I was over in Seattle to photograph a wedding a few weeks ago and the day after the wedding was the Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk. It’s an annual event wherein photographers the world over (900 locations) meetup and take pictures. I, along with my brother and sister in law, signed up for the walk that took place along the waterfront in Seattle.

Secondary to the sense of community that comes from such an event (as well as an excuse to get out and take pictures with the sole purpose of making art) is the fact that it’s also a contest. One winner s selected from each walk by its leader and that photo is submitted to the international contest. There are ten prizes awarded as well as one ridiculous grand prize.

I was lucky enough to have my photo chosen as the winner of our walk. It’s an unexpected honor because there were so many great photos submitted. I’m really not expecting anything beyond this (overall winners are announced Aug. 17th) because of the sheer number of entries—fingers crossed, though.

In case anyone’s curious, here’s how this photo came about.

We (my wife, my brother, and his wife) were wrapping up shooting and walking down to where the rest of the group was eating and I was straggling behind looking for things that looked interesting and I saw this wall and called to them to come back. My main idea was to try backlighting the wall and see what I could get. So I laid the flash behind the wall and pointed it up at the wall to give a nice gradient (there were a couple of times where people asked if I forgot about the flash because it was just laying there). I took some pics of my wife shaking her hair but they were blurry because I only had the one flash and had to rely on the ambient light/slow shutter to light her. There were a few interesting silhouettes but nothing outstanding.

Then my brother and his wife were done shooting and I gave their flash to my wife to hold up (high, camera left against the wall for dramatic lighting) and had the 2 of them stand up there and pose. To minimize the perspective problems caused by the wide angle lens I held the camera as high as I could and used the live view tilt screen to compose the shot. Click. By this time, with both of the flashes going off, a small crowd gathered and was watching and discussing the “professional photo shoot,” so (like I usually do when shooting in public) I grabbed a family that was watching and had them stand up there and took their picture. I then handed them a business card and they emailed me so I sent them a copy of their portrait.

My favorite part of the photo is the fact that it looks like it has a border that was added in Photoshop. But if you look where the subjects legs leave the photo, you can see that the “frame” is actually on the wall behind them. Also, the graphical nature of the photo is pleasing to the graphic designer side of my brain.

It was a lot of fun & I’m already looking forward to next year’s photowalk.

Click to see the winning photo as well as some of the other shots I took…