I bought 12 disposable cameras. Each camera has 39 exposures.

I gave each of my students a camera, and gave my Taiwanese friends Doris, Polly and Yvonne each a camera as well. I told them to take pictures of whatever they think really symbolizes Taiwan. Once a camera is done, I’ll get the pictures developed. All the pictures will go into a photo album for me to keep, copies will go to their respective creators, and the best photos will be posted here.

This could either turn out to be an awesome project or a total dud. So far everyone’s really pumped about it, and it’s been a lot of fun, but it was also

IDEA!
(6 hours later) 8 cameras in hand!
(20 minutes later) hand out cameras!
(2 hours later) buy 4 more cameras!
(the next day) hand out 3 more cameras!
exclamation point! woo!

I haven’t really thought it through is what I’m getting at. All I know is

  • There will be a lot of pictures. So far, 468 of them.
  • I only want photographers who have lived here their entire lives.
  • Maybe it’ll inspire some of the kids to pick up photography.
  • Maybe it’ll inspire my photographer friends to think outside of the box. Take away the ability to review each picture, change settings, zoom, and delete, and photography gets interesting.

If it all works out and goes well, maybe I’ll expand and include more age ranges. I’d love to include high school and college students, since my age range right now is 6-12 and 23-27, but I suppose I’ll first see how this part pans out. That and I’ll wait for my next paycheck. Yikes.

But first I need to define “works out” and “goes well”. Because I don’t know. End result equals what?

What to call this experiment? The Disposable Camera Project is taken. I googled it. So is The Disposable Camera Experiment. Those don’t really tell the whole story anyway. My ideas so far (both good and international-incident terrible):

Operation Taiwan
My Taiwan: the Disposable Camera Project
Shoot Taiwan!
Disposable Taiwan
Taiwan on Film
I Shot Taiwan (but I did not shoot the deputy)
Simple Photography: Taiwan
Pictures of Home: Taiwan
My Pictures of Taiwan (My POT for short. Easy to remember, right?)

Stay tuned.