Pour Some Creativity Juice | Photo Fantastico Contest Experience | Arizona Documentary Family Photographer
Have you ever thought what you could achieve with 48 hours from start to finish? I remember that rush of adrenaline when I was a student working on my final paper and the deadline is fast approaching and I barely made it by a hair. Well, I normally wouldn’t recommend this approach to any student. However, after being stuck at home since January, I think some healthy dose of this kind of thrill is much needed by now. Conveniently, I stumbled upon this photography called Photo Fantastico three days before the contest started. I immediately signed up.
Unleash your most creative self in a contest unlike any other!
*Create 5 images in 2 days.
*Compete with photographers from across the globe
* Win prizes
*Be forced to create an incredibly creative photo collection!
Here came July 20th 10am, I hopped off my workout zoom call right into the clue(prompt) reveal party zoom call. Maybe it was the exercise or maybe it was that excitement for this unusual new contest I’m about to participate in, my heart was definitely beating fast. And we got our 5 clues:
Highs and Lows
Street Scene
AM/PM
Unexpected Visitor
How Fabulous!
Now I’ve got 48 hours to come up with 5 images that go along with these clues and are coherent within the set. Well, technically, 55 hours but with my kids nap schedules and buffering time for uploading my submission, I decided that I better have something ready within 48 hours. So it began!
First I started to brainstorm under each clue and see what it means. Perhaps the fact that it’s the first clue, I spent a lot of time on the pair Highs and Lows. It can be literal. It can be figurative. I have recently done a challenge with flying a kite; I’m working on a home project to document our pretty unique life and living situation; I am constantly trying to just tell my story as a mother of three young kids. These were my first reaction and I started to try to expand along these lines hoping to find a good cohesive line of story for the rest of the prompts. However, I couldn’t make sense out of these separate tidbits. I thought to myself, it would definitely be easier if I could first write a story and then break up the scenes into five segments.
A couple of hours had passed and I need to start to make some lunch for the kids. First change of course. I’ve never felt more inadequate in storytelling than this moment. I wish I had finished the Masterclass on creative writing and storytelling. Do I have time to go and finish the second half of that class now? Probably not. Precious time!! While lunch was in the making, my brain was definitely not in the kitchen. Surprisingly I did not burn any food. Haha. During nap time, I started to google “how to write a short story“ and “how to write micro stories“. Honestly, the more I read other people’s short stories, the more inadequate I felt in story writing. I started to listen to songs and musics hoping to find inspirations. I texted the clues to my mother-in-law and told her to come up with a poem or a short story with it and hoped that I could possibly use her creation as inspiration or at least for my other personal project. I also gave the five clues to my daughter and asked her to draw stories for the different clues.
I realized that she used each prompt to create an individual story but as a whole, these stories were cohesively her. Funny, imaginary and full of love. I recorded my daughter telling me all these stories actually. I gave it a thought that maybe, I could also have a series of stories that are not related but all with the same theme? Quickly I gave up on that idea because it was too much work for too little time. Maybe it will be a fun project on my own for the future to create a series of stories based on my daughters’ drawings. But I did come up with another idea—are there any kids’ short stories or micro stories? Then I stumbled upon this pot of gold:
The Lost Balloon
by Evaleen Stein
O dear! my purple toy balloon
Has flown away! and very soon
It will be high up as the moon!
And don't you think the man up there
Will wonder what it is, and stare?
Perhaps hell say, "Well, I declare!"
Or, maybe if it chance there are
Some little boys in yonder star,
And if it floats away so far,
Perhaps they'll jump up very high
And catch the cord as it goes by!
At any rate I hope they'll try!
This is a poem called The Lost Balloon by Evaleen Stein, a not so famous American female poet, included in the book Child Songs of Cheer published in August 1918. Well, with it being almost August and us being in a pandemic, I immediately felt drawn to the fact that there is this book called Child Songs of Cheer published back then. I looked up the book but there isn’t much information on the background information on either the book or the poet. I also found it rather interesting that the ratings on Evaleen’s works are not that great, according to goodreads at least. Nonetheless, after a century, I found this poem and was inspired by it. My kids enjoyed this poem along with her other works in the collection. On a side note, my husband and I have been talking about how everything is entertaining these days including books. We have been wondering what books from a hundred years ago looked like and how kids were reading/listening to stories back then without the constant screen time stimulation. Anyways, this one little poem just spoke to me on so many levels.
