There is a growing movement with photographers everywhere to learn more about light, forget about all the gear, take that light source off the camera and use your brain to create better light in all photographs. Forgetting common fears around lighting or mixing flash with ambient light is the goal of the “Strobist” movement, coined by blogger and photojournalist – David Hobby.

I’ve been shooting with a loose collective of photographers in Calgary, who’ve organized themselves on Flickr (a social photography community). Lately I’ve been dreaming of bigger things for the Alberta strobist shooters, a group that seeks to create strobist communities beyond Calgary – one that fosters local meetups everywhere and comes together for large scale shoots in major centres.

This weekend was the launch of Alberta Strobist, a new Flickr community dedicated to off-camera lighting with small speedlights and studio light. Our first event is April 29th at Shutterbug, a local photography studio and is limited to 15 people. Participants will go through the basic course assembled by Hobby’s strobist.com called “lighting 101″, and we will follow it up with a larger group of more experienced shooters for “lighting 102″, and then on to a larger, collaborative shoot.

If you are attending “lighting 101″ expect to bring your gear and do some shooting yourself. Holding an event like this in a working studio provides us great access to models, gear and other photographers – so use the time to its best advantage. I will be speaking among others, and shoot tethered with my Nikon gear onto a projection for all to see. This is a class heavy on “doing” vs. “talking”, so if you learn visually – this is the class for you.

Cost to attend is $5, which covers refreshments and materials. I hope to update you further on the success of Alberta Strobist in the coming weeks.

As you already know, Google Maps has satellite views of most every corner of the globe. This view is able to climb over fences, dive through back alleyways, and show street-level views of most any place – from the convenience of your desk. I’m heading to Las Vegas in February and have been intrigued by the neon sign graveyard I’ve seen in photos on Flickr. A quick scan in Google Maps showed me the yard, the detail of the inventory, and a pathway to plan my shoot there – all for free.

 Flickr, an online photo community has a similar tool available called “Places”. Users are able to sort through photos via a map interface, viewing the resulting photo sets AND the locations they were generated from. The act of “geotagging” your photos places them in context of where you shot them. Searching through photos by content, in a map interface offers many different viewpoints for the same location.

Try it out, see what hidden gems are available for your next destination.