March Photo Scavenger Hunt

Photo by Joe Shlabotnik

This is the old page for the March Photo Scavenger Hunt. Check out the new one: marchscavhunt.tumblr.com

Who wants to do a Photo Scavenger Hunt?

It’ll be just like the photo scavenger hunts you did as a teenager, except you blog the photos, or put them on Facebook, and you don’t take a whole lot at once. You take one per day. Only one. Try and get the highest amount of points.

Some rules:

• Photos must be posted on the day you take them (e.g. you cannot fly to New Zealand at the beginning of March, take a photo, then post it at the end of the month so you save your winning shot till the last possible moment).
• Post your photos to a blog, or public Facebook album. Stick the link to your blog or your Facebook album in the comments of this page (or the Facebook page).
• You can only post one photo per day (unless you are doing a series, in which case points are awarded for the series and not for multiple photos).
• Each photo can only fill one category.
• Taking photos of photos is not allowed except in the case where the challenge is to take a photo of a photo of a photo (e.g. the famous person must actually be in the photo).
• If you fail to post a photo on any given day you will lose 5 points.
• If you repeat a challenge you won’t get any points and lose 5 points.
• Points will be added up at the end of the month.
• The winner will in the title of “Winner”. Nikon will also give them a free camera*.

The pages and albums for those participating are:

Anthony Duke
BJD
Tom French
Jenny Howie
Robert Howie
James Noble
Ming Wty

Photos:

You in a different country from the one you were in on March 1st. – 50 points
You getting a tattoo – 40 points
You serving someone on a register at Maccas – 35 points
With someone famous (cannot be a politician) – 30 points
A photo with a good story behind it (tell story in description) – 30 points
With a train driver – 30 points
Sky diving – 30 points
You in a different city from the one you were in on March 1st. – 25 points
Studio Shot – 25 points
Reproduce a famous photo in the same location – 25 points
With a Politician – 20 points
With a stranger (must include name, age, and their favourite meal in description) – 20 points
Your Landlord – 20 points
A photo series – 20 points
Geocache – 20 points
Lightening – 18 points
Getting the number of someone you don’t know – 17 points
You with someone you once had a crush on (cannot be a current boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife) – 15 points
A religious leader (non-Christian) – 15 points
More than 10 people you can name – 15 points
With a bus driver – 15 points
With a Postie (on duty, friends of Kenny)– 15 points
3:33am – 15 points
Cross dressing – 15 points
Music Festival – 15 points
On a roller coaster – 15 points
With your dentist – 15 points
A family that isn’t yours (must be human) – 15 points
An old photo in the same spot (like this) – 15 points
Your face-painted – 15 points
With a fancy car – 13 points
Underwater – 13 points
Underground – 13 points
Somewhere up high – 13 points
11:22am Saturday Morning – 12 points
Sunrise – 12 points
Up a tree – 10 points
At the movies – 10 points
At the beach – 10 points
At a museum – 10 points
Clubbing – 10 points
Police – 10 points
At your old school – 10 points
Kissing – 10 points
With your Boss – 10 points
In the middle of nowhere – 10 points
A house you used to live in – 10 points
In church (or place of worship) – 10 points
Buying a coffee for stranger – 10 points
Reproduce a photo on Facebook – 10 points
Secret – 10 points
A photo of a photo of a photo – 9 points
All dressed up – 8 points
Giving flowers – 7 points
2:23pm Wednesday – 7 points
Directing Traffic – 7 points
Sunset – 7 points
On a roof – 6 points
Doing a hand stand – 6 points
Holding hands – 5 points
Rollerblading – 5 points
On a roundabout – 5 points
Beautiful – 5 points
Scary – 5 points
Instagram – 5 points
On a bus – 5 points
Swimming – 5 points
A family member – 5 points
Moving Picture – 5 points
Ironing board surfing – 5 points
With an x-ray of part of your body – 5 points
In front of a building, street sign, etc that has the same first/last name as yours – 5 points
On a train – 5 points
Somewhere dark (not pitch black) – 5 points
Somewhere old – 5 points
Somewhere new – 5 points
Pub – 5 points
On your way to work – 4 points
On the edge of the atmosphere – 4 points
Favourite book – 4 points
On your way home from work – 4 points
Backyard – 3 points
Straws up nose – 3 points
Playing a sport – 3 points
Long boarding – 3 points
At work – 3 points
Best friend – 3 points
Pet – 2 points
Dirty clothes basket – 2 points
Coffee – 2 points
Eating breakfast – 1 points
Where you sleep – 1 point
Yawning – 1 point
Foot – 1 point

Do you have any more suggestions? Put them in the comments.

