Drool on the Frog

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Snap-Shot-City

Snap Shot City logo
MyGeek can find the coolest things on-line. He was telling me about a photography contest on-line that had something to do with the city you lived in. I tucked it in the back of my brain until I could sit down to think about it. A couple of days later I remembered and had him sent me the link the Snap-Shot-City. (He learned about it here.)

By their own definition, S-S-C is:
  • A worldwide photographic treasure hunt
  • That brings people together on-the-ground and on-line
  • It celebrates the cities in which we live
  • It aims to open eyes to the extraordinary; everyday; everywhere
  • By challenging people to become artists for a day
  • To create simultaneous fun for our extended social network all over the world
  • A good, good time
Fountains in Corpening Plaza, downtown Winston-SalemThis is how it worked. We registered as a team on SnapShotCity's web site. At 1:30 on Saturday, September 29, we were able to download the 20 topics for this year's photo shoot. We had from 2:00 - 7:00 p.m. to snap pictures around our town that represented those 20 topics. Then, we raced home and uploaded our pictures to the S-S-C gallery in each category.

Fire escape on the side of the Pepper BuildingFive hours seemed like a long time until we started trying to interpret the topics. We thought several of them were pretty tough:
  1. Oasis
  2. Man's best friend
  3. Youth of today
  4. What's new pussycat?
  5. Pattern language
  6. Odd one out
  7. Wrong side of the tracks
  8. Out of sight. Out of mind.
  9. Luck of the draw
  10. Splat!
  11. Silhouette
  12. Too little, too late...
  13. Step by step
  14. Up, up and away!
  15. Against all odds
  16. Time travel
  17. Hang in there
  18. Tourist
  19. Wearable art
  20. The writing's on the wallOld Salem employee in period clothing
It took a little longer than we thought to upload our pics. We had about 200 to sort through, upload, map and label. The ones I'm showing here are nice shots but they didn't make our cut onto the S-S-C gallery. It looks like there were about 99 teams participating. Typically you can find our team pictures, JohnRhon, on either the first or second page of each topic.

lone window AC unitMyGeek and I are adventurous and have lots of ideas but we aren't very daring. We don't like approaching strangers and asking to take their pictures so our operation was more covert. It meant we had to be more creative with our ideas... and careful. For instance, for "Youth of today" I wanted to take a picture of the massive soccer fields full of kids. But these days, people are suspicious of strangers driving by and snapping pictures of their children. There were also several youth car washes going on. In my opinion, you need to ask the youth if it's o.k. to take their picture. Driving slowly through the parking lot, leaning out the window taking pictures of youth washing cars just doesn't look right. But we both were too intimidated to walk up and talk to strangers so you'll notice the majority of our pictures don't have people in them!
Got Beer graffitiIt was a hot day and actually pretty stressful rushing around town trying to get all the pictures taken in the given five hours. It would be great next year to have a couple more people on our team to come up with ideas for the topics. At the end of the day, though, it was a real blast! Just like with SPS, seeing the pictures from the other teams is the big payoff. There are going to be winning shots in each category. The Judges are working through all those right now. You'll be one of the first to know if we have a winning pic. Until then, check out the gallery.

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