FoP Mini Challenge #10: Alphabet Soup

[slpollett]

FoP Mini challenge #10 : Alphabet Soup

Many, many years ago there was a Dgrin challenge to spell a word using "letters" found in everyday objects. I remember being quite intrigued with finding letters wherever, but quickly realized that I'm just not creative enough to see letters beyond the obvious. Whenever I see folks at craft shows selling alphabet photos to create a collage of a family name, I always have to see what unique ways they found the letters. Ultimately, I'd like to see a name or word spelled out, but single letters are ok for this one.

This challenge will end on Monday, September 29, 2025 at 6:00 pm CDT. I'm giving this mini about 2 1/2 weeks in the hopes of seeing some fun and creative entries.

General Rules
1. The host supplies a topic for the challenge, and you post 1-3 images.
2. Participants have about 2 weeks to enter photos.
3. The host judges the winners (1st, 2nd, 3rd, Honorable Mentions) and is not eligible to enter.
4. The 1st place winner has up to 72 hrs to choose a topic and post the next challenge. When the challenge ends, the host judges the winners and passes the baton to the new champion.
5. If the winner can’t be reached or is unable to host the next mini, the honor goes to the 2nd place winner who then has up to 72 hrs to post the next challenge.

Remember, you can enter as many as three images (or for this challenge only, a collage of images that spell a word). I really hope that you will find this mini enjoyable and fun to do. Here are some examples from my archives. I just know you can do better than these!










PS: you can use whatever software you want to combine your letter pics into one image, but if you are looking for an easy way to do it try the free software called Photoscape. It makes it easy to do and it's free. I have nothing to do with this software and get nothing for recommending it. I just remember that it is what a lot of us used to create our words back in the day.

 

[great grandma Rosalie]

I was trying to do this and was about to give up when I realized that you were not finding these letters in photos that you already had, but were taking photos specifically of the letter shapes. I am not sure that I will be able to do this because getting photos from my phone to my computer is so involved (I can't download them anymore the way I used to be able to do). But maybe I will try a little later.

 

[slpollett]

I was trying to do this and was about to give up when I realized that you were not finding these letters in photos that you already had, but were taking photos specifically of the letter shapes. I am not sure that I will be able to do this because getting photos from my phone to my computer is so involved (I can't download them anymore the way I used to be able to do). But maybe I will try a little later.

Single letters that can be found in your existing photos would also be fine.

 

[slpollett]

I can't believe there's not a single entry! We still have about 7 hours before the cut-off, so there's still time!

 

[sapphire73]

@slpollett, I just checked back to see how this mini challenge is going. I'm sorry that no one has entered. Unfortunately, I'm not going to be much help as I have no photos fitting this theme (or the the last one) and no time to search out new ones. (And as mentioned in an earlier post, I've had to step back from my photography for a bit.)

I do want to express my appreciation to you and to @great grandma Rosalie @bfluegie @ShipleyNW @Mike_d and other who've been participating in the FOP mini challenges these past months! I was hopeful! I'm not sure whether the low participation is because folks are busy with other things? Or finding that the other games and competitions are enough for them?

Gretchen

P.S. Sherry, I also sent you a DM

 

[slpollett]

Welp, this mini challenge is closed with zero entries. I'm sad. I really thought this would attract some interesting entries. Last mini only had one entry. This brings us to a bit of a quandary--do we pause (temporarily? permanently?) the minis until January and then try again? Was the lack of participation in the last two minis because we chose two themes that weren't interesting to potential participants, is everyone just too busy to participate in another challenge, or is it something else?

Gretchen (sapphire73) and I have discussed what to do going forward. While we certainly aren't the only two people to have an opinion about what we can do, Gretchen was the moderator/host of the challenge forum on the old dgrin. We've made her the defacto coordinator of these minis here also. She and I discussed a few options. One, we can pause the minis until January to give everyone a break and then start back up to see how it goes. Another idea is running each mini for a full month and calling them monthly challenges. Does anyone have any feedback or other ideas that we can consider? What can we do to generate more interest? Is it even worth continuing? Are there too many other weekly contests so that another contest isn't needed?

