Guest blogger @Ianstreet67 gets into some summer photo fun.
So a couple of weeks ago I was chatting with the kids and getting ready for the summer holidays. Thinking back through the fog of time, my summer holidays consisted of 5 things 1) kicking a ball about 2) throwing stones into the river 3) lying on the sofa watching cricket 4) camping with the family somewhere 5) daydreaming. In fact I became so good at number 5 that the skills I developed in it as a child remain strong in me to this day.
The world is of course not what it was and in chatting to my kids about what sort of things they might be doing over the holidays, as well as all the usual stuff, we thought of coming up with a fun idea that would last throughout the 6 weeks. The kids, partly inspired by the photo theme in the Guardian magazine each week, came up with the idea of having a different theme each week of the holidays (eg Blue, Movement etc) and we’d all take a photo and see what we could come up with. They then suggested I put it up on a blog that I contribute to, www.intotheorchard.com, to see if anyone else was interested and if word spreads we could create a global summerphotofun project.
I also thought that it would be a useful introduction to the positive nature of social networking as it is a world that they are very much growing up in. It’s easy, I think, to hold the world of blogging, twitter etc in some sort of fear like a modern day bogeyman and I think that I have been guilty of this in the past myself but one of the reasons I’ve taken more of an interest in the last 6 months is to seek to understand it a bit better to help my kids negotiate their way. I reckon that if I fail to do this then I’m failing in my responsibilities as a parent, and while I still have lots of wariness about it I thought that this project could be a good way to start this engagement.
The six themes (one for each week) have been decided by the kids and the first one, Messy, has been running this week in the first week of the school holidays with the next theme to be announced tomorrow and then each Saturday thereafter. How it is working is that anyone who takes a photo related to the theme can tweet me @ianstreet67 and use the hashtag #summerphotofun so others can see. I’ve been retweeting everything and will be collating all the weeks photos on the blog www.intotheorchard.com with this weeks photos going up tonight (who needs an Olympic opening ceremony eh?)
I had no idea what would happen when we launched this idea, might just be me and my phone but the first week has been great fun with photos from Vegas, Norway, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and incredibly, from my kids point of view, Australia and it has been great to see the variety of interpretations on the theme and I’ve included a few here to give a flavour of what has come in.
It would be great if Culture Vulture readers could get involved and help spread the word and, depending on what happens perhaps I could get some of you clever creative people to help me create some sort of exhibition that would sum it all up at the end of the summer holidays? In my head we have a nice café, cakes, kids, good people, good vibes, good tunes and all the photos displayed or projected somehow.
This may all sound a bit wacky but even if no one else likes it our family will have a lot of fun with this. We hope that you will as well and that you join us for some #summerphotofun, don’t worry that the first theme is finishing this week there are five more, with the next one starting tomorrow.