The Scott Kelby Challenge - 5/28/2010

[Rajah Sulayman]

Anyone else taking it this weekend? As luck would have it, I'm heading down to DC for the weekend and just this morning decided to leave behind my d700 and bag full of lenses & strobes, taking only my GF1 and second lens. Doing the challenge will complement it well.

To recap the link, the challenge is to basically spend the weekend shooting like you're using good old film. In other words: No LCD, 24 or 36 shots max, no viewing the photos within 24 hours of taking them, and you gotta print one. I'm gonna take it a step further and stick to one ISO (400) for the whole weekend, as well as shoot entirely in full manual (I normally hop between full manual and aperture priority). Hell, I may even just stick to the pancake lens (40mm equiv) and leave my 28-90mm (equiv) in the bag all weekend.

I think it'll be a fun little challenge, just the thing I need to put a boot to my creativity's ass. I may wind up cheating a little and "buying" a second roll of film, but I'll try to stick to one and, if I do get that second roll, I'll be sure to donate a second $13 to the charity.

Anyone else?

[lputman]

I'm not participating in this particular challenge but I have done this type of thing with another forum some months ago. It was quite fun.

[Rajah Sulayman]

Having spent the last six years shooting digital almost exclusively (aside from the rare medium here or there), it's easy for me to forget how spoiled I've become. I shot for years on a simple Nikon FM10 with just one 35mm lens. I didn't even have film auto-advancing, let alone all the bells and whistles that current cameras offer out of the box. And yet I made a lot of fantastic captures on that little thing; some of my favorite photos were taken on my humble FM10. Much as I appreciate the conveniences of modern cameras and recognize that they do help my photography in a lot of ways, it's sometimes nice to cut out all the frills and just focus on the photography.

[lputman]

Here's what I did for my particular challenge...
slr assignment - contact sheet on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

I think it is good to do this type of thing.

[Rajah Sulayman]

In case anyone's interested, here are a few photos from the weekend, as well as my own rambly musings on the challenge.

[Henry Wilt]

Just followed your link and left a comment there, but worth just saying again thanks for the insight.
I'd also like to say you have some absolutely stunning pictures on the site (which I will check out more thoroughly as soon as I can, I don't really have a lot of time right now as I'm at work).

[Rajah Sulayman]

Originally Posted by Henry Wilt

Just followed your link and left a comment there, but worth just saying again thanks for the insight.
I'd also like to say you have some absolutely stunning pictures on the site (which I will check out more thoroughly as soon as I can, I don't really have a lot of time right now as I'm at work).

Thanks for the kind words, Henry. I actually replied to your comment on the site but another thing occurred to me since then--one of the tricky things about quantity of shooting is knowing when to be prolific and when not. For every concert that I've left with a few hundred variations of the same shot, I have at least one photo shoot that I've left with nowhere near enough images.

I think I've managed to find a happy medium (which is probably old hat to most other photographers by now), which is to take a few images of a lot of different shots. In a concert, for example, unless I can come up with a healthy mix of different shots and angles, there's no need to walk away with 200+ images. But if I'm photographing my grandmother and trying to preserve as much imagery of her as I can muster, then I should aim for a wide variety of shots, with 2-3 exposures per shot.

Plus, imposing a "3-exposures per pose/scene/shot/image" limit on myself will force me to get creative with setting up different shots and images to capture.