A few months ago I took part in a photo game/contest organized by one of my Twitter contacts. The idea of the game (No Gear, No Fear) was to shoot a whole roll with a cheap BW disposable camera (the ILFord HP5+ camera). Eventually we would pick our four best photos and include them in the four categories for the contest: street, architecture, landscape, and portrait. A winner would be picked adding the points of the judges, blah, blah, blah… You know the drill.

I participated because I knew it would be a challenge and lots of fun, but I really wasn’t interested in winning anything (plus I didn’t read the entire list of rules and had no idea I was supposed to shoot four different categories!) So in the end, I just bought my camera online and took it along with me for a day in the park; not expecting much, simply happy to be out on my own and shooting.

The objective of this contest was to also get out of your comfort zone and try to obtain decent results with very simple gear. For me, it was just fun to play along. It was great to go back to basics and use a disposable camera – something I had not done in at least 30 years! And it was interesting to see what others could do with a $10 camera (here’s the link to all the albums of the rolls that were submitted).

When was the last time you used a disposable camera? If it’s been a while, give it another try! You’ll be surprised with results or, at the very least, with how fun this exercise can be.

Maite