. We think it will probably be the largest photowalk ever held in the history of photowalking — already almost 600 people have signed up! We will start the walk in Yerba Buena Gardens in downtown San Francisco.

Most exciting, one of our lucky photowalkers will win Google Glass. That’s right, a winner will be selected randomly — you must pre-register for the walk here and must be present at the end of the photowalk in person to win. We will go over the rules and details on how to win the Glass at the photowalk.

This is a free event open to everyone regardless of skill, experience, camera type, etc. Bring your Holga/Diana or your Canon 5D Mark III or your Rebel or your Android phone — or even that other phone that I can’t ever remember the name of 😉

We will be announcing more details between now and the event, but you won’t want to miss this fantastic San Francisco event. We will have a great afterparty too where we can all geek out about photography.

See you there!

January 10, 2013

Google+ Long Exposure Photowalk! Thanks to Chris MacAskill and SmugMug!

We had a great Google+ long exposure photowalk this past weekend.

Chris MacAskill and his team from SmugMug came out on Sunday morning and put together a wonderful behind the scenes sunrise photo shoot at the Golden Gate Bridge. Check it out!

February 8, 2012February 8, 2012

Flickr Getting Serious About Photo Meetups, Sets Up Corporate Page on Meetup.com

On today’s Flickr blog there is an announcement for two big upcoming Flickr photowalks. One is in New York on Saturday February 18th and already has 70 people signed up. The other is in Philadelphia on Sunday February 19th and already has 23 people signed up.

While these numbers are not as big as some of the photowalks that have been taking place over the past year through other sites, it is very interesting to see Flickr begin to get more active in the photowalking scene.

Even more impressive is what appears to be a brand new elegantly designed community page for meetups by Flickr at meetup.com. I played around a bit with the site and was very impressed — it’s much better designed than Yahoo’s own upcoming.com site and likely to attract much bigger participation in walks going forward — especially if promoted on the Flickr blog and through other official Flickr channels.

It’s also interesting to see that Flickr’s Head of Product Markus Spiering himself has organized and will be attending the two upcoming East Coast walks personally. Spiering is the guy who runs Flickr, so having him on the walks is a very visible way to show support for these kind of community events.

In the past I’ve been critical of Flickr for being out of touch with their users and the photo community. Earlier this year Spiering promised a “renewed focus” from Flickr this year and certainly beefing up community events, his own personal involvement, along with a page dedicated to these sorts of events by Flickr is a great way for Flickr to begin better re-engaging the photo community.

As a West Coast dude I won’t be able to attend these walks, but I love seeing this sort of community involvement from Flickr.

Today seems to be the first day that Flickr has blogged about the site — so far 142 flickr people have signed up from 33 different cities. It will be interesting to see what sort of momentum this site can attract.

January 14, 2011

San Francisco Photowalk, This Sunday at 4pm

Who: You

What: A DMU San Francisco Photowalk

Where: The walk will start outside the Civic Center Muni/BART Station.

We will shoot parts of the Tenderloin District making our way to Downtown to shoot the architecture and other street scenes.

We will plan on having dinner at the Embarcadero Osha.

After dinner we will walk along the Embarcadero towards the Bay Bridge and end up at the High Dive Bar along the Embarcadero for after shoot libation.

Why: To celebrate the arrival of our DMU Admin visiting from the Great Pacific Northwest Adameros.

When: Sunday, January 16, 4pm

You can get more information on the photowalk here (note: you have to have “safe search” turned off on Flickr to be able to see DMU)

August 16, 2010

Congrats to Ivan Villa For an Honorable Mention Award for Scott Kelby’s Third Worldwide Photowalk

Scott Kelby is out with his selections for the winners of this year’s Third Worldwide Photowalk that took place last month. He selected 1 grand prize and 10 honorable mentions from over 1,000 images submitted. Each walk’s leader submitted a single winner from their walk to compete for the prizes.

The image that I selected from our walk in Albany (above) was taken by Ivan Villa and it won one of the 10 Honorable Mention awards that were given. Congrats to you Ivan on winning in the contest!

You can find Ivan’s photography and design site here.

