Friday Photo and an Instagram Challenge: Presenting Perspectives

A few years ago, (or what I refer to as BI, as in Before Instagram)  I wanted to create a fun daily reminder of personal gratitude. Because I apparently lived under a rock, I had never heard of Gretchen Rubin’s insanely successful book, The Happiness Project, and thus I declared a Happiness Project of my own. The goal was to take a picture every day of something that made me happy and post the daily photos on a Tumblr blog I created. After about four months, I abandoned the project to the abyss whereby all generally mundane ideas get tossed, and I moved on.

But since I love visual storytelling, I later fell hard for Instagram, the smartphone app that turns even the most banal of subjects into a photogenic work of art. Combine that adoration with the fact I knew I wanted to connect my love of photos with my love of storytelling and community, and my wheels were turning at high speed.

If you are an Insta-addict like me, you’ve no doubt come across various photography challenges. The most popular challenge I’ve seen on the web is the  Photo A Day Challenge, but there are countless others out there. Typically these challenges are hosted by a blogger or company as a way of broadening their fan base or getting their product in front of more eyes. The daily challenge usually centers around a particular subject, like food or clothes or weight loss or furry puppies.

While I don’t certainly begrudge any of those challenges, I’ve refrained from participating in any of them because the focus is typically on the subject matter or on the photographer her/himself. Personally, I’m more interested in photography as a way of seeing the world in new/different/unexpected perspectives and challenging myself to branch out from my normal point of view.

Thus, I decided to combine that desire with the communal storytelling functionality of a Show & Tell Instagram Challenge.

Since the word for August will be “Explore,” I would  love for anyone interested to join me in the quest see the world from as many perspectives as possible, every day, for 31 days. AND since I’m in movie-land with the creation of Show & Tell Productions (we’re in editing mode for seven mini-movies as we speak!) and summer in the US is all about Blockbuster movies, I thought it could be fun to add a cinematic element to the photographs.

In honor of July’s theme of Connection, I would be thrilled if you wanted to join me!

Here’s how this will go down:

Starting August 1^st and continuing everyday for the rest of the month, I invite everyone to take a photo inspired by one of the daily prompts I’ve listed below. And to help all the participants find each other, I vote that we use the hashtag #OnceUponAnAugust.

That’s it. So simple, right? You are welcome to participate as many or as few days as you wish. There’s no rules, just fun!

At the end of the month my goal is to answer:

How can we not just see, but explore the world differently through images?

Without further delay, here are the prompts for our Exploring Perspectives Instagram Challenge:

{Bonus! As I was writing this post, I read that the incredibly talented writer and photographer, Susannah Conway, is bringing back her popular August Break, with bloggers posting  daily photos of their choosing on their blogs and/or on her Flickr group. Why not multi-task and combine the two? There is no such thing as too much exploration!}

Who’s with me? Be sure and leave a comment below with your Instagram username and I’ll curate a community list!

UPDATE: Several folks wrote me to ask if they could participate if they don’t use Instagram. And the answer is… of course! I also finally figured out how to use a link-your-blog option on the site. The new and improved page for the Challenge is here: http://www.showandtellstories.com/2012/07/31/onceuponanaugust/ 

You might also enjoy reading: