Photo Fantastico
I decided to participate in the Photo Fantastico Contest again in November. They had to change the contest time due to the fact that their original date collided with the election day and unfortunately I already had a lot of things scheduled for their new dates. Rather than totally giving up, I decided to still give it a try. The whole point is really to push myself out of the box and try new things so what’s there to lose, right?
If you are not familiar with what the Photo Fantastico Contest is about, I wrote about my experience for the last round here.
In short, you get 5 photo prompts on Monday morning and you have till Wednesday afternoon to create a series of 5 images, one image interpreting one prompt, to compete in the contest. So essentially it’s a photo essay mini assignment with a 48 hour deadline.
This time, I tried to work on conveying mood and emotions. I have come to realize that I am indeed a very logical person and it can be hard for me to know myself how I feel exactly let alone articulate my emotions. Usually this is not really too much of a problem but when it comes to photography, I do find it an obstacle for me to effectively convey a visual message. Eventually, as a visual storyteller, you want your audience to feel something. If I can’t even figure out how I feel, how can I expect other people to feel how I feel?!
Also, I tend to over analyze things. I don’t want to take things as their face values. I always ask—why is it have to be this way? There gotta be something more to it and what is it?! So I also decided to work on just my first instinctual reaction to the prompts instead of keep refining the ideas. So, just go for it and be done with it and move on kinda approach.
The 5 prompts are:
1.Worth Repeating
2.Dreamscape
3.Spot Color
4. Companionship
5.Such Great Heights
The first thing came to my mind was a story about my recent motherhood struggle—wanting to have some time for myself but always ended up with kids invading my privacy. At the end, as frustrating as it can be in the moment for me, I always found it quite humorous and myself filled with this tender love and appreciation for my children.
So I crafted this story that I slept in and had breakfast in bed. Then I was hoping to get a good soak in the bathtub to let time disappear. However, I obviously found myself in companionship with my kids. At the end, we actually all had a great time.
It was really hard to fit in the prompt of “Spot Color“ into my story so that prompt was definitely a struggle for me. But overall, I had fun creating something totally out of my comfort zone.
I decided to color grade the images with a cinematic tone and resized them to be like wide screens.
I was trying to have time as one of the hidden story line in there and thank you Ikea cheap $2 clock. While I was playing with the clock, I realized that it can create a really cool shadow with how light hit our bed so I definitely like the first image the best out of the series.
I tried to play with prisms and my gopro. It was definitely fun to totally just do crazy things and play with effects.
I did not end up winning this round but that’s totally ok. I definitely enjoyed the winners’ submissions as well as many other fellow participants’ work.
Thanks to mom and dad, I was able to actually hop in to the bathtub with the kids and we actually had fun. Well, at least before Bagel decided that he was done. The water level was a little too high for him and he kept floating up. I did not turn on the jet so I was able to use bubbles and a bath bomb in the tub. But with bubbles, the tub became REEEEEEALLY slippery so it was really hard to hold a good position while making sure that I didn’t drop my camera in the tub.
Anyways, I really love this concept of a creativity challenge—with constraints but totally creating for myself.
Actually this can be expanded to be a game for anyone I feel. You don’t have to have a fancy camera to do a challenge like this. We actually did a mini creativity workshop right before the official prompt reveal party. We came up with 5 prompt for ourselves and went on a 10 minute photoshoot using our phones. The photos actually were not horrible. So you know what, if I can create some fun in 10 minutes, I have no excuse to not be creative in life in general.
