Saturday, July 24th was the third annual Scott Kelby Worldwide Photo Walk. While there were three walks taking place in Phoenix, and one in Tucson, it was the walk in Flagstaff that caught my attention. Who wants to walk around Phoenix taking pictures in July, it’s 108 friggin’ degrees? Not that I need a reason to go up North to the mountains and pine trees, but walking around downtown Flagstaff in 70 degree weather taking pictures with other photographers makes for a great one.
The people and the equipment were diverse as expected. It was great talking with everyone about style, technique and gear. Chris, the organizer seemed to be a gear-head like me and while he looked longingly at my Canon EOS 7D, I coveted his Canon EF 70-200mm F4 IS USM zoom lens. The other payback is viewing everyone’s results. While many of us took similar paths and photos of similar subjects, everyone saw things a little differently. In some cases folks captured images of subjects I didn’t even notice. There were definitely a few photos that generated an “I wish I had seen that” or “I wish I’d have taken that photo”.
The photos I took from this walk also gave me more opportunities to experiment with HDR. I enjoy the look of HDR and believe in some cases it is a legitimate method of expression. Not all images, and subjects, benefit from HDR but as they say “art is in the eye of the beholder”. I have discovered that the HDR Toning Adjustment within Adobe Photoshop CS5 offers impressive creative control over single image HDR which can produce subtle results or ‘over the top’ effects. However, I usually choose Photomatix Pro from HDRSoft when I want to exaggerate HDR. I’m happy with many of the final results.
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