I decided to tell a story that’s adapted from this old poem with a spin of my kids current favorite made-up story of Bob the Alien. So I sketched up my plots and ordered my balloons.
My ideas: 1. Highs and Lows—balloons are flying highs and lows and that’s how much my kids love their toy balloons. 2. Street Scene—My girl lost her balloon so she’s chasing her balloon in the street. 3. AM/PM—the balloon got caught in a big tree and my girl will go look at it in the morning and at night.(Cue—my attempt to do an awesome astrophotography shot for the PM with balloon still stuck in the tree.) 4. Unexpected Visitor—Of course the comet! 5. How Fabulous—Bob the Alien turned the balloon into a star and brought it back! I had two evening gold hours, two mornings, and two nights to get all these shots in.
We have been having unusual cloudy days this week somehow and of course on the days of this contest, we didn’t have my favorite golden hour sunsets pretty much at all. My kids were already in bed but I peeked through the window and saw that slice of golden light shining, I grabbed my girl out of bed and did a few shots. She was not that thrilled because she was just about to get to this exciting part in the story Dad was reading. I was not feeling too happy about the images because we were losing light fast. So I called it good and send my girl back to bed and decided to give it a try to hopefully get a shot of the comet somehow through the clouds.
I climbed up to our roof for the first time. I had my phone out trying to locate the stars behind the clouds. Then I laid down and just stared at the sky for a long while, by myself. It was quiet. I still had all these thoughts rambling through my head but it was a nice quiet time without interruption from anyone or any devices. Eventually I just gave up because there were just too many clouds and I couldn’t see any stars. I probably should have just taken the long drive out of the city but oh well. I had a headache anyways so let’s just get some rest and we will have a busy day ahead of us.
I woke up late because of the headache I had the night before so as soon as I woke up, I jumped right in to shooting.
These were pretty good images to show that the kids were having fun with their balloons and they took the balloons everywhere they went. They were pretending that it were their birthday. However, it was not as good as I wanted the image to be. So I kept shooting. Gotta work hard and it’s totally ok to have a lot of not so good photos to get THE shot.
I was hungry. I was hot. Can you even imagine how much the kids were whining at this point? Yeah, we better get the kids some breakfast. I asked my husband to take a behind the scene photo of me taking photos and when I saw that photo, I had a new idea. (Btw, Creative editing and Photoshop are allowed in the contest but you just have to use the materials created within the contest time frame.)
Kids were fed so I got them out of the house again. To give them a break I just let them play in the backyard while I climbed onto the roof again. Man, it was not a good idea to climb up to the roof in Arizona in the middle of the day without wearing gloves or thick pants or good shoes or sunscreen. I was just burning. But again, it is just an amazing view from up high to watch my little kids running around. Yeah, now I started to regret that I did not get the drone I wanted. Oh well, climbing up to the roof is not that bad after all because I found a new angle.
Then I thought, hey, how about shooting from this angle with my girl looking at the balloon stuck in a big tree. I tied up a balloon in the tree and then asked(more like yelled at) my girl to go over to the tree and look at the balloon up there and I’ll just take one last photo and they can go back into the air-conditioned house instead of being baked in the scorching Arizona sunlight.
My girl was rather upset that she had to do one more photo so she did not want to look up to the balloon and literally just walked away back inside right after I got this shot.
But I knew that I just got THE shot.
Now, good thing is that I got the shot. Bad news—I knew that this would be the shot for the prompt of Highs and Lows as the opening of a story. With an opening strong, I felt that I had to keep the story more interesting to have a good climax. The balloon is already in the tree so how do I get a street scene? It doesn’t make sense to chase a balloon anymore. Maybe someone peeking from the street and saw my kids trying to get the balloon but couldn’t reach it?
