The Scope

I imagine Darrell Edwards loved playing hide and seek as a kid.

(Should I duck into the closet, should I climb a tree, or should I hide in plain view?)

The creative director at a local marketing company recently started a photo sharing group where people play pretty much the same game, but with photos.

Hosted on the photo sharing site Flickr, Guess Where St. John’s Metro is a place where people can post pictures of the city and have people guess where exactly they were taken.

I contacted Edwards to ask him a few questions about the group.

Where’d you get the idea for Guess Where St. John’s Metro?
The idea for the group came from me getting home from a trip to New York City. I took over 300 shots there just on the streets and subways and stuff. Then I stumbled upon the Guess Where NYC group on Flickr. I posted a couple of those shots to that group and it was awesome seeing how many people guessed all of the shots in that group so easily… In a city like that you’d think it would be a challange.

So basically I gaffed the idea from that group.

When did you realize it would work here?
I realised it would work here the day after I posted my first pic to the Guess Where NYC group. Our city is quite a bit smaller than New York, but there’s a lot of really cool nooks and crannies… architecture from 100 years ago that people just dont pay attention to. So if you took shots of those sort of things, framed it up in a different way, or just showed something from the perspective of someone who was there, not just driving by, I figured it would be challenging to guess where those shots were taken.

A good example is a shot I took up at the top of McMurdo’s Lane looking back towards the building that used to house The Heritage restaurant. Henry street is in the background, and there’s a couple walking by. The background is kind of blurred…

Now, to me, that location is completely obvious, even with the blur. I have lived up over the hill, in the vicinity, for close to 10 years now. I pretty much walk down this street every day, and I’ve photographed the hell out of downtown… But on the group I have someone guessing it’s a scene from LeMarchant road.

It’s awesome to see what different perspectives people have on things, even if the guess is incorrect! It’s just plain fun.

You can find the pool at http://flickr.com/groups/guesswherestjohnsmetro/pool/