Photo challenge: HooHaa52

I’m doing it again.

Sheesh.

This will be the third run at the HooHaa 52, a year-long challenge I’ve run. This idea came from me wanting to do a photo challenge, yet not necessarily do one of the one-a-day challenges.

I’ve done the Project 365 and it’s harder than hell. I actually went for it again this year and failed after 200-plus days. With everything going on in my world, I wasn’t always up for going out and taking a photo. And I hate snapping something awful, just for the sake of doing it.

Originally, this HooHaa 52 was set up as an interactive photo challenge.

We use Flickr because it allows a free or pay account and it also makes it so people can chat with each other in the forum part of our group. It also makes it so the photos are in the same group so people can visit all the other images and, hopefully, comment on each.

In the past, not eveybody finished. I think that is normal with many photo challenges, for whatever reason. Somebody could get bored, or decide not to participate or not want to meet the deadlines or whatever other reason.

It happens.

I’ve made it a bit easier this year. We used to have it set up so we’d break it up and each participant would get a certain amount of weeks to post a theme. This, in theory, seems good. It means only the person posting knows what they will be doing until it’s time to post.

In previous years, that’s been Sunday at any time.

Unfortunately, people seemed to have an issue with the deadline. People would forget, or be on vacation. Often times, somebody would send me the theme, asking me to post it. There were other times where the theme didn’t go up until a day or two late.

That, in turn, made it hard for people to post the photos on time. We’d get a backlog and all of a sudden there were several weeks of themes in a batch. That made things slightly confusing. Though some people liked the “freedom” of doing that, it didn’t follow the challenge. Anybody can set up 52 themes and just have to finish them by the end of the year. The challenge is doing it on a deadline.

So, understandably so, we lost some people. And that’s fine. In the third year, I’m ready to see this be the challenge I had hoped it would be. We’re going to run it for 2013, making it easier in regard to keeping track of things.

Some of the things the challenge is:

• Each person submits 10 themes at the beginning. Each week, one will be selected randomly.
• The person has one week to take that photo.
• Then, during the next week, they post the photo. (so, week 1 photo will be posted while we are working on week 2 etc.)
• All the themes are supposed to be broad, thus giving everybody a chance to interpret the theme how they see fit

That’s basically it. I ask the images be tagged for each week so it’s easier to find the images if one wants to see one week’s worth. I’ll be lenient with an occasional late post if somebody is on vacation or something, but we’re switching it up so people can have a full week to post, so hopefully there won’t be any issues.

Hopefully, with all of these items set, everybody — including me — will be able to be successful in the challenge. Personally, I plan on trying to be a little more artsy (I received a Holga lens for the DSLR for Christmas and might purchases a Lensbaby Spark with some gift cards. I also want to use my Diana lens and maybe even the pinhole).

Right now, we have about 10 people involved. I like that it’s small. It makes it a little more intimate. We’ll take a few more, though.

If anyone is interested in participating, let me know. We plan on starting next week, so I’d have to add you on Flickr quickly. Also, you’d have to get me your list of themes ASAP. Please, though, if you are interested, make sure you’ll be able to go with the challenge and make a legitimate effort at completing each theme on time and finishing the challenge.

Remember, this is a challenge — so it’s not always going to be easy. It will take some dedication, but in the end, I think it will be a truly fun project. Note, if you are going to participate, you must be a member on Flickr.

Let me know if you’re up for it. If not, I’ll be blogging about it over the course of the next year, so you’ll be able to see how it’s going!

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com. Also, please “Like” HooHaa Blog on Facebook!