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.
Thanks for organizing and being the leader for this photo walk. The Albany Bulb is for sure a cool place. I also enjoyed the food and beers at Spenger’s afterwards.
Sorry for not making it to Spenger’s … had to gas up and decided to just head on home after failing to find the place, haha. Had a great time exploring the “bulb” though; even though I only had maybe an hour of shooting.