It’s near the end of the month, so that means I’m broke and prone to moaning about money. It is an unpleasant habit I’ll admit – though I think it’s better than, say, public nose-picking – and it’s a habit made all the worse by living in London. It’s all to easy to use the money thing as an excuse for not getting out, and so losing that sense of participation and ownership which really binds you to a place.
A couple of weekends ago, I managed to snag some free tickets to Shoot Experience‘s ‘Shoot London’ event, something which was fun, and also really made me feel more connected and involved with London as a city, providing a neat antidote to my moape-ing tendencies.
Shoot Experience is a photographic treasure hunt; working in teams of four, you’re given a sheet of clues (10 for our event), and have a set amount of time to solve them and take one photo for each. Seven of the clues were ‘fixed’, in that they referred to a specific item or place, and three were ‘open’, thematic clues that you were free to illustrate as you pleased. At the end of the day, you submit your camera’s memory card to the judges, and there are prizes for each clue – pretty good ones, too, like books, watches, iPods etc.
It was a lot of fun. The weather was brilliant, which obviously helped, but the concept itself is a great one; there’s just enough competition to give the day some urgency and make you want to take good photos, and obviously, you’re in a group with friends, too. But it was the pinging around London I most enjoyed; it was exciting, even a bit liberating, because instead of skating along the surface, taking the tube to work, or just going to a shop, you were digging at the city, looking at it, really interacting with the place.
All our team’s pics are up on Flickr, here, and if you do a search on Flickr for ‘shootexperience’, some of the other teams’ photos are there as well, and some coverage has appeared on other blogs. Shoot costs, but you do get prizes – there’s a Flickr group which does something similar for free (but without prizes).
My partner (hereafter the Jesteress!) was so impressed she’s even started working with Shoot Experience on their new website. A great day, and well worth a go – there’s plenty of future Shoot events coming up.
The Wired Jester 