How do You Photograph Ugly, how do You Photograph Time?

Over the past couple weekends, I’ve led two photo scavenger hunts. Participants in the hunts had 3 hours to photograph a list of 20 topics, such as: color, contrast, bark, soft, old, action, life, and ugly. The area I chose for the hunts was the Old Town portion of the Tacoma waterfront because of the wide range of possible photographic subjects (and, quite frankly, the nearness to my house). I think all the participants would agree, it was a fun time. Because there were two hunts, for two different clubs, and a few people members of both clubs, I made two separate lists with only a couple topics repeated on both lists.

Doing a scavenger hunt is a great way to push your photographic vision, to force yourself to think outside your normal “box.” Want to give it a try? Here’s a list of my favorite topics compiled from the two different lists I used over the past two weekends (minus topics specific to the place). Go someplace you think might have good photographic opportunities, give yourself 3 hours, and try to get a good image of everything on the list. Try for something different from your normal routine shot, be creative and push the envelope!

I’d love to see some of your results or hear your thoughts on whether this is a worthy exercise. Send me some of your results, and I’ll post them in my blog.

Here’s the list:

1. ugly
2. time (many people in the hunts I led photographed a watch or clock; try to think a bit more creatively and make a photograph that shows time itself)
3. soft
4. person/people (try to make it someone you don’t know)
5. shadow
6. light
7. layers
8. contrast (many options here, contrast between objects, contrast between light and dark, etc.)
9. curve
10. lines
11. life
12. action
13. negative space
14. color
15. symmetry
16. autumn (if in the southern hemisphere, substitute spring)
17. old
18. macro/closeup
19. photographer’s choice (photograph anything you want)
20. self-portrait

To give a bit of inspiration, here are a few of my shots for the above topics. (Disclaimer: for the actual scavenger hunts, participants are required to take jpegs, so the images submitted have no post-processing. The images below have undergone post-processing with Lightroom 5).

Ugly – I found this old bottle nipple stuffed with something green and shot it with a macro lens. It would have worked for the macro category as well.

Autumn – colorful leaves fallen onto an evergreen bush. I borrowed a fellow photographer’s black coat, which I laid on the ground, to make the black background.

Negative Space – it’s been foggy recently in the Puget Sound region, making it easy to find an image with lots of negative space

Old – these old foundations from a historic mill on the Tacoma waterfront made an interesting subject and had good light as well.

Photographers Choice – the pagoda in Chinese Reconciliation Park looked great with the fog and the fall colors

People – this couple (and son) asked me to take their photo with their phone, I took one with my camera as well.

Time – for me, this 4-minute exposure of some old pilings is an image of time, both for the calming effect the long exposure has on the water, but also the mystery of what the pilings were part of in the past