Back in the Game: Week One, Flowers

At the end of 2022, I joined a weekly photo game run by Kenneth Wajda. Each week there was a prompt, and the rules were simple: shoot, develop, scan, and submit a photograph matching that prompt. If you missed a week, you were out.

I lasted about ten months before I failed. In that time, the game improved my photography by leaps and bounds. Shooting intentionally, estimating exposure, developing my own film, scanning, editing in Lightroom: doing all of it every week cemented those skills in a way nothing else had. Then, like all things, life got in the way, and I missed a week.

I miss the game. I miss having an assignment. I miss taking the photographs, developing, and scanning the film. I enjoyed every part of it. So I asked my wife to revive it with me by giving me a weekly prompt, which I’d go out and shoot. For this first attempt, the prompt was flowers.

The game only requires submitting one photo, but developing a roll means developing all of it, so it would be wasteful not to shoot the whole thing. The rest become bonus photos, and these four are my favorites from this week’s roll.

I made all four of these with a Rolleiflex 2.8E on a tripod, using Kodak T-Max 100, and developed in Ilford DD-X.

I made this photo of sunflowers at Daniels Park. The flowers somehow took root in a rocky patch of soil between parking spaces. I did my best to frame it so that there weren’t any cars or other evidence of the parking lot, but I missed the stop sign in the background. Oh, bother.

The next three photos were all from the Botanic Gardens at Chatfield Farms.

The barn isn’t as visually interesting as I thought it would be when I took it. The colors were much more striking in person, and a lot of that is lost in black and white, so I think it would benefit from color.

The cactus is a favorite. I love the plants in the background, with their straight lines at different angles, and I used a very small aperture on purpose to keep as many of the spines and as much of the background in focus as possible. It worked, and the spines came out sharp. I don’t love that the identification signs are included, and I’d have preferred the highlights on the rocks below to be a little darker, but overall I like it.

The silo is the one I’m happiest with. It came out just as I’d hoped, and the elements aren’t cluttered. It looks like a nice image.

Anyway, these are the best four from the roll in my opinion. I’m pleased with them, but I don’t think any of them are “portfolio-quality” images. The important thing is that I went out and made photographs. Without the game, I wouldn’t have taken my camera and made any photographs. I’m more likely to bring my camera when I have an assignment, and I’m more likely to notice my surroundings because I’m looking for photo opportunities. Without an assignment, I might walk right past something beautiful because it never occurs to me that I might want to photograph it.

One of the things I love about photography is that there’s always something to improve, sometimes technically and sometimes creatively. You’re never finished learning, and that’s a big part of the appeal for me. The photo game helps me continue to progress on my learning journey.

My intention for the future is to rebuild a streak and keep it going. If I miss a week and fail, I’ll probably start over, as long as I’m enjoying it. This isn’t really about winning the game. It’s about going out and making photographs, and that’s what matters most to me.

Overall, it was a good first week back. Thanks to Kenneth Wajda for running the original game.

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