July 25, 2010

Had a Great Time Photowalking Last Night at the Albany Bulb

Thanks to all who came out last night for Scott Kelby’s Third Annual Worldwide Photowalk that we held out at the Albany Bulb in the East Bay. The weather was a bit chilly but it was a great evening to be shooting out there. We started our walk about 6:15 and headed back into the Bulb to shoot some amazing sculpture that local artists have sort of spontaneously installed there. We continued shooting around the Bulb, said hi to few local residents, and ended up at the Castle (this sort of man made concrete structure) where we shot the sunset. After the sun set a group of us headed over to Spenger’s in Berkeley where we had a few drinks and for some of us some dinner.

Overall I was pretty happy with how things went last night. I’ve led a lot of photowalks in the past, but this was the first time I’d led a Scott Kelby one. I thought Kelby and his team were pretty organized in terms of putting the basics together to help team leaders put on these walks. There were 1,111 different photowalks yesterday, all over the planet and over 33,000 different photographers participating. That’s huge!

Those participants who registered prior to the event will have until July 31 to submit what they feel is their best photo from the walk for the contest. Also if everyone who went on the walk could tag their images with worldwidephotowalk2010 that would be great. I’ve also started a group on Flickr for our Albany Bulb walk where those who came can post photos from the walk.

Several on last night’s walks were on their first photowalk. Others were photowalking veterans. It was great catching up with so many old friends and getting to meet some new ones as well. If you went on the walk I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. The Bulb is a magical place and I think we got it just right heading out there at sunset.

Some of you on the walk asked about the history of the Bulb. The following is taken from the Bulb’s wikipedia page:

The Bulb was created in 1963, after the City of Albany and Santa Fe, which owned the land, signed a contract for the disposal of construction debris. Lawsuits against the landfill operator brought the dumping to a halt in 1987. Following the lawsuit, the shoreline associated with The Bulb became part of The Eastshore State Park, while the City of Albany maintained ownership of The Bulb itself. Today, 99% of The Bulb is owned by the City of Albany, the other 1% being owned by East Bay Regional Park District.

There is a site albanybulb.com devoted to news on the Bulb here.

I’ve posted my set of images from last night’s walk here, I’ll be adding more to it in the days, weeks and months ahead. For those of you who are interested in doing another photowalk next month, Invisible Cirkus is coming to town from Miami and we’ve got another one scheduled in San Francisco’s Mission District on August 22.

July 2, 2010

Marc Silber Interviews Me for silberstudios.tv

This past weekend I had a great opportunity to co-host a photowalk with photographer Marc Silber down at the Peninsula School in Menlo Park. We put the photowalk together as part of a video interview that Marc was doing with me about my photography including lots of tips, techniques and comments by me on my own personal photographic style.

SanDisk is sponsoring Marc’s show and in addition to my own interview, Marc has 29 other great interviews up with some of the top photographers out there shooting today in pretty much every genre. The interviews are generally short, 5 to 10 minute in length and offer you wonderful insight and tips on how to improve your own photography.

Thanks again Marc for having me on your show. You can check out the video we did together here. If you have any questions feel free to post them in the comments and I’ll answer them there.

June 30, 2010

Albany Bulb Photowalk for the Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk, July 24, 2010

I’ll be leading a photowalk on July 24th at the Albany Bulb near Berkeley, CA as part of Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photowalk. The walk is limited to 50 participants first come first serve and has 19 spots remaining of the 50 at present. You can register at the link I just posted. I’ve set the photowalk up to start at 6pm to take advantage of the sunset over the Bay. We’ll shoot until about 8:30pm or so when the sun goes down and then head over afterwards to Spenger’s to grab some drinks or food.

I attended the San Francisco Kelby walk last year and had a great time. This year there are already 897 photowalks set up with over 18,000 photographers participating. After the walk photographers will be able to upload their shots to the Worldwide Photowalk website and be eligible for prizes.

The Albany Bulb is an interesting Bay Area shooting spot with great views of the San Francisco Bay and Bay Area bridges. There is also a lot of art and natural beauty out there. You can find out more about the Bulb at the wikipedia page for it here. Here is a set of my own images from the Bulb. Looking forward to hanging out with everyone who is able to make it.