Earlier this year I had never heard of Stockholm Fotomaraton but a contest to win tickets to it appeared on my Instagram – and I won. And on august 16 i participated and got hooked. I have already bought a ticket to next year.
So what is it? It is a photo contest where you are given two themes to photo and then at specific times get two more at checkpoints all over Stockholm – after each checkpoint you have about two hours to finish the ones you got. You can stop after 8 themes (or 8 hours) but the hard core participants go on for 24 themes. I chose to be soft core as a first-timer.
You can spend how ever much time you need on a theme but, and it is a big but, you must shoot the photos in order. That part was mentally kind of brutal – if you saw a perfect picture for the next theme you had to shoot the previous before that.
It is a contest – there are prizes – but it felt more like a community. Other participants gladly shared their ideas and experience.
Below are the photos I ended up submitting. Some I felt were desperate attempts but some I really liked. The whole experience really re-triggered my love for photography and the challenge of not being able to edit or crop was a good lesson in thinking things through before pressing the shutter button.
I didn’t win but got top 10 in the theme ”The hustle and bustle” which was my own favorite of my submissions.
Read about the event and book tickets for next year: https://www.stockholmfotomaraton.se/
