May 2014 Challenge Ideas

[chrishadden]

It is unlikely that I can post more than just a few days but I shall be watching participants from a hospital bed and from convalescence at home after hip replacement.
Thank you for all your good wishes.
Chris smiling at the moment!

[lynnh]

Boris... you know how I love Mono images. Jola, Water would be good because it is always available and gives many opportunities indoors and outside, drips, drizzles, puddles.
And I like my list of M.
Those are my 3 choices for May. We'll see what everyone else votes for.

[vneilknobbe]

Being on holiday and taking pictures just about every day, there is a strong chance that I will be able to participate in May, so my two cents would be to go with the idea tha Boris put forward and do Lynn's list in Mono.

[travelingrabbit]

I love the idea of a technical challenge and think that "Water" is ideal, be it a long exposure during the daytime using an ND filter; water droplets within our own homes; reflective images within a rain puddle, pond or river; rain droplets on a window, etc..... I'm back from vacation and finally able to participate in May!

As much as I love scavenger hunts, I think that there should be technical challenges as well. How else can we all improve our skills?

[emmelafoto]

emmelafoto wrote:
I second the idea of a more technical challenge. Scavenger Hunts or something like that, are nice to do, but - as already said - we have had many of them over the last year.
Maaike

Maybe those of you wanting a technical challenge should start your own instead of trying to change the format of this one. This has been a subject/theme based challenge for the past 5 years. I think we should be mindful and not make a challenge exclusionary to the regular members of this group. Some of us use phone cameras or PS. Some of us don't get out of the house/neighborhood except maybe once a month so urban/rural doesn't work well for a PAD. Night shots, I'm in bed by dark and there is nothing for miles to see.

Lynn, I am not trying to change the format. What I ment was, just as Scott pointed out, that we had quite a few Scavenger Hunt type challenges in the past year. I would like to focus more on one theme this month. Some good suggestions are made. "Water" of "Liquid" is one of the possibilities.

Looking forward to May.

[bdean]

I too love the idea of a technical challenge. I'll be traveling the first week but will look forward to 25 days of May!

[borisalex]

I think this challenges should be more creative, instead of technical stuff ( who cares) and WATER! I cannot sit on a stream with my tripod in the water for one hour!! Instant spontaneous photos, PLEASE!!! No ND filters and tripod, stes me back 300 $ !

Come on guys!!

Edit: My idea for May is "Moments"
Doesn´t need to be Mono!

[janicecd]

I'm happy to go along with any of the suggestions - Fluid / Mono / Lynn's list
But I'm not too technical.

[1designguy]

A little history about these on-going challenges. The Thursday Informal Challenge (what evolved into the Weekly Informal Challenge) began as a good idea to have something fun with a changing topic posted by Bev Harrison and Lee R. back in the Fall of 2006 with participation from a loyal and international group of PaDders. Soon after that (January 2007) it hit me that while I was often working on a monthly theme or method in my PaDding for practice others might enjoy also participating so the monthly challenges in this forum began and continued. The first theme was a B&W January challenge. We fumbled around and submitted new forum posts for each new day until we realized how this was "clogging" up the forum (just go back a page from the link above and see).

These picked up regularity in the Spring of 2007 with "Trees" in April and "Shoes and Souls" in May and pretty much kept on running forward. Prior to 2007 these were mostly friendly challenges with individuals messaging each other and joining in often with links to the others participating shown on our daily entries. That got to be time-consuming.

I just say this to point out that the reason this started was for the exercise and interaction. It may have evolved into something else (which is fine) over the last several years but the point was to pick something we could focus on for a month to work on and improve ourselves as photographers. Over the years I have seen people participate and inspire with everything from film, scanners, P&S, phones and DSLRs with amazing results. Again, one of the points of challenges is to stretch us.

I thought it would be good to throw this into the mix to better describe where I'm coming from in the original post at the beginning. I'm not trying to step on any ones toes. I have enjoyed these monthly challenges in all forms for a long time. I enjoy participating when the time allows. I see no sense in running two different since a BIG part is the interaction.

So...

What if the theme is "Water/Liquid"? If anyone wants to add a technical aspect (like Walter mentioned having done all of April) then that would be the icing on the cake. I would love it if we pick a theme and others want to pin point something even more defined (like "Water in B&W", "Water in Motion", "Water Abstracts", "Liquid Color" etc.) and share it with us as you start out on the month so we can watch, learn, share, encourage and comment throughout the journey.

Sorry for the long post.

[bdean]

I like your idea, Scott, of a monthly theme with an optional technical twist. It would allow us to experiment with a technique but not feel stressed out if we didn't like our result and posted an image based on the theme alone. Self-paced instruction is how I would term it.

[lynnh]

Sounds good to me Scott. Would you start the thread? Our New Zealanders are already in May.

[1designguy]

Looks like water/liquid gets the most replies. I'll get it going.