Shot by Marc Lebryk

A little while back, local shooter Marc Lebryk approached us about whether or not we’d be interested in helping light-up the local convention center for the Monumental Mayhem girls’ roller derby event. Now, astute readers might remember Marc from his review of the Radiopopper wireless trigger system, and a few of you might have met him at one of our photo walks. So, he’s a guy we know, and we worked out something with our own Nick Henry and rentals to get some gear out there for shooters, along with some of Manfrotto’s neat new DADO balls. And now, Marc has his blog post about the whole experience up. You should, of course, hop over there for the whole experience from a career-shooter’s view.

It’s time once again for Canon Days here at Roberts. If you haven’t checked, we have a bunch of highlighted products in the promos section over on our site (including a special starter accessory kit for just $99.97 with any Canon DSLR purchase).

But, if that’s not enough for you, and you can make it out to Indy or Carmel this Saturday, Nov 19th, you’ll find we have even more in store (get it? in store? oh, I slay me…) In both our brick-and-mortar stores this Saturday you’ll be able to meet the Canon reps, try all the cool toys, ask questions, get answers, and enter a few special promotional giveaways for prizes like a free PowerShot ELPH 300 HS (both stores), or a photo contest to win a Galaxy Tab Android tablet (made possible thanks to Canon’s new PIXMA Pro 1 inkjet printer, Carmel store only).

So, make sure to schedule some time this weekend to come out and see us, if you can. The festivities will happen from 10am-3pm at both stores here in Indiana. How about it? You going to come out and see us?

Well! Just in time for the event itself tonight, we’ve got all our open spots for tomorrow’s event filled up. More people are welcome to come join us and shoot with whatever you like, but we can’t guarantee we’ll be able to loan you a P7000 to try (and for those wanting to enter the special photo contest, all entries do have to come from a P7000, that’s how it is). For everyone who did get a reservation in, we’ll see you tomorrow at 6pm, Holliday Park, we’ll meet out in the parking lot area and figure things out from there. Be sure to bring your own SD cards for use in the cameras, yeah?

Nick and myself are pleased to be working with Nikon to offer you all a chance to come to a very exciting photo walk special. Nikon is going to come out and bring up to 25 of their top-of-the-line pro Coolpix P7000 compact cameras for people to borrow and use for a couple hours. There’ll be a short presentation at the beginning from their tech rep, a cool guy named Jason, to get you familiar with what the cameras are capable of, and then you’ll be free to grab one and roam around shooting whatever you care to for a couple hours. And then, oh yes, and then we’re going to have a photo contest for people who attended to submit to, and the winner will get a $100 gift card to their favorite camera store (no, us, sillies). All attendees will also get a special coupon from Nikon for $25 off a P7000, in case they decide they’d like to add one to their own collection.

This’ll make the second photo walk Nikon has made it out for, and the last one was a blast. I expect this one will also be great. Plus, come on, chance to win a gift card and play with someone else’s toys. You know you want to.

The details are:

Wednesday June 29th, 2011

6pm – ?

Holliday Park (6363 Spring Mill Road, Indianapolis, IN 46260)

As always, no cost to attend. We might have to reserve slots, though, because of the limit on cameras, so, RSVP to us in the comments, on the FB, on Twitter (@robertscamera) or email me at dmartin@robertsimaging.com. Let us know you want in.

And, be sure to thank Nikon for generously making this event possible.

Everyone will need to enter Union Station [huge red brick building] through the double green doors off Illinois Street.  The doors are located underneath the overpass which is north of South Street and just south of the Omni Severin; these doors are on the west side of the building.  They should not try to enter the doors on the north side of the building, underneath the stained glass window [this is across the circle drive from the Omni].  Also, they will not be able to get to the Grand Hall if they enter over by Cadillac Ranch.

If anyone is unsure where it is, there is no physical address, so they can just put the Crowne Plaza Hotel into their GPS [123 W. Louisiana St., Indianapolis, 46225].  If they are at the front doors of the hotel, they will just walk across Illinois Street and enter through the double green doors.

The closest / cheapest parking option would probably be either Pan Am garage or any of the mall parking.

If that’s all a bit abstract for you, I found the doors she means on Google Street View, which’ll also give you a hand approximate address and driving instructions. Click here to map it.

Now, communications: If you have problems finding us, try the following:

Tweet us at @robertscamera

Call Derek at 765-215-9249

And, if you’re still not on the mailing list, shoot me an email at dmartin@robertsimaging.com and I’ll get you added.

