My friend Frederick Johnson (frederickvan.com, @frederickvan on Twitter, and regular on the This Week in Photography podcast; aka TWiP), arranges local photowalks regularly, and Sunday I went along for the photowalk on Treasure Island. I’m not one for wandering around snapping random photos, so I proposed the idea of an “assignment” that we could each follow, to give us some kind of goal. And it’s always clever to force yourself out of your regular comfort zone of photography anyway. We decided the theme would be color, scratched down a series of hues on little scraps paper and drew them out of my knit hat. We chose Red, Yellow, Brown, Blue (but no sky or water allowed), and Black and White (both on the same ticket). We chose to leave out Green, as it would be entirely too obvious. I drew last and got Blue, which turned out to be surprisingly plentiful on the island. Although I think I’ve fulfilled my pain-chip-photo quota for the year!
Having an objective really made it more interesting for me, and I think the rest of the guys agreed. And again it’s always fun to step out of your “normal” area of practice, to see what you can come up with. Here are the respective galleries:
- Blue (mine)
- Yellow (Egan Schulz)
- Red (Mike Greenberg)
- Brown (Frederick Johnson)
- Black & White (Ralf Weber)
I’m sure I’ll be on another one soon. Being the competitive types, I think next time we’ll put money on it and open it up to blind criticism. Fun! ;-)