What I like about the mini challenges that the other little contests here don't have are 1) each participant can enter up to 3 images for consideration, and 2) the host of the mini decides how long to keep the mini open. Usually, each mini lasts 1-3 weeks.

Either post your thoughts and/or ideas here or feel free to DM either Gretchen or myself.

 

[Darkslinger]

Welp, this mini challenge is closed with zero entries. I'm sad. I really thought this would attract some interesting entries. Last mini only had one entry. This brings us to a bit of a quandary--to we pause (temporarily? permanently?) the minis until January and then try again? Was the lack of participation in the last two minis because we chose two themes that weren't interesting to potential participants, is everyone just too busy to participate in another challenge, or is it something else?

Gretchen (sapphire73) and I have discussed what to do going forward. While we certainly aren't the only two people to have an opinion about what we can do, Gretchen was the moderator/host of the challenge forum on the old dgrin. We've made her the defacto coordinator of these minis here also. She and I discussed a few options. One, we can pause the minis until January to give everyone a break and then start back up to see how it goes. Another idea is running each mini for a full month and calling them monthly challenges. Does anyone have any feedback or other ideas that we can consider? What can we do to generate more interest? Is it even worth continuing? Are there too many other weekly contests so that another contest isn't needed?

What I like about the mini challenges that the other little contests here don't have are 1) each participant can enter up to 3 images for consideration, and 2) the host of the mini decides how long to keep the mini open. Usually, each mini lasts 1-3 weeks.

Either post your thoughts and/or ideas here or feel free to DM either Gretchen or myself.

Hey Sherry, just my two cents, but, while I appreciate the creativity of your challenge, I, probably like many, don't want to invest in a challenge that requires me to take a number of images (or search for a number of images) just to have to combine them into one image. I am way too lazy for that...

I think that if you repost with a simpler challenge, you'll get more entries.

Please keep it going.

 

[sapphire73]

Welp, this mini challenge is closed with zero entries. I'm sad. I really thought this would attract some interesting entries. Last mini only had one entry. This brings us to a bit of a quandary--to we pause (temporarily? permanently?) the minis until January and then try again? Was the lack of participation in the last two minis because we chose two themes that weren't interesting to potential participants, is everyone just too busy to participate in another challenge, or is it something else?

Gretchen (sapphire73) and I have discussed what to do going forward. While we certainly aren't the only two people to have an opinion about what we can do, Gretchen was the moderator/host of the challenge forum on the old dgrin. We've made her the defacto coordinator of these minis here also. She and I discussed a few options. One, we can pause the minis until January to give everyone a break and then start back up to see how it goes. Another idea is running each mini for a full month and calling them monthly challenges. Does anyone have any feedback or other ideas that we can consider? What can we do to generate more interest? Is it even worth continuing? Are there too many other weekly contests so that another contest isn't needed?

What I like about the mini challenges that the other little contests here don't have are 1) each participant can enter up to 3 images for consideration, and 2) the host of the mini decides how long to keep the mini open. Usually, each mini lasts 1-3 weeks.

Either post your thoughts and/or ideas here or feel free to DM either Gretchen or myself.

Hi Sherry, thank you for laying out several options here. It would be great to get feedback from folks, and I appreciate the quick response from @Darkslinger (Bill). Thanks! Sherry and I look forward to hearing from others as well.

Gretchen

 

[great grandma Rosalie]

Hey Sherry, just my two cents, but, while I appreciate the creativity of your challenge, I, probably like many, don't want to invest in a challenge that requires me to take a number of images (or search for a number of images) just to have to combine them into one image. I am way too lazy for that...

I think that if you repost with a simpler challenge, you'll get more entries.

Please keep it going.

for these challenge you can enter 3 images. Not just one.

But in my case I am currently organizing photos I took in 1966 and dealing with other matters so I don't have time to figure out alphabet photos. If it was something I could find that I already had, I could participate.