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Photo challenge
Jan. 3rd, 2009 10:17 pmThis "365 photos of yourself (often drinking a cup of coffee)" challenge has been mentioned several times in LJ recently. Here's some thoughts on the subject:
-- Sure, go ahead, post photos of yourself. But your other LJ posts should outnumber your photo-only posts, because unless you're Ansel Adams or Diane Arbus, you're using this challenge as a substitute for real communication and content. At the very least, your photo captions should be meaty and meaningful, or pithy but poetic.
-- You're going to be spending several minutes minimum per day to take the photo, upload the photo, code up the photo and the Live Journal post, etc. If you have that much tenacity and ability to stick to it on a daily basis, in the same amount of time per day you could do any number of activities that with greater long-term benefits. For example, you could memorize three words in a new language -- Spanish, Italian, Farsi, whatever. Spell them, define them, use them in conversation, really get to know them. Three words isn't too much to do in one day, and it would just take minutes. And at the end of the year, you'd know more than 1000 words in this new language. Wouldn't this be a greater accomplishment than having a collection of similar photos of yourself?
-- If you're taking a photo of yourself every day ... ask yourself, why? An experiment in personal discipline? An exercise in creativity? A visual biography? Following the pack? Discover your motivation, and try to bring this insight to the photos you take. (If your motivation is "a need for attention," don't kid yourself that your readers don't know your motivation already ...)
As a goal for the year, or a challenge to oneself, this photo-taking challenge seems, to me, to set its sights a bit too low.
Oh ... and if you take photos of yourself in your bathroom mirror, clean the mirror first. We don't need to see your toothpaste splatter!
-- Sure, go ahead, post photos of yourself. But your other LJ posts should outnumber your photo-only posts, because unless you're Ansel Adams or Diane Arbus, you're using this challenge as a substitute for real communication and content. At the very least, your photo captions should be meaty and meaningful, or pithy but poetic.
-- You're going to be spending several minutes minimum per day to take the photo, upload the photo, code up the photo and the Live Journal post, etc. If you have that much tenacity and ability to stick to it on a daily basis, in the same amount of time per day you could do any number of activities that with greater long-term benefits. For example, you could memorize three words in a new language -- Spanish, Italian, Farsi, whatever. Spell them, define them, use them in conversation, really get to know them. Three words isn't too much to do in one day, and it would just take minutes. And at the end of the year, you'd know more than 1000 words in this new language. Wouldn't this be a greater accomplishment than having a collection of similar photos of yourself?
-- If you're taking a photo of yourself every day ... ask yourself, why? An experiment in personal discipline? An exercise in creativity? A visual biography? Following the pack? Discover your motivation, and try to bring this insight to the photos you take. (If your motivation is "a need for attention," don't kid yourself that your readers don't know your motivation already ...)
As a goal for the year, or a challenge to oneself, this photo-taking challenge seems, to me, to set its sights a bit too low.
Oh ... and if you take photos of yourself in your bathroom mirror, clean the mirror first. We don't need to see your toothpaste splatter!
