Tonight was one of the funniest Vandigicam outings I’ve ever been on. I came up with this idea just before the weekend, something silly that served as a break from any sort of “serious” photography: a Photo Scavenger Hunt that I modified for the group.
A bunch of us met at Havana on Commercial Drive, and I mashed us together in a booth and declared us one group instead of competing ones. By the time we had drinks and nosh and chatted it was already nearly time for the scheduled rendez-vous at Rime, and thankfully Jason had the foresight to send us in that direction to see if there was anyone waiting for us. There we found Lynn and as the light was starting to fade, we headed over to a wall mural to take our silly photos. The pic above was the first one, and as Cliff says (click on the photo for Flickr comments), “It only went downhill from here. Packing a phonebooth, Kiddie gelato scoops, car cramming and familiar strangers. 
”
Ah, it’s good to be back Vandigicamming again. Everyone’s such a good sport!
One of the reasons why I chose Commercial Drive is because it’s sort of an “anything goes” kind of neighbourhood. I figured it was the least likely place to encounter anyone telling us to point the cameras the other way, and we’d find some eclectic backgrounds to shoot in. I came up with a list of 10 photo tasks that wouldn’t get us into trouble, fairly innocuous things such as squeezing into a phone booth. What we found was that even while we were stuffing ourselves into the booth, passersby didn’t even bat an eyelash at us! Like it was the most commonplace sight in the world to see people pack into a small space like sardines and take photos of themselves. We couldn’t stop laughing, which may have sent the locals scurrying away.
I blame the full moon for all this tomfoolery.
As Cliff mentioned, we did make a gelato stop before I got us to cram ourselves into the smallest car of our group (Janos’ Ford Escort) for a self-portrait. A random person in the neighbourhood where he parked asked us if we wanted our picture taken, and it turned out Janos recognised her from his days at the University of Victoria! So, not exactly a random stranger.
Did I mention there was a full moon?
It was Janos’ first Vandigicam meetup (what a first impression! “These people are MAD!”) and only Lynn’s second, so it was an interesting group dynamic. I love it when people are this game!
The others have yet to post their photos online. Until then, this is what I’ve got uploaded: vandigicam_tomfoolery
