There's this really cool group on flickr called Utata. The people that are most active in the group are really serious about photography. Someone presents a Salon every Sunday on a different photographer, the editorial staff chooses a photo every weekday to feature and write about, and challenges are presented for anyone to participate in.
One type of challenge is called Iron Photographer. These challenges are posted every couple of weeks or so, and always include three elements. As far as I can tell, two of the elements are objects you must include in the photo and one is a technical aspect to the photograph. The goal is to incorporate all three elements into a good picture. I've participated in a few before, but I kind of just slapped them together as soon as I thought of something. Many of the Utatans put a lot of thought, time, and effort into their submissions, and the results are highly creative and of high quality. It is really cool to look at how other people interpret some of the challenges.
The most recent Iron Photographer challenge, #65, included a button-having shirt, something you would find at a child's birthday party, and square format.
This is the first Iron Photographer that I have participated in because I had a good idea of what I wanted to do before I decided to do it. Before, I decided to participate and then had to come up with a way to incorporate the 3 elements. I knew that I had this wonderful shirt that had buttons, I knew that I had some leftover Happy Birthday napkins and a tablecloth somewhere, and I thought a good way to combine them was to have someone eagerly awaiting the delivery of birthday cake at a party. I have some medium format cameras that I could use to have a square format originally, but then I'd have to wait for the film to be developed, and I don't think those cameras work with my tripod. So I used my new camera (Fujifilm Finepix J10. I really like it.) and then Picnik to crop the photo to a square.
Done, and done!
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