Photographic Scavenger Hunt...

In April 2009 I ran a photographic "scavenger hunt" at Melbourne Camera Club.

I always enjoy wandering around with other photographers so this was basically an excuse to do that. It partly harnessed the 'set subject' idea from the competition world and put a light-hearted spin on it.

Unlike a normal 'set subject' competition, photographers had to rely on their wits and skills with a camera and couldn't resort to Photoshop or their home archive of images to find appropriate images to match each topic. They had to capture their images on the day.

Those lacking in imagination were free to participate but I developed a basic scoring system to encourage photographers to work as a team in devising ideas for each shot. One approach would be for teams to split up and then reconvene later to select the best image for each topic but that didn't seem very sociable to me. One topic - the team eating lunch - was designed to ensure the team stuck together.

A portrait of a stranger was required in order to get the team to interact a little with people they encountered. An individual photographer might find that task intimidating but with a team of photographers clutching their instruction sheet I thought they'd find it less daunting.

I avoided any specific geographical requirements - I could have asked them all to shoot a particular building but I didn't want it to be a race or a day that required a particular mode of transport.

Meeting at a pub at the end of the day seemed like the best way to keep the mood light. I wanted the group to interact as they compared notes/images from the day and the scoring was just to add a sense of competition to it. If formal competitions are for the more serious, mature photographers then this hunt was intended to be light and frivolous, aimed at more casual photographers.

I especially hoped that it might attract a few students from our recently-completed "Introduction to Photography Course". Camera Clubs can seem a bit intimidating for the newcomer so this would be a way for them to interact with other club members in a casual, relaxed way.

On the day we got some pretty bleak weather so a few bailed at the last minute but the dozen who participated seemed to enjoy the day.

The only thing I would change is perhaps aiming for a slightly later start time (eg. 11am) and trim it back to just 10 topics accordingly. We ran it on a Sunday which I'm sure excluded some who had other commitments but I knew that would probably happen on any day I chose.

A couple of our participants took the idea back to their own club and ran their own a few months later. As I hadn't participated in the MCC hunt, I entered that follow-up hunt with a friend and we ended up winning. I suspect that was because as instigator I had the best sense of what we should try to shoot.

If you like the idea and want to try it at your club, here are the documents I created for the MCC hunt for you to take as a template for your own hunt. They'll need obvious modifications but they should be enough to get you started. If you require versions in an alternate format (I have the originals as OpenOffice documents) just contact me and I'll pass on something more suitable for you.

• an overview of how the day will work (I handed this out on the day but it was also the basis for pre-hunt promotion)
• the form for the team to complete on the day (including the list of shots they need to take)
• administration form for the hunt co-ordinator (used to record the participating teams and their scores)