Monday, September 10, 2007

Flash Your Friends

Tired of those 2 a.m. self-portraits?

Does the cat hide under the bed when it sees your camera?

You may be in need of some new subject material. And there is no better place to find it than a Strobist meetup. After the success of the Florida meetup last month, (nearly 50,000 views) lots of people are planning local events in cities and countries all around the world.

Now, you can easily search for a local meetup, or put the word out about one yearself.

(More, including video of the Seattle meetup, after the jump.)

There is now a drop-down menu on the sidebar to search upcoming seminars and meetups. The "Search Meetups" choice opens a new window and searches for the world "meetup," (which is not, in fact, an actual word) in the Strobist Flickr discussion threads. The results are returned as most recently updated first.

So if you are looking to meet some locals who do not think you are weird for scrounging black straws from restaurants, click here to search for a meetup in your area.

A quick check include meetups in the works for New York, North Carolina, Arizona, Georgia, London, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Baltimore/Washington, Chicago, California and Missouri.

And not to be outdone by the Florida folks, the Seattle contingent just had a meetup of their own, posting a video as little challenge for the next city:



I see several folks from the Seattle seminar -- Jeremy, Ted, Brittney in a bathtub -- looks like you guys had lotsa fun. (Why can't you do this stuff when I am in town??) The Flickr thread on it is here.

If you would like to make your event searchable from the main site, create a thread in the Strobist discussion groups (check for duplicates first) with the word "meetup" embedded in the copy. And please edit the thread headline to reflect the most up-to-date info -- confirmed date, location, etc.

(Nuked Assistant photo by Antti Lehtinen.)

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18 Comments:

Blogger MortonPhotographic said...

WOW! What incredible shots. And at first I was looking at the setup seen in the video like "I dunno, that doesn't seem so great..." "How is that gonna come out?" And then the shots came up... did I say WOW?!? Amazing, incredible.

But was it really necessary to violate the Panda?

September 10, 2007 3:25 PM  
Blogger MortonPhotographic said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

September 10, 2007 3:26 PM  
Blogger Ted Leung said...

Aw, c'mon David -- you were the one who was tired and had to go to be early. :)

If you promise to come to town again, I am sure that we would promise to do something like this during that time...

September 10, 2007 4:11 PM  
Blogger Ted Leung said...

Oh, and this is the link to my flickr stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/twleung/

September 10, 2007 4:13 PM  
Blogger Jeff said...

Dang it! I can't believe I keep missing these things.

I was so inspired by your seminar it will be great to keep doing activities and keep that inspiration going.

It looked like a blast.

September 10, 2007 4:28 PM  
Blogger M Hunt said...

And what was the music???

Great shots but the Music!

September 10, 2007 4:32 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Is that woman humping a giant panda?

September 10, 2007 4:49 PM  
Blogger reinier said...

poor panda....

/*sarcasm*/

That looks cool but, I'm wondering.. I live in the Netherlands and I'm sure similar things are organized here too, but I'm way too inexperienced as you can see on my flickr page :) [http://flickr.com/photos/8468678@N08/]

But I'm affraid I'll just look like a fool going to those meetings, I really don't know how to light things or advise models or whatsoever. For people in my case generally speaking; can we go to those meetings and just copy the setup from the (Semi)pro's, ask them of course, and shoot side by side with them or are we just annoying and in the way :)?

I'm really a bit unsure about this, and of course, it also depends on the people you're with.

Thanks for reading and David, time to register "Strobist" as a trademark don't you think ;)

September 10, 2007 5:12 PM  
Blogger Michelle said...

How on earth did people manage to keep control of their PW's? Draw straws for which channel? At the end of the day, I'm envious! That was some cool shooting.

September 10, 2007 5:19 PM  
Blogger mhakola said...

Funny short story about the Seattle Strobist group. I was shooting the AARP convention here in Boston this past weekend and they(?) had someone doing a little presentation on what flickr. Apparently Strobist tags carry some crazy weight pn flickr because he picked some generic tag and the SeattleStrobist group came up. His response? "Well, I don't know exactly what this 'strobist' thing is but it seems to come up quite a lot."

September 10, 2007 5:28 PM  
Blogger Nimai Wong said...

Have you considered using Upcoming.org? Might be a good way to centralize and organize Strobist meets around the world. And since it's merging with Yahoo, it works out pretty well! I was going to start a group, but thought it be best if you be the moderator. :)

September 10, 2007 5:36 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

That music made it look like a 1989 Dungeons and Dragons convention (this year's theme "Silence of the Lambs")
Amazing no one tripped over a 16-sided dice!
But seriously, great shots and it looks like a lot of fun!

September 10, 2007 6:19 PM  
Blogger Nicholaus Haskins said...

Roger that, big can of worms that was opened there!

Good luck to everyone setting up meets!

Nick Haskins

September 10, 2007 6:45 PM  
Blogger Ted Leung said...

renier,

We ended up with one room with people who didn't have much experience, and people are generally good about being helpful. We are trying to make it a point to have a range of activities so that both beginner and advanced folks get something out of it.

FWIW, none of the shooters from that meetups are pro photographers.

michelle:
It looks like chaos, but there were only 10-12 photographers, and 4 setups, which is enough to keep the channels straight. More problematic was multiple people shooting the same setup - but that was actually easy to coordinate.

September 10, 2007 7:56 PM  
Blogger carpeicthus said...

Hot damn, that looks like fun. I know some models and an MUA or two who would be game for an NYC meet-up. We can't let a village like Seattle out-fun us.

September 10, 2007 9:56 PM  
Blogger cliquephotodesign said...

Hey I'm located over in the berkshires "the other side of the state. Is there any chance we can set it up in the middle of the state Springfield or Worcester where ever. How bout an old warehouse, train station, if its in october an old haunted house. Centrally located might increase the turn out. Talk to Greg at Amvona.com and he might sponsor the Coffee and Donuts.

September 10, 2007 10:19 PM  
Blogger Charlie said...

hmm, interesting.

September 11, 2007 3:47 PM  
Anonymous ogalthorpe said...

Strobey said:

(Why can't you do this stuff when I am in town??)


Dude. There are planes leaving every day from there to here. I'm currently working on putting together the bestest most fantastical seattle strobist happening yet (we call them happenings, or at least I do. I love the '60's association of cool and laid-backness).

you want i should send you an invitation? We will have maps. Eye patches are optional, but should you choose to wear one you might be mistaken for Dale Chihuly around these parts. maybe.

September 11, 2007 4:04 PM  

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