Picture from Camera 308 of the Disposable Memory Project
The creators of one my favourite collaborative photo projects, the Disposable Memory Project, have dreamed up and launched a new idea for 2012, and this one seems just as awesome. It's called The 100.
The aim? To capture the a week in the lives of 100 people, aged between one and 100. By the end of the year, these snapshots of so many lives, from people of all different ages, scattered across the globe, will form a giant collage of life.
It's a little bit of social history documentation mixed with a smidge of creativity, which means that I love it. A lot.
Matthew Knight, the creator of the Disposable Memory Project, and his team are at the 'search' stage right now: they're looking for people who're interested in participating in the project. Unsurprisngly, the slots for people in their 30s are over-subscribed, whilst under-five and over-80 are a bit sparse. If you'd like to add your name to the list, or think that you know someone who might, head over to the website and sign up. You can be from anywhere, and definitely of any age!
The team isn't waiting for a full complement of 100 people to sign up before they send out their first cameras; they'll be doing that when they think that they have a fair enough spread to get started.
When participants have documented their lives with their disposable cameras, they'll return the camera to 100 HQ, where the film will be processed and the stories of their weeks, the snapshots of their lives, will be added to the project blog.
If you'd still like to get involved, but not necessarily by sharing a slice of your life with the project, you could always help out by donating a disposable camera to the cause, or by paying for some film processing. You can always spread the word, too, to complete the jigsaw of ages.
Head over to The 100 to join in the fun and help create a canvas of life of all ages.
If someone tells you “LOL learn how 2 autofocus, you dweeb”, you need to do 2 things: Live in the happy knowledge that whilst your camera might have had an off day, at least you know how to string a grammatically correct sentence together.
Ultimately, you are the photographer, and what you decide is how the final result gets done. Nobody can tell you what to do, and if you like your photo, then you’ve won one of the huge battles.
It’s the curse of all writers and poets: They spend months – years, even – crafting their masterpiece, and then nobody ‘gets’ it. They all ‘get it’ wrong. Tell you what though, that’s where part of the beauty comes from: If you are taking a photo which you meant to symbolise the innocence of youth, and your first 10 commenters feel it’s a strong commentary on, say, child abuse, then they are per definition right.
Remember that, just like you are not there to interpret your work, you’re not there to defend it either.
Technical aspects of your photographs might be objective: A photo can be accidentally over-exposed, blurry, or have some rubbish in the background which makes your photograph less-than-perfect. Once you start killing the technical foibles of your photographic work one by one (don’t go too perfectionist on it though, it’s not useful to end up deleting all of your photos because of every little detail), the actual creative work starts shining through, and this is where the worst potential for getting hurt comes from.