Through most of last year, I organised weekly lunchtime photo walks with work colleagues. The concept was simple enough - pick a day, send out invitations, then wrack my brains for a suitable theme. While simple enough in principle, the selection of a theme often caused me a lot of trouble. It needed to be accessible, achievable within an hour or so over the course of a lunchtime, and not too repetitive despite being restricted in the area we could cover in the time available. Sometimes, inspiration eluded me, leading to some topics which were rather mundane or which just pain didn't work well. Even so, someone always managed to find interesting ways to interpret the theme, and over the course of the year we produced some real gems between us.
I had to stop the walks toward the end of the year as my back problems caught up with me. But now, after surgery, I'm getting back into the swing of things and the walks are back in business. I'm determined to be a bit more adventurous with themes this year, but the constraints imposed by the time limit are still proving to be a pain. A couple of weeks back, I set the group the task of "minimalism" , and it resulted in some really interesting images. Perhaps I shouldn't worry too much about being too abstract, and go with the idea I had of choosing a word at random from the dictionary, and letting people be as interpretive as they like.
This week's word is "convergence"
