Two weeks ago on May 24 UTC (ie: May 23 5:00PM — May 24 5:00PM in my time zone) I took part in the 24×24 Photo Marathon. It was my very first photo marathon, and in fact the very first time I’d tried themes in my photography. Overall I enjoyed the new challenge! Frustrating in parts, but that’s what challenges do, I guess. It taught me to look a little more deeply into what’s in front of me and imagine how I could capture it, something which I’ll definitely carry forward.
Let’s go over each of my 24 photos: themes, outcome, and behind-the-scenes dirt.
Theme 01, “A very good idea” : Sign of the times, right? Plan B would have been a screenshot of the marathon itself.
Theme 02, “Black mirror” : thought about shooting myself reflected in a black car, but that would be weird. Fortunately the lighting at my desk was just right!
Theme 03, “Connection” : the only thing I don’t like about this view is that goddamn eyesore chandelier under Granville Bridge. Didn’t even notice that was there until after I posted the photo. Sigh. Maybe I should have gone with my first idea of shooting Burrard Bridge, whether from the ground or from Granville Bridge.
Theme 04, “Cat and mouse” : here we move indoors, since night has fallen. Good thing I remembered those cheesy socks I got one Xmas!
Theme 05, “Inside out” : easy-peasy silly.
Theme 06, “Solidarity” : I religiously (heh) follow Chris Steadman on the socials, and I really need to finish his book.
Theme 07, “To the left” : probably the leftiest thing I own, a copy of Out of the Closets: Voices of Gay Liberation (© 1972 by Karla Jay and Allen Young), a collection of revolutionary articles and essays from the very early days of the gay liberation movement. Bought second-hand at Little Sister’s many years ago.
Theme 08, “Dinner club” : good thing that Ace of Wands looks like a club, because I didn’t have any other ideas.
Theme 09, “Burst” : morning again! I went hunting for flowers, since I figured there wouldn’t be many fireworks available.
Theme 10, “Towards the light” : solar power FTW! My other idea was sunflowers, but we don’t have any around here. I also thought about shooting from a shaded location towards the light, but none of those photos looked good and it was too on the nose anyway.
Theme 11, “Key ingredient” : I think I kind of lost the plot here. The “key ingredient” was supposed to be light, but in hindsight I don’t think that came through.
Theme 12, “LOUD!” : HONKHONKHONK
Theme 13, “Transit(ion)” : The most interesting transit place was the (not yet reopened) ferry dock down the way. I decided to shoot its new, longer, ramp and the way it descends back and forth to the dock itself.
Theme 14, “Roomy” : as roomy as it gets around here!
Theme 15, “Thin red line” : turns out there aren’t many red things in the city, let alone thin red lines. I thought about the line of cones on Beach, but that’s orange. I did take a couple pictures, just to see what it felt like, and good thing this is not a traditional photo marathon!
Theme 16, “Pretty ugly” : formerly pretty pretty, now wilting-pretty. Kinda works? Maybe I could have zoomed in more, I dunno.
Theme 17, “Secret garden” : I don’t have a garden of my own, so I did the best I could.
Theme 18, “Comfort” : yes come through with the comfort food!
Theme 19, “Normal people” : to be fair I don’t know if these people are normal, but they were doing a normal thing so here we go.
Theme 20, “The favo(u)rite“: ugh I’m not happy with how this photo turned out.
Theme 21, “Rough” : Simple, straightforward. Done and done.
Theme 22, “Self portrait” : I’d already done a selfie for theme 6, so I had to kick it up a notch.
Theme 23, “Order” : I don’t remember what prompted this exactly. Maybe it’s just that the pencil case was sitting on my desk and I was all “why not?”
Theme 24, “Give meaning” : ehh, I lost it again, and then wasted time, and then panicked because it was almost 5:00. So here you go I guess?