See you all at 6!

Before I get into details, I should remind everyone that if you want to be on our mailing list for this, send me an email at dmartin@robertsimaging.com and let me know. If you’re a Twitter person, you can follow either @robertscamera or @zedmartinez to keep up. And, there’s the Facebook page also. Those are all the ways you can keep your finger on the pulse of the next photo walk.

If you’ve gone on a photo walk and have a Flickr, there’s a group you should join and submit shots to here.

OK, now, onto the next walk. 2011 Photo Walkabout regular Cambrie Anderson has arranged for us to be able to shoot in the old Union Station / Crowne Plaza. All massive props go to her for making this one happen. This’ll be taking place next Wednesday, June 1st, at 6pm at Crowne Plaza. You need to show up at a specific place or you can’t get in. Per Cambrie:

Everyone will need to enter Union Station [huge red brick building] through the double green doors off Illinois Street.  The doors are located underneath the overpass which is north of South Street and just south of the Omni Severin; these doors are on the west side of the building.  They should not try to enter the doors on the north side of the building, underneath the stained glass window [this is across the circle drive from the Omni].  Also, they will not be able to get to the Grand Hall if they enter over by Cadillac Ranch.

If anyone is unsure where it is, there is no physical address, so they can just put the Crowne Plaza Hotel into their GPS [123 W. Louisiana St., Indianapolis, 46225].  If they are at the front doors of the hotel, they will just walk across Illinois Street and enter through the double green doors.

The closest / cheapest parking option would probably be either Pan Am garage or any of the mall parking.

And, for those of you who are more visual, she means these doors (picture links to Google Maps street view for more visuals and approximate address):

So, got all that? Good. Also, we’re sure Cambrie would love it if you’d check out her site at www.cambrieanderson.com, or follow her on Twitter at @cambrie_a

You can find pictura on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/gallerypictura and the event page for Dr. Weber’s talk on Facebook here.

Now, that map I promised:

Remember, 6pm. There’s a chance Nick and I might be late is traffic is being a pain, so, give us a few minutes either way, we’ll be there. Promise.

Photo walks are free to all, although you’re encouraged to grab money for parking just in case. You’re also encouraged to bring a few bucks to tip models when we have them out. And, this time, we do once again have just such a model.

Photo courtesy Caitlin Davies

Isn’t she just lovely? We feel she’ll bring a lot to your pictures. And, since it’s supposed to be nice tomorrow, I’m going to bring along my Quadra light set, and try and grab the one from Rentals as well. So, we can play with having two different light set-ups, or throw them all together for one sun-decimating 4 light set-up. We should be able to pull some serious gorgeous shots off. And, don’t worry about your gear, anything with 1) Manual controls and 2) either a flash or a hotshoe will be able to get in on the lighting fun. We’ll also be sure to have some time for ambient lighting shots for everyone who only has automatic.

The location for tomorrow’s meet-up is West and Washington, by the Eiteljorg. We’ll meet people there from 6-6:15, after which we’ll move on to the canal for my attractive backdrops. If you get there late, or otherwise have trouble finding us, you can tweet us at @robertscamera, hit up our Facebook wall, or do something so silly as call me at 765-215-9249

Tuesday’s photo walkabout was such rollicking fun, Nick and I want to do it again. And, since we found the museum grounds / canal area to be full of nice spots to shoot and hardly exhausted them, we’re just going to do it at the same place. And, right now the weather forecast for next week says Tuesday might be drop-dead gorgeous, so, heck, let’s just do the same time. Deja vu is always in fashion.

So, Tuesday May 10th, 6pm, meet at the corner of West and Washington by the Eiteljorg and then we’ll drop back as a group to the canal area. I’ve got a couple models I’m going to contact and see if we can’t get a new face out. So, the same rule applies, you’re welcome to come shoot for free, we won’t judge you. Nick and I know what it’s like to have no budget. If you can, though, bring a few bucks to help compensate whatever lovely model we get to have grace our photos.

If the forecast holds steady and it is a gorgeous day, I’ll bring along my Quadra kit, and if it’s extra gorgeous maybe rentals will let us bring out their pair as well and we can have some fun shooting with larger strobes this time around. I know I love working with my set when I can, although the rain has been making that irksome of late.

Anyway. Rain or shine, but boy we’re hoping for shine, next Tuesday, May 10th, 6pm, meet at Washington and West for a canal area walk. See you then, gang.