Sunday's spotlight - International Photo Walk

By guest blogger Pete

For a number of years now, Napp (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) has organised an international photo walk. Why the title has the word "professional" in it I don't know. Members number both professional and amateurs. I was a member until some 2 years ago but left because the members area became swamped with Adobe Lightroom rather than Adobe Photoshop. But if you are interested in photography (and haven't yet done so) you can have a look at what sort of things they get up to by logging onto photoshopusertv.com. But I deviate from my first sentence and must return to that.

The photo walk involves that, on a certain day, people from cities, town, villages and hamlets throughout the world go for a walk and take photos. Easy as that! The best photo from each participating group is then sent off to NAPP and the winners of the competition are awarded with some really good prizes.


I belong to a group called "Lincoln Photo Nomads". Membership is open to all and activities are arranged very competently by Richard, who founded what he refers to as "the most unorganised group of photographers ever". However, Lincoln Photo Nomads ended up as the Lincoln representatives for this competition and last Sunday some 40 or so members met together at the "Wig and Mitre" pub before setting out on the walk. The Wig and Mitre" serve a very good and reasonably priced cup of coffee - the pub is situated at the top of Steep Hill (next to Brown's Pie Shop), if you're ever in uphill Lincoln and fancy a coffee.


Anyway, after an initial briefing, we all separate and go our own ways for the photo walk. If we went as a group we fear that all the photographs would be dominated by studies of photographers taking photos of photographers taking photos of photographers taking photos, etc.

It's not easy to be original in your own city. In Lincoln we have many historical and attractive buildings but they've all been photographed by so many folk that's it's difficult to find an angle that hasn't been used before.


This year I made my way to Lincoln Castle. CCs have a reduced entrance fee so an investment of £2.70 seems potentially to be good value. "CCs", by the way, stands for Crabby Crinklies - not that I'm at all crabby and I haven't got a wrinkle or even a "crinkle". It was one of those days when the weather couldn't make up its mind - bright one minute an overcast the next.

I wasn't terribly thrilled with any of my photos so I decided that rather than send them in their original form I would doctor them up a little and see what results. I'll let you know when I'll be off to the States to collect all my prizes!


Lincoln is in chaos at the present moment.It's the height of the tourist season so the city fathers have decided that it's the ideal time to have the main arterial road into the city dug up. What is this essential work that JUST has to be done? Replace pedestrian road crossing lights and add some 25 yards of beige colouring on the asphalt. It took ten days to complete the first one an now we're well into the second. For anyone intending to visit Lincoln then let it be known that the High Street SHOULD be clear and open again by the end of November unless.....................


Keep on trying to get into Lincoln -- surprisingly, it is worth the struggle."

Editor's Note:
Hot off the Press.........Pete just found out that his photo - the first one shown here of Lincoln Cathedral, won the Photo Nomads competition and his photo now goes through to the final in the US! You can see it announced on the Photo Nomads blog here. Well done dad!