YAM Photo Scavenger Hunt
Every February / March, our YAM (Young Adult Ministry) group does a photo scavenger hunt. We are coming up on the time for our next annual hunt. It is a very fun time. Everyone is broken up into groups of 5 or so (1 driver, 1 camera, 1 mission - to document in photo form as many activities / places around town as you can in 4 or 5 hours). A planning team forms the "clues" - a menu of activities you have to select from to accumulate points. You perform the activity by getting your team to that place or doing that thing and then taking a picture of it. When we're all done, we rendezvous at a meeting spot and eat dinner and go over our pictures. You have not seen all the other teams' pictures, so it is a blast to see everyone's pictures and tell stories of our adventures during the day. It is one of the things I look forward to each year.
My first year, I was on a team with Shelley (female, live wire, "yeah, way to go fast" kind of passenger, another lady - I don't remember her name - she was more of a visitor, another guy - somebody I met (weird story) a year or two before at a Super Bowl party who was a skydiving enthusiast when at the time I had no interest in skydiving and thought is this for real, and Andrius. Certain times, I would look back (occasionally I was driving in reverse . . kidding) and see this poor girl flopping around in the seat - You have to drive fast to get it all done in time :) One time, I started driving before she had got in the car. I think I ran her over at one point . . (Looking back, I think I understand why she never came back). So I was the driver. And I was CRAZY. It was pretty good that year getting around, because I think we had a clear idea about a route to get all these pictures; everything went smoothly in terms of not having to double back or anything; it was a good plan. We had good collaboration on that one.
My memories were of the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame, always a fun building to pose in front of, and Andrius and I sticking things in our belly buttons in front of a UT science building. (You were supposed to get the most unusual item in your belly buttons - We used what we had at hand. I had a chess piece, my friend Andrius had glass!) When we finished, we called in to find out that our secret rendezvous spot was Mancini's Italian on Cedar Bluff. We had a great meal and went over our pictures on this TV with way a lot of people looking over each other to get a view of the pics. The great story from the first one had to be that some people found out where our pastor lived, went to his house, and got a picture with him and his dog. Very skillful stuff, very funny too the idea of several crazed young people arriving breathless at the pastor's house on a leisurely Saturday and requiring him to be in pictures. I was waiting to be mentioned in the sermon the next day.
The second year, I was the driver again, but I obeyed some traffic laws this time. Noelle, Doug, Jason Gaul, and I were the team. The clues this year were different: much more involved, more activities, a lot more possible options. There were a number of fun shots, from the guy we ran into in the mall with a huge, colored mohawk to standing in the front lawn across from Kroger on Kingston Pike, to dipping our feet in the creek off the Third Creek greenway to having to attempt to put on women's shoes. It was a real blast. We had a longer time period this go-around, so we got a lot of pictures. A scourge of conscience was trying to get the bald guy in Wal-Mart to get in a picture with us, and he is asking, "Why do you want me in your picture?" "Well, uh . . uh . . " The most outrageous thing we did was to do handstands in the center of WestTown Mall. Jason is handicapped, but he got up on his hands too with a couple of mall bystanders holding his feet.
During this go-around, I tried to adopt a different face for each picture to try to make it interesting. In one shot, I am standing in rigid "attention" mode, mimicing the police officer I was posing next to. People for some reason got a kick out of that when we pulled up the shot on our slideshow afterwards. We would zoom into the pictures and focus on facial expressions, etc.
The all-time most amusing picture was some guys, Jason Bruer and Tyler Arp, who got a great picture of this statue on Gay Street in downtown Knoxville. The horse has got its feet up. Jason got under it and acted like he was getting attacked, and Tyler motioned as if he were pulling the horse off him. It was a classic shot and very creative. Those two had a creative, some might say crazy, partnership.
We'll see what shenanigans we get into this year. One of our first shots in year 1 was in my shower with 4 people and we ended up in a boy's bathroom at Weigel's. The second year we found ourselves doing crazy things in Wal-Mart and rousing the fire department and getting into their fire engine. Who knows what lies ahead in '06?
My first year, I was on a team with Shelley (female, live wire, "yeah, way to go fast" kind of passenger, another lady - I don't remember her name - she was more of a visitor, another guy - somebody I met (weird story) a year or two before at a Super Bowl party who was a skydiving enthusiast when at the time I had no interest in skydiving and thought is this for real, and Andrius. Certain times, I would look back (occasionally I was driving in reverse . . kidding) and see this poor girl flopping around in the seat - You have to drive fast to get it all done in time :) One time, I started driving before she had got in the car. I think I ran her over at one point . . (Looking back, I think I understand why she never came back). So I was the driver. And I was CRAZY. It was pretty good that year getting around, because I think we had a clear idea about a route to get all these pictures; everything went smoothly in terms of not having to double back or anything; it was a good plan. We had good collaboration on that one.
My memories were of the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame, always a fun building to pose in front of, and Andrius and I sticking things in our belly buttons in front of a UT science building. (You were supposed to get the most unusual item in your belly buttons - We used what we had at hand. I had a chess piece, my friend Andrius had glass!) When we finished, we called in to find out that our secret rendezvous spot was Mancini's Italian on Cedar Bluff. We had a great meal and went over our pictures on this TV with way a lot of people looking over each other to get a view of the pics. The great story from the first one had to be that some people found out where our pastor lived, went to his house, and got a picture with him and his dog. Very skillful stuff, very funny too the idea of several crazed young people arriving breathless at the pastor's house on a leisurely Saturday and requiring him to be in pictures. I was waiting to be mentioned in the sermon the next day.
The second year, I was the driver again, but I obeyed some traffic laws this time. Noelle, Doug, Jason Gaul, and I were the team. The clues this year were different: much more involved, more activities, a lot more possible options. There were a number of fun shots, from the guy we ran into in the mall with a huge, colored mohawk to standing in the front lawn across from Kroger on Kingston Pike, to dipping our feet in the creek off the Third Creek greenway to having to attempt to put on women's shoes. It was a real blast. We had a longer time period this go-around, so we got a lot of pictures. A scourge of conscience was trying to get the bald guy in Wal-Mart to get in a picture with us, and he is asking, "Why do you want me in your picture?" "Well, uh . . uh . . " The most outrageous thing we did was to do handstands in the center of WestTown Mall. Jason is handicapped, but he got up on his hands too with a couple of mall bystanders holding his feet.
During this go-around, I tried to adopt a different face for each picture to try to make it interesting. In one shot, I am standing in rigid "attention" mode, mimicing the police officer I was posing next to. People for some reason got a kick out of that when we pulled up the shot on our slideshow afterwards. We would zoom into the pictures and focus on facial expressions, etc.
The all-time most amusing picture was some guys, Jason Bruer and Tyler Arp, who got a great picture of this statue on Gay Street in downtown Knoxville. The horse has got its feet up. Jason got under it and acted like he was getting attacked, and Tyler motioned as if he were pulling the horse off him. It was a classic shot and very creative. Those two had a creative, some might say crazy, partnership.
We'll see what shenanigans we get into this year. One of our first shots in year 1 was in my shower with 4 people and we ended up in a boy's bathroom at Weigel's. The second year we found ourselves doing crazy things in Wal-Mart and rousing the fire department and getting into their fire engine. Who knows what lies ahead in '06?
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