Stockholm Fotomaraton – Give it your best shot

Tomorrow I will be registering for the 2020 Stockholm Fotomaraton. It dawned on me that I hadn’t got round to sharing my Stockholm Fotomaraton photos from the 2019 competition yet. So I here they are.

On a endless summer night in mid August for 24 hours scores of photographers buzz around the streets of Stockholm. During the 24 hours participants have to pass through six checkpoints at various locations in the city. You are given four themes to start with and the details of where and when to meet at the first checkpoint. Here your participant card is stamped and you are given the next four topic and details of the next checkpoint place. The aim is to take 24 photographs. The pictures must be in correct sequence and are based on set themes.

Now the annual competition is in its 30th year. Many of the original participants are still competing and many more have joined them. In 2019 there were nearly 400 people taking part, some professional photographs, some amateurs and some who just enjoy a doing something a bit different.

Starting on Saturday August 17th, at Globen on the stroke of noon the competition started. Sporting my free Stockholm Fotomaraton T-shirt and number 161 I was off. I started pretty enthusiastically and I’m going to be honest, by the time I got to the first checkpoint I was a bit tired. But I persevered. I snapped photographs late into a very rainy evening and beyond. On a couple of occasions times my tripod caused quite a lot of attention from the all night revellers in Sergels Torg and  Medborgarplatsen.

These are the photos I took and entered.

During the 24 hours I walked over 30km and took over 600 photos. I also ran out of time and was one of the last participants to hand in my SD card.

My Stockholm Fotomaraton 2019 Diplom

Annoyingly about 10 minutes after I handed my pictures in, I realised I had made a mistake. I had accidentally deleted one of my images, meaning I had handed in only 23 of the 24 photos! Not really much I could do, but still I enjoyed the experience and will be back again next year.

Bearing all this in mind here are my top tips to remember for the competition later this year:

• Enter the correct photographs
• Don’t spend too long thinking about one topic, go with gut instinct.
• Get one of the scooters or a bike to get round the city, rather than walking everywhere.
• Check and select the photos I will use as I go
• Take a laptop with me so I can check the photographs for quality
• Possibly work in Black and White?
• Drink more coffee

Some other images that caught my eye on my photo marathon.