38th Scavenger Hunt

Published on by Balise

I do not have much in terms of “behind the scenes” for the 38th Scavenger Hunt, because there’s no setup and barely any processing in there – so I decided to make a single post instead.

The List was heavily oriented towards a pirate/adventure/treasure theme, which I was quite happy to see, because I knew I was travelling to the Canary Islands during the Hunt time, and what better setting than an island for that kind of theme? So here are my pictures, in the order of the album reveals. There’s a mix of “seeing the scene and knowing it was a good fit for the Hunt” and “going through the pictures after the fact and finding things that may fit the theme”, but I did want to keep the set to “Canary Island pictures”, which I managed to do… although this may have been a stretch in some cases 😉 If you want the rest of the pictures for that trip, they’re there: Canaries – 2023. And I’m linking my fellow Scavenger albums along the way 🙂

Treasure

A bee sitting on a very yellow flower. The framing is not very close to the flower (there's a bunch of green leaves around the flower), but still enough to distinguish the translucid wings of the bee.

Treasure was definitely a “let me go through my pictures and find something appropriate”-type of picture. I thought going for the bee on the flower was maybe a bit of a stretch, but I wasn’t the only one with this idea in the album, so what do you know! 🙂 The processing of this picture was a bit annoying, because I couldn’t find a crop that completely worked. I finally settled on that one, but I’m not entirely satisfied with it.

Adventure

A small wooden bridge, held by black stones, over a lower flat surface. . The background is very red rocks, and the whole scene looks like red dust has covered everything - almost Martian, if not for the few small timid plants.

I honestly do not remember if I had “Adventure” in mind when I took this shot. I think I may have, but (as I didn’t know yet at the time) I was starting to come down with COVID, and my brain was apparently already busy fighting it, so I don’t have much memories there.

Flag

Top of an inflatable castle with a "pirate" theme - inflatable walls, inflatable pirate, inflatable pirate flags.

I giggled SO MUCH when I ran into this inflatable structure, set up of town festivities. It’s not often that you can get a shot that would work for not one, not two, but THREE words (treasure, skull and flag) on a list… and with a very literal interpretation at that! That shot almost made the cut for two themes (I was considering two different crops for Treasure and for Flag), but I eventually decided that, while funny, it wasn’t a shot worth two words, so I submitted it for Flag.

Code

Cargo containers with their numbers clearly visible. The cargo containers are orange/brown/red; there's a few green palm trees in the foreground. The image processing is grainy and gives a film feeling.

“Code” was definitely a “let me see what I have in my pictures roll that might match” situation. I had taken a lot of pictures around the harbor in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, and I suddenly realized that I actually had a fairly decent fit for the theme around the container codes. I had to extract this from a much larger crop to make obvious what I wanted to convey; and I decided for a retro/film processing (with grain and slightly off color toning), because it felt right when I started playing with it.

Vessel

For Vessel, on the contrary, I had a wealth of images to choose from, and I had taken a lot of pictures of boats and ships (easy, on an island!) with that theme in mind. But that drakkar felt the funniest/nicest vessel I could find, and it also fit the connotation of the theme well (better than, say, a ferry.) The processing was kind of annoying, because I took that picture between two trees, but I still wanted to give a sense of open sea, rather than “something taken from my hotel room” (which… it was), so there’s been a significant amount of healing and cloning involved. I think it’s not too bad 🙂

Monster

A large accomodation barge, presenting as a small building on top of a large platform on top of six large feet. The platform and the feet are red, offering a stark contrast with the blue sky.

I must admit I didn’t think of Monster when I took pictures of this offshore barge, but it absolutely jumped at me when I was looking at my photo (digital) roll with the list in mind. Not only is it a very large “monster” structure, but with a bit of imagination, you can see six legs and a large head! I was afraid this would be a bit of a stretch, but the comments seem to agree that this is a good fit for the theme, so I’m happy.

Skull

A LEGO diorama with two ships, including a pirate ship with skull and swords on its sails, over a blue LEGO seabed.

We entered a mall that happened to have a pretty neat LEGO exhibition… including this cool diorama. I had taken the shot I used for “Flag” already, so I knew I had a “backup Skull” if needed, but I was still very happy to stumble upon this one. It’s also the only picture of this Hunt I didn’t take with my DSLR, but with my phone 🙂

Eight

Two prickly pear heads with eight flowery bulbs on top each, with mountains in the background.

I must admit that Eight needed a liiiittle bit of help to fit the theme, although I had taken that picture with the word in mind. Turns out, each of these cactus heads had 9 bulbs and not 8 – the one one the right had one hidden behind another, and the one on the left had one that was further away than the others. I called Photoshop to the rescue and, well, I did manage to submit not one, but two eights for that shot 😉

Aquamarine

Parking lot markings on a dark road. We see regural white markings, and aquamarine square markings, maybe for small containers or boxes.

There was a lot of opportunity for Aquamarine – taking pictures of shades of blue-green in waves was my first attempts at the shot, until I ran into these markings on the harbour near the Monster picture, and they just looked perfect for the theme. I was trying to go into the more abstract view of the picture, but I think I didn’t quite manage to get what I wanted there.

Sea / See / C

Sunset over the sea; the sky has a line of clouds and is orange, the sun is almost touching the sea, and is aligned with a large rock on the beach. A small wave is exploding near the rock.

And the last picture of the set was a “bonus word”, with the theme “Sea/See/C” (choose one, two or all three!). I’ll admit I went the lazy way with that sunset, but it was a very nice sunset to watch, sitting on a sea wall… we were definitely not the only people there 😀

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