I tried my Gopro but it was too wide. It was a nice looking view with my long lens…Well I would need to set up my camera in the street and use a remote to trigger it and duck down behind the fence to send my kids up a ladder trying to get the balloon. But then what about my AM/PM?! Nah. Not gonna work.
With lunch time fast approaching and me still running around our house covered by sweat, kids happily got promised with happy meals for lunch. Thank you nice sister from our church for sending my kids their birthday McDonald giftcards. Then I thought, hey, it would be cool to create a scene where my kids saw the balloon store and wanted a balloon but wish not granted! So we drove to the party city store and parked at different spots in front of the store with double blinker on and I took some photos. The we rushed back home. Well, I did take one more stop to get my kids each a frappuccino as a little reward on top of their happy meals. There is no shame to bribe my kids for photos. Haha.
In order to make sure that my story is actually smooth and I would not exceed the word count limit for the write up, I spent some time to actually write down my story that I was trying to tell:
“Hold the string, otherwise...” Lolo’s loud grunt cut off mom’s sentence. Lolo barely stepped into the backyard. Immediately her head dropped. Frozen for a few seconds, she then said,”It’s too hot. I’m going back inside.” After picking up lunch, Lolo rapidly tapped her right hand on the window.“There Mom! Only two dollars! Please!” Mom actually flipped the turn signal! She changed to the left lane and turned up the radio. “Can a red round balloon still turn into a star?” Lolo asked. Finishing up Lolo’s favorite impromptu bedtime story of Bob the Alien, Dad said, “perhaps Bob would catch the balloon when it passes by and check for you.” The next morning at only 5:30am, Mom woke up to Lolo’s loud squeal:”Look Bob came!” In the backyard mom saw Lolo dancing, with a gold star balloon. How fabulous!
I got the closing shots and sent the kids to bed. Now the last shot would be the comet shot to represent Bob the Alien’s unexpected visit. I climbed up onto the roof again. Now, we are still having cloudy days but we had a little clearer sky throughout the day so I thought that I could at least get something—maybe just some stars if not the comet. I mean, our neighborhood is actually relatively dark at night and we could have seen a lot of stars on a summer night. However, the luck was not on my side.
Now my awesome astrophotography shots were not happening for sure.What do I do? I thought. While lying on our hot roof, I thought that I could choose to indicate that an unexpected visitor, like a friend, came to deliver some goodies at the door including a new balloon. But that was just too cheesy of a story and just in a lack of some childish magic. It was getting late. I had to go to bed and get some sleep before my baby gets up in the middle of the night. Then I thought, what if I create a comet in my photo somehow? I tried to create a comet with flying by airplanes. Then it hit me…What if I just use my phone flashlight to do light paint somehow? So there I was, late at night standing on top of my roof alone trying to create a comet illusion with my phone flashing at different angles. Soon enough, there was a helicopter circling around the neighborhood with a beam down. It didn’t catch me in the spot light though, so maybe it was just searching for a criminal I thought.
I’ve got the raw images and I still have to edit them. I wanted to reflect that nostalgia feeling in my series since I was originally inspired by a poem from 1918. Also I wanted to make it less technical—meaning less showing how good a photographer I am as in parallel to the fact that Evaleen was not that famous or good of a poet back then but still the work made an impact because of the content rather than the technics. I had my series done for proofing at 2am, 15 hours before deadline. In the morning, I printed the 5 images out and pinned them to the wall to actually look at them in the old fashion way. Then I made some adjustments on the tones in some of the images and was happy about my collection. I submitted the collection a few hours before the deadline.
I told my husband the night after I submitted my entry:
Man that was hard. But it was really fun!
Looking at submissions from previous years, I was not expecting to win anything. This whole contest was mostly to push myself a little further on my creative journey. At the same time, it was just a good clean fun thing to do for myself when I have been stuck with kids 24/7 for six months now.
