A deadline is a great source of inspiration

Actually, it's something I heard a couple of days ago in a Brooks Jensen's LensWork podcast and today I was able to learn in firsthand. In Mr. Jensen's case it was the necessity to produce some original prints for a new issue of his magazine. For me it was the Flickr 64 Challenge, a head-to-head photo contest I had signed up for about two weeks ago.

In this contest, the admins randomly (I assume) pit applicants against each other in a draw, two to a contest.  There are 32 brackets to start.  The contestants are to take a photo during a specific week (can't use an oldie but goodie), then post it to the designated group thread for a total of two photos to a thread. The public then takes 1 day to vote on each pair.  The 32 winners of the brackets are reseeded into 16 new brackets, and so on until there's only one.

I had never played this game before and completely forgot I signed up for it until I saw a post in another group's discussion, where a member was asking for advice on which photo he should submit. I rushed to check what the deadline was and discovered it was 1 hour away.  I had not uploaded anything this previous week, so I had no qualifying shots in my photostream, not even crappy ones (in case my opponent did not post anything and forfeited).  And I was away from my storage drive, so I could not upload anything I had shot.  So I typed up an apology and said I was defaulting.

And then Mr. Jensen's theory of deadlines as motivators popped up in my mind. What good is listening to all the great advice if I never put it to good use? Also, what good am I as a photographer if I can't make a stupid deadline in a game? What about working with customers, weddings, events?

So I decided to go for it.  Good thing I had my camera with me.  And a USB cable.  I have no software to process the photos on my work computer, but that's what Picnik is for.  Of course, by then 15 minutes had elapsed and I had only 45 left to produce a contest entry.  And so I did.

It was not the first or the last shot I took over the 25 minutes I spent outside, but somehow I knew it would work the moment I took it.  I then spent about 15 minutes looking at the 28 or so images, deciding on the one I knew I would go with from the beginning, uploading it and cleaning it up in Picnik.  I submitted it with 3 minutes to spare.

The voting is not over yet, but barring some massive reversal of fortunes, being up 22-8, I should survive the first round. I am sure there is a lesson in all of this, or two. One being, apparently, that it's never a bad idea to carry the camera around, even if you have no intent to shoot when you leave the house. And the other is the subject of this post.

Source: Experience, LensWork podcast episode LW0007