Shoot London Photo Event

Participated in a photo event at the Tate Modern with some friends on Saturday. Each team was randomly assigned 4 photos to shoot, each photo corresponding to a word or short phrase. These would then be assembled in order, to fully illustrate a story. The story was not known until after the shoot, so the phrases were without context. There was a time limit of 3 hours to get the photos done. That goes by very quickly. No editing allowed, and only one photo per phrase.

Our phrases were:

"she yelled"

"this hard economic climate"

"Saffren Walden"

"goji berry salads"

At the end, they were assembled into a slideshow and displayed in sync with a reading of the whole story. The whole thing was interesting and great fun. I would definitely do it again. The participative aspect of it worked, but overall I don't think the end product works as art for anyone other than those involved. The photos themselves don't tell a story. Nor do they really illustrate the story. The lack of context is part of the problem, but that's what makes it fun when doing it and surprising when revealed. (The downside is that this can encourage people to go for cheap laughs, as with bad improv.) Trying to have every word of the story covered by one picture or another is a problem. And even for participants, there were too many photos. Something around 500 -- fatigue set in after the first 100 or so even for the most attentive of viewers. This was the first time they'd done this "story" format, so it will be interesting to see it evolve. I would go with half the number of photos -- same number of teams, 2 photos each, and not try to cover every word.