Looking for something fun to do outside with your children, friends or even just to motivate yourself? Well look no further than a scavenger hunt.
There are plenty out there if you look on the internet; however, I recently did one by iPhotography. Not only does it combine the fun of searching and looking for items, but also the joy of taking a photo of your finds. I am currently in the process of doing one of the iPhotography courses, so it was a good opportunity to have some fun while testing out newly learnt camera skills.
However, you don’t need to be doing one of their courses, or an amateur photographer to enjoy their scavenger hunt. Whether you normally just take photos for the fun of it using your phone, or are a professional photographer, this will suit everyone. And if you don’t have a camera, well you can still get out there and find the objects. You could even go about collecting a memory of it a different way, maybe with a sketch, or a rhyme, or even a video. The options are endless!
Scavenger Hunt rules
I decided to do this with my friend. We both live in different counties, so we needed to come up with how we were going to do the hunt, and show each other our finds. We knew we would be taking photos, so it was then a case of deciding the rules for the scavenger hunt. These are some ideas that we came up with:
- How many can you find in a day/a week
- Finding any three items on the list each day (no repeats)
- Seeing who could complete the whole scavenger hunt the quickest
- Going down the list and finding, in order, one object each day
We decided to go with the last option. With both having different work schedules, completing it the quickest wouldn’t have been fair! We also decided that we would limit it to 6 photos to send to each other. This way we weren’t just sending all our photos, but evaluating them and narrowing it down to our best/favourite ones. That’s one thing I like about scavenger hunts – you can set the rules and the boundaries so it suits you!
Searching begins
So armed with our cameras, off we went searching. Something I really like about this scavenger hunt is that it doesn’t just list objects. Instead, it makes you get creative and think outside the box. For example, for something upside down, my friend sent me a picture of a traffic cone the wrong way up. I actually believed she found it like that until she told me she had turned the cone upside down and then taken a photo! Trying to take a photo of clouds on a cloudless day also had its challenges, but thankfully some appeared in the evening.
I was actually doing a walk with my friend on two of the days. Needless to say, our walk on ‘insect’ day took longer than planned, with us looking for and finding some interesting insects. It is amazing what you find when you are properly looking at nature. This scavenger hunt has not only made me appreciate it more, but also learn a lot about it.
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I was quite impressed with our initiative on ‘wet’ grass day – which was a lovely sunny hot day! I knew I had a picture of some dewy grass from a couple of weeks ago I could fall back on if needs be. However, I thought I wouldn’t be believed that it was taken on the morning of a hot day! So instead, out came the water bottle, and the careful pouring of water onto the grass to try to get a droplet to stick to a piece of grass ensued. It was great for practising macro shots though!
Camera
I would like to add that I used a mixture of my Olympus E-PL8 and my iPhone! My friend used a Panasonic Lumix TZ95 and her iPod! But you don’t need fancy cameras to do the scavenger hunt – I got some great photos using just my phone.
If you are looking for a shorter scavenger hunt that is specifically for children, then click the link here for 22 best scavenger hunt ideas for kids. You may also like to check out some other outdoor activities I have come up with: – Walking from A – Z and Walking the rainbow.
If you are interested in doing one of the Iphotography courses, which I highly recommend then click here: Iphotography courses.
So get out there, be creative, have some fun and appreciate nature!
