Wasted Continuum

Don’t miss the first ever OMGLGWATPAS. “What’s that?”, you say. It stands for “OMG, let’s go walk and take photos and stuff”. Maybe it won’t be the final name. Basically, I’m organizing a photowalk for next weekend (August 14th or 15th) here in the Twin Cities. The final date is still up for voting. It’ll be a super casual and unstructured. I literally just want to hang with some photographers and take some photos. All you need is a camera. I’m not organizing a photowalk for pros being that I’m not one so bring your DSLRs, your point and shoots, your film cameras, or your camera phone. All are welcome. Heck, if you wanted to just sketchwalk with me, that is fine too. It will probably be a small group. It will be late afternoon on either Saturday or Sunday. Location is also up for voting. We will be shooting until we feel like stopping. Like I said, super casual.

Leave a comment here if you are interested in joining me. Make sure you tell me which afternoon you’re voting for and if you have a location to suggest. I would like to lock down a time and location by the middle of this week so that people can plan for it. If you don’t want to comment here, you can find me on twitter at @JavaJunky.

Update (Aug 10): So with all the crazy storming this week, I think I’m going to set a solid time for Sunday at 4pm since it may rain on Saturday. I’m still taking votes on location. I have one general vote for Saint Paul. I’m going to toss out some possibilities: Downtown Saint Paul, Minnehaha Falls, Uptown, U of M West Bank. Feel free to add your suggestions. Vote here or reply to me on twitter(@JavaJunky).

Update (Aug 13): I decided to make Downtown Saint Paul the location for the photowalk. We can meetup in Mears Park in Lowertown. If you can’t meet at 4pm, contact me ahead of time so I can give you my number so you can join up later. You can email me at wil@wastedcontinuum.com or on twitter as @JavaJunky.

Meeting Details

Mears Park in Downtown Saint Paul (map)
4pm Sunday, August 15th, 2010

I get a lot of people asking me about my lighting setup in my photography. I find it hard to explain my setup because I don’t really have a single, rigid setup. Instead, I usually just apply the basic theories of lighting that I have learned over the years and apply them to the scene at hand. I’ll say it now. Lighting is easy. Let me be more accurate. The basics of lighting is easy and learning a couple concepts will get you along the way to mastering lighting your scenes.

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I have decided to start up my 365 project again on my Flickr. This will be my third. You can view my first photo on Flickr here.

Something exciting happened to me this week. I had one of my photos used in a Men’s Health article. Wednesday morning, I was contacted by someone in the creative department to use one of my photos from my Flickr stream. I have been contacted before by various sites about using my photos before, but never by a national publication like Men’s Health. By Wednesday afternoon, the article was up and my photo was included with my name right next to the byline. This morning I woke up to a pleasant surprise. I was emailed again. This time I was told to check out the front page of www.menshealth.com. I was a little shocked when I saw that the article my photo is featured in was the top story. So for the whole morning of June 17th, 2010, my face was plastered front and center on the homepage of the Men’s Health website. It was kind of surreal. It may not be as big of a deal as I make it out to be, but to me, it means a lot. I am a self-taught photographer and I have worked really hard over the years to improve myself skills and knowledge in it. Having one of my photos published by major magazine like Men’s Health in a way validates my work and efforts. Whatever it means, it did make for a good week for me.

View the full screenshot from this morning

I decided to enter one of my favorite photos, Center, into the Charity Print Auctions Flickr Group. The winning bid for this 12×18 inches print will be donated to Red Cross to help with the Haiti relief efforts. To enter, all you need to do is to comment on the photo here with your bid. If you do not have a Flickr account, you may email me at auction@wilchow.com and I will make a bid on your behalf in the comments. The auction ends on January 24th, 2010 at 23:59 CST. For more details and to bid, head over to the photo here.

I just found out today that my photo got accepted into the Fine Arts exhibit at the Minnesota State Fair this year. I have to thank my friends for supporting me, but the one I have to thank the most is my Liz. She is the one I made this photo for. She is the one that inspires me. If you are in the MN area at the end of the month, come check out the Fair if you can. If you haven’t been to the MN State Fair, you really should. It’s the second biggest one in the US.

State Fair information