Hyde Park

Today I went to Hyde Park for my friend's birthday. It's fast becoming a tradition that he holds some kind of treasury hunt for these events, but not the kind of treasure hunt that involves finding clues. This year we were given polaroid cameras and two lists. We had to take photos of one thing from the first list, combined with one thing from the second list.

We were all split into teams, generally with a mixture of people we knew plus a few new acquaintances. The team I was in had orange sashes and our "secret sign" was a salute. There was a race to get two props, we ended up with a plastic ray-gun and a long black wig. We were given two puzzles, which would give us two more things to photograph on our list, and had an hour and a half to complete everything.

A couple of examples of our work; we combined "An animal or animal statue" with "A BBC documentary" by taking a photo of two of our group with a camera and "microphone" (aka a pen) surrounded by pigeons, ducks and swans. We also had "A willing member of the public" and "Sherlock finds the killer instantly", with me as Sherlock, several team members and two willing members of the public looking shocked, and a baby who was part of our team pointing the ray-gun prop at a pair of shoes (with her Dad's help) as if she had just disintegrated someone.

It was a lovely afternoon coming up with all these ideas and running around the Serpentine Lake in Hyde Park to take them all. When I have been to Hyde Park in the past it has only been to see the Winter Wonderland, which takes over most of the park. Now that I've seen it without all of that in the way I think I will have to return again for a proper walk, and with my camera naturally.