Space­balls! — © Copy­right 2011 by William Beem

Yes­ter­day, I par­tic­i­pated in Scott Kelby’s World Wide Photo Walk at EPCOT. It’s an annual event where a group of pho­tog­ra­phers get together, go walk through an area, and take some shots. How­ever, the pho­tog­ra­phy is really sec­ondary. It’s a social event. You may get some nice shots or per­haps not, but the idea is to gather around folks and have a nice time. That’s exactly how my day went — it was great.

The first year I did this, it was in the dead of sum­mer. I joined a group in Mount Dora, FL and we had a rea­son­ably nice time. We also melted in the heat & humid­ity. For that rea­son, I skipped the event for the last cou­ple of years. This year, Scott announced a change of tim­ing to Octo­ber (expanded over a week­end, rather than a sin­gle day). That made all the dif­fer­ence in the world. Those of us in Cen­tral Florida woke up to nearly per­fect weather for an event like this. Our stan­dard heat & humid­ity was gone — the high temps were about 80 degrees and very com­fort­able. A front with dry air moved in the area to pro­vide com­fort­able walk­ing weather. Granted, it elim­i­nated the clouds, but that’s OK. It was more impor­tant to have nice weather for the event. I read that some folks in the Philip­pines showed up at their walk despite a typhoon. Now that’s dedication.

Our Fear­less Leader

Fear­less Leader — © Copy­right 2011 by William Beem

Our fear­less leader, Kevin Gra­ham, orga­nized every­thing nicely. In the shot above, he picked a very poorly lit place to give us our ini­tial instruc­tions, but it was com­fort­able in the shade with a cool morn­ing breeze. Then we trucked over to the front of EPCOT’s Space­ship Earth to have our group photo made by one of the Dis­ney Photo Pass pho­tog­ra­phers. Got some great shots, and then a late entry came and we gath­ered to do it all again to have a com­plete group photo.

So who was this late­comer to our party? Keith Barrett!

Update! Keith was not late, he was early. He was just early some­where else and had a hard time find­ing us.

Keith Bar­rett — © Copy­right 2011 by William Beem

For those of you who are active on Google+, you may already have Keith in your Cir­cles. If not, go find him. Keith is a pro­lific par­tic­i­pant there who shares a lot of won­der­ful mate­r­ial, but he’s also one of those “glue” peo­ple who attracts inter­est­ing folks from dif­fer­ent cir­cles and brings them together. He also records and broad­casts Google+ Hang­outs with Trey Rat­cliff, which are on his site if you’ve never been in one before.

A Fine Group of Walkers

Work­ing the Shot — © Copy­right 2011 by William Beem

A fine group of walk­ers — that title sounds like an aging group of punk rockers.

As you can see, nothing pre­vented our EPCOT team from get­ting their shot. Peo­ple got on the ground, they climbed on things. One man went inside a British phone booth (for entirely too long, if you ask me) to get shots from the inside look­ing out, up, down, and who knows what else. Our team would not be deterred from get­ting their photographs.

Of course, I did the absolute wrong thing. I brought my Think­Tank Sling-​O-​Matic cam­era bag and a tri­pod. The best advice for a photo walk is to go light­weight — carry a cam­era and a ver­sa­tile lens. Well, I don’t have a ver­sa­tile lens. I have heavy glass, which is what I lugged along. I also knew there were some HDR shots I wanted to get on this visit, even if not part of the photo walk event. On the pos­i­tive side, I used every­thing I brought, except for my flash. I think I could’ve used that, too.

We Met Inter­est­ing People

Cran­ber­ries — © Copy­right 2011 by William Beem

Yes, there was a gen­uine cran­berry farmer (or is it herder?) in the mid­dle of EPCOT. He was sud­denly sur­rounded by dozens of pho­tog­ra­phers who had never seen a cran­berry herder  farmer before. A nice lady from Ocean Spray came over and asked me if we were with the media, because we descended on them like locust. Once she learned about the photo walk, she gave me her card and men­tioned that they’re ask­ing guests to feel free to share their pho­tos on the Ocean Spray Face­book page. I redi­rected her to our Fear­less Leader, but in the end, no cran­ber­ries were injured.

A num­ber of other folks came up ask­ing me why we were all there, so I shared info with them. One of them turned out to be a gen­tle­man who attended a swim­suit work­shop with me a year ago and was look­ing for oth­ers who shared his pas­sion for pho­tog­ra­phy. Well, there we were.

The Pho­tos

The tim­ing of the photo walk this year coin­cided with open­ing week­end of the EPCOT Food & Wine Fes­ti­val. Naïvely, I planned ahead that I’d take pho­tos of food & wine. Nope. Didn’t get a sin­gle shot of any­thing edi­ble. We wound up the walk at the Chi­nese Pavil­ion for lunch and I noticed one of my table-​mates took a moment to pho­to­graph his meal before eat­ing it. Yeah, not me. Although I don’t care for most Asian foods (I’m a finicky eater), I was hun­gry and dug into it right away. My quick review is that I still don’t like Chi­nese food, but it doesn’t taste bad. It’s just not my pref­er­ence. At any rate, there are no pho­tos of food or wine here.

Part of the event is a bit of a photo com­pe­ti­tion. Folks from each walk upload their shots and the leader gets to pick a win­ner who, I think, gets a copy of Scott Kelby’s most recent book. That’s a LOT of books when you con­sider all of the dif­fer­ent places around the world that par­tic­i­pated. Kevin men­tioned that he’s look­ing for some­thing OTHER than the typ­i­cal post­card shot of EPCOT. That meant I had to spend time look­ing at the place very dif­fer­ently than I have in the past. It’s a bit of a chal­lenge to look at a famil­iar place and see what you’ve never seen before.

From the group win­ners, I think there’s another level of com­pe­ti­tion for more prizes. Damn if I know what prizes, as I don’t think I have any­thing prize-​worthy here at all. Although I tried to look at EPCOT dif­fer­ently, I don’t think I really got much that was inter­est­ing. I even had to fall back and do the post card shot of the mono­rail. I can’t help it. It doesn’t mat­ter, though. I had a very pleas­ant day meet­ing peo­ple, hang­ing out and shoot­ing some pho­tos. With that in mind, I’ll let them speak for themselves.

Tarps — © Copy­right 2011 by William Beem

Pink Tears — © Copy­right 2011 by William Beem

Mer­chan­dis­ing! — © Copy­right 2011 by William Beem

Oblig­a­tory Mono­rail Shot — © Copy­right 2011 by William Beem

Tequila — © Copy­right 2011 by William Beem

Tem­ple of Quet­zal­coatl — © Copy­right 2011 by William Beem

South Pole — © Copy­right 2011 by William Beem