First of all, happy Labor Day. I hope you spend sometime to day thinking about how much better your life is because of organized labor movements. For example, you like weekends? Thank you unions! You like fair wages and relative income equality? Well, this has begun slipping away, but thank you unions for these things almost existing at one time. You like not having to send your 6 year old to work in the coal mine? Thank you unions! You like having widespread employer-based health coverage? Well actually, it is an extremely stupid idea to tie people’s health coverage to their job, but it is a vast improvement from before when next to nobody had health insurance. Thank you unions! Finally, do you like the Family and Medical Leave Act? This law requires employers to provide up to 12 weeks of job-protected unpaid leave annually to care for a newborn, newly adopted child, seriously ill family member or for your own illness. Thank you unions!

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If my vacation is going as planned, I’m somewhere on a road or in a park in eastern Iowa right now. Therefore, I will publish this week’s submissions later tonight or early tomorrow morning. Sometime after I get back to the Photography 139 worldwide headquarters.

However, just because I’m out gallivanting around, doesn’t mean you can’t start on this week’s theme. It is:

MACRO

MACRO! Wait, didn’t we just do MACRO 3 weeks ago? In fact we did. Last week’s theme SKY represented the end of Year 7 of THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE. With the end, I’ve decided I want to line up the beginning of Year 7 of THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE with the beginning of the calendar year. The problem, it is 17 weeks until 2021. I know, that seems like forever and a day. But the real question was, what to do in the 17 week interim? Give you guys a 17 week break. Nah fam. I’m gong to have 17 weeks of Hall of Fame of themes.

What does that mean?

Well, I went through the list of every theme we’ve had over the 7 years of THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE. I compiled a list of the themes that we have used the most and created a list of 17 themes that have been used the most. Actually, the list ended up being 22 themes, and then 4 had to sadly be eliminated. I mean, they were sent to the farm to live with grandpa.

5 themes have been used in every set of 52 THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE themes:

1. SELF-PORTRAIT
2. SIGNS
3. MACRO
4. STILL LIFE
5. WATER

2 themes have been used in 6 out of 7 sets.

6. BLACK & WHITE
7. ANIMAL

15 themes have been used in 5 out of 7 sets.

8. FRAMED
9. REFLECTION
10. SHADOW
11. NIGHT
12. TREE
13. FOOD
14. FLOWER
15. ART
16. ROAD TRIP
17. RELIGION
18. MUSIC
19. COLORFUL
20. FACELESS PORTRAIT
21. RUINS
22. TRANSPORTATION

I randomly eliminated 5 themes from the third set to get to my Hall of Fame list of 17:

1. MACRO
2. WATER
3. STILL LIFE
4. SIGNS
5. SELF-PORTRAIT
6. BLACK AND WHITE
7. ANIMAL
8. FRAMED
9. TREE
10. ART
11. NIGHT
12. RUINS
13. FOOD
14. FACELESS PORTRAIT
15. COLORFUL
16. ROAD TRIP
17. TRANSPORTATION

Now you know the list and order for all the themes for the rest of 2020.

If you want to take a look back at the ghosts of MACRO past, here are the links to the 7 previous times that MACRO was the theme for THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE:

THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE was originally called THE RANDOM WEEKLY PHOTO EXPERIMENT. It was first published on January 14, 2010. While I am not its guardian, it was originally more of an idea by Vest. Originally the submissions were published on both of our websites. Well, his submission and my submission were published on both websites. Then whomever else we got to submit were published on their respective websites.

On Monday mornings, a new theme was spit out by a random generator program that Vest wrote. The very first theme was USE OF SPACE. Now I write up the entire list of 52 themes and put it into a list generator website. Whatever it spits back out is the order of the themes.

THE RANDOM WEEKLY PHOTO EXPERIMENT was for a from a success. I was lucky to get 3 to 4 submissions on a good week. I cancelled THE RANDOM WEEKLY PHOTO EXPERIMENT after two years. The final theme was SELF-PORTRAIT. It was published on January 2, 2012. There were only two submissions. My submission and Vest’s submission. In fact, you had to go all the way back to November 21, 2011 to find a submission from somebody besides me or Vest. There was one submission by Jesse for the theme SIGNS.

I pulled the plug, and thought is was a fun attempt at getting participation for the website. However it failed miserably. However, every once in awhile, people would tell me that they missed it and wished I would bring it back. I mostly ignored these people, because if they enjoyed it so much, I’m pretty sure that they would have submitted. Finally after about the fifth different person pushed for its return, I reluctantly brought it back. