Disposable Day: a New/Old/New Way of Seeing






We are excited to announce Disposable Day, the first long-term filmzblog community documentary project. The beauty of Disposable Day is that anyone can participate, regardless of your level of photographic expertise, and we hope to collect as diverse a range of experiences and visions as possible. 






For the less experienced photographer, Disposable Day invites you to seek out what is visually interesting about your everyday life, and asks you to show it to us in a way that is all your own. For more experienced photographers, Disposable Day challenges you let go a little, hush up your inner control freak, and explore this medium to it’s fullest.

Contributors to Disposable day include invited participants (people that we ask because we know them or know of them and think they are interesting and/or up to something cool) as well as awesome impromptu participants (anyone who has stumbled upon this project and wants to participate, yes this means you).

Interested? Great! Here is a general prompt, but feel free to do it your own way:



Prompt 

Using one disposable camera, shoot a full roll of film in 24 hours or less that illustrates your day, surroundings, or environment. Consider tiny details like your household’s toothbrush collection scattered across the bathroom counter, a larger picture like a building that you pass everyday that you find mysterious. Show us something that you think is beautiful or ugly, something that pisses you off, something that you love or that is important to you, something that makes you pause and go ‘what?!’

Disposable day is a documentary project, and while certain pictures where people are camera aware can be interesting, this project is primarily concerned with candid moments. Try to avoid standard snapshots of people looking at the camera and smiling. We are interested in the images that you see that go beyond the obvious, and that illustrate the novelty of your everyday life.



Tips

Light! The more light the better. In circumstances where there is a lot of light and you are taking a close up of your subject, or when your subject is faraway, but there is something in the frame that is closer, you may wish to cover your flash. You also might want to cover your flash if you are trying to take pictures of light through a window, or evening light surrounding an object. If your flash goes off it could potentially wash out the natural light. If it’s getting darker or you are inside you will probably want to use your flash.


Watch out for your finger! We have yet to have a disposable day roll where there weren’t a few nice shots that were interrupted by the photographer’s finger creeping in the frame. You won’t be able to see your finger through the viewfinder so try to be aware!

Worried about privacy? If you want to photograph a person, or people but for whatever reason you don’t think it’s a good idea to post their face on filmzblog, you can always just photograph part of them: their hands, feet, their eye, the back of their neck. Be creative!

Have Fun! Disposable Day’s ambition is to gather a diverse collection of images from a wide range of experiences, however we also hope that we can inspire you to examine your everyday surroundings with fresh eyes, to look around yourself and find excitement in what you have often considered mundane, to see something that you never noticed before. That is the documentary magic that we want to share with all of you. 


Submissions 

Okay so you’ve finished your disposable roll, what next?

Invited Participants can simply put their cameras in the envelope provided and stick it in the mail. Filmzblog will have your film processed and scanned. We will then send you your scans and invite you to write about them, and share any links or information about yourself and your projects. If you want your negatives returned just send us your address and we’ll mail them to you.

Impromptu Participants, when you take your disposable camera in to be processed be sure to ask your photo lab to scan your images onto a DVD. Choose 4-12 of your favorite images, e-mail them to filmzblog@gmail.com and tell us a little about what you photographed. Who, what, where, how, why? Any, all, or none of these things. For those of you who are a bit shy when it comes to writing about your images, keep in mind that a little context is always helpful to keep an audience interested in your work. When writing about your images, once again feel free to be creative! If you wish to include any links or information about you and/or your projects send those along to! We are always interested to know more about our fellow filmzbloggers. 

Please be sure that you read and follow our guidelines for submissions!

Once you have submitted, we will review your content and let you know if it’s a good fit for filmzblog. We retain the right to reject any submissions that do not meet our guidelines for submissions or that do not keep with the spirit of Disposable Day.

Now send us some pictures!

*All of the pictures in this post were taken by Lauren using a disposable camera

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