Feel free also to comment if you think the points allocation is off or you want to clarify the rules. Or just comment if you wanna join the scav hunt.

*Probably not actually. Nikon don’t know I volunteered them for it. But if you win, write to them, tell them you won and see if they’ll give you a camera.

The Hunt’s Closing Remarks

For everyone except our international competitors, the March Photo Scavenger Hunt is over, and wasn’t it good fun?

Firstly I’d like to say thanks to you all for playing, it was super fun. I loved seeing all your photos, I loved the lengths people went to getting photos. I loved that people talked to strangers, stalked famous people, jumped out of planes, dressed up, got wet, and went to other countries all in the hunt for points. Your commitment to the hunt made me consistently happy.

When I created the Scav Hunt I didn’t expect so many people to play. But for some reason, 37 of you got on-board and went hard (mostly). I’ve had so many people tell me how much they were enjoying seeing your photos go up each day. I’ve also had many people tell me they’re playing next year. Yeehaa! 2013 is going to be bigger and better.

Our winner, Jenny Howie, did amazing! No-one else was so committed and went so hard to win. For nothing but glory she did all but one of the top 31 categories. She very much deserves to have the title “Winner” for the rest of her life. I’m hoping she gets it tattooed somewhere to celebrate.

I think there isn’t anyone who would disagree with me, when I say that by far, the most beautiful, artistic, and consistently high quality photos were done by Mark White. Every day I looked forward to seeing what Mark would do. I regularly found myself looking back through Mark’s photos just because I loved them. If you haven’t seen them, make sure you try and get a look. If there was a prize for best photography, Mark would win it.

I think a special mention should also be made for Tom Martin who won our first wooden spoon. -129 points is a solid effort in non-participation. Good work, Tom.

Well done to the people who managed to post a photo every day. Only 10 of the 37 people who played managed this. It certainly is hard work posting a photo every day. You guys did great.

I loved seeing how creative you guys were with your photos. While often people seemed to see how far they could press a definition of a category, the search for easier ways to do things lead to some great lateral thinking.

To all those of you who had a photo rejected, I appreciated you graciousness in accepting my decision and not getting angry at me. It made things a whole lot easier and less stressful for me. You were lovely even when things didn’t go your way.

Now I know that next year’s game is still eleven months away, but I’m already getting excited.

Here are some of the things I’m thinking about implementing:

–       More categories.

–       More points.

–       Bonus twenty-four hour rounds.

–       Higher scoring more difficult photos to make a perfect score much more difficult and leave the field open for longer.

–       More clearly defined high scoring categories to prevent liberal interpretations of categories.

–       More lower scoring categories you can interpret liberally to encourage creativity.

–       Creating a way to honour photos that are artistically impressive.

–       Creating a better way to centralise photos and tally scores. Maybe with a dedicated website. I can’t really make that though so I’ll need some help. Any IT guys wanna lend some skills?

–       Keeping plenty of easy categories for those people who get home at 11:30pm and think “Crap I haven’t posted a photo today”.

–       Posting the categories on 1st February for a month of pre-planning.

I have more thoughts but that’ll do for now. If you have thoughts, email me or inbox me. I’ll listen. I want to hear your ideas. We can make 2013 even better than 2012.

But before I get started on next year, I think we should celebrate this year.

So if any of you are keen, I’m gonna head to Bi-Centennial Park in Homebush for a Post-Scav Hunt picnic on Saturday, 7th April. We’ll hang out, take photos, eat food, through Frisbees. It’ll be great. I’ll stick up all the details soon. You should all join us. Even if you haven’t played, you’ve just enjoyed watching you should join.

That’s about all I have to say.

Well done. Thank you all for playing, encouraging each other, and posting great photos. Like I said, it’s been super fun. Let’s do it again some time.