The judging and award ceremony was live on a zoom call the next day. That’s the thrill! Since I was not expecting to win, I was muted without video showing. I was putting my baby to take a nap when I was watching the submission collection slideshow. There were some real AH-mazing sets! By the end of the slideshow, I was ready to give my applauses to the winners and try harder next time. HOWEVER, guess what, they announced the first Best-of-Prompt winner for Highs and Lows and there I saw my name. WHAT?! I definitely did not expect that. I had to scramble to put my baby down in bed, unmute myself and turn on the video when they were trying to find out if I were there. That was actually really cool and unexpected that I actually won. It was really nice to hear what the judges had to say about what they liked my image and I thought that I successfully conveyed my message there. It was also VERY cool to be able to have my image in front of so many photographers I look up to. Honestly, I didn’t even remember what they said the prizes were since I was not expecting to win. The whole experience itself was worth the participation already and now that one of my images actually won, it was even better.
This is a super long post. I know I know! So if you have made it all the way through, wow, thank you!!!!
I really wanted to share my WHOLE experience as I went through this fun yet challenging creative process.
There are some very valuable things I took away from this process:
We are our own worst critiques so don’t be too hard on ourselves, especially as creatives. Or in life in general. We are probably better than we thought. Also, while we cannot please everyone out there, our work speaks to people in ways we might not even expect. Just like Evaleen Stein wasn’t that famous back in his days and she didn’t get extremely good ratings nowadays, her work still impacted me in a positive way. Hopefully I can just keep sharing my work and my thoughts, then one day my images or words might make an impact on someone’s life. That is good enough.
Creativity comes from outside but also more importantly from within. One thing I did NOT do during this process was to look at other people’s photos for inspiration. I wanted my photos to be totally mine. You can get inspirations from a lot of different places rather than someone else’ existing images and try to replicate. I read a quote once: “Inspirations are for amateurs and for the rest of us, we just get to work.“ Don’t get me wrong, it is VERY important to study other amazing photographers’ work. However, it’s more important to actually just get to work. If I didn’t climb up onto the roof again during the day just trying to experiment from different angles, I would not have gotten the shot that won the award. Sometimes it is pure luck but I also do believe that hard work warrants better luck in the long run.
Find a good community. It was just amazing to see how supportive everyone was during this whole process. All the submissions are amazing one way or another. Some are stellar in technical aspects. Some are pure awesome stories. Some provoke strong emotions. Some bring smiles to my face. To me, we are all winners. And it is TRULY a good feeling to be able to recognize each other’s strength and be happy for one another. Yes, this is a competition, literally. However, I felt more strongly about community over competition through the process. If you feel like you don’t belong to any of the existing communities, then create your own. People likeminded will find your existence valuable.
If you think life is boring or you are stuck, just say yes to something crazy and give it a try. Or go find a personal project and work on it. Just go and do something about it, something. Don’t wait for a better opportunity. I actually signed up for a visual storytelling workshop that will start soon so if I had waited, technically speaking I would have been better prepared to win. I’m glad that I didn’t wait till the next round to start. These past few days have been one of the absolutely highlights of the year. Especially now that we are facing all the craziness in this world, this little project was a nice escape from my other problems even for just a little bit. I was refueled.
There is always room for improvement. It’s kinda funny that the more awards I’ve won, the more I feel that I’ve got long ways to go. It’s just super humbling when you compare your work against other brilliant works. I am getting better and better at critiques on my own work. I know this might sound contradictory from my first point, but I think it is a good thing to know how to critique my own work setting emotions and attachments aside, from a pure professional way. Even with my award winning image, I already feel that I could make it even stronger with some tweaks. It’s just exciting, to me at least, to know that I still could get so much better in the future.
A lot work goes into amazing results. The longer I’ve been taking photos, the more I know that it takes a whoooooooole lot of work to become a great photographer. There is no shortcut. There is no overnight fame and fortune like winning a lottery. If I am not where I want to be, I simply have to put in more hard work to get there. Guess what, along the way I will fail. Many many times. I will fail miserably at some point, then again and again. But it is OK. It’s all part of the journey and part of the learning. Then I am better than ever before.
Well, that’s what I have been doing these past couple of days. Thank you for listening to my ramblings and my thoughts.
If you are into photography and you want to get some creativity juice flowing, you definitely NEED to check out the Photo Fantastico Contest for their next run in November. Maybe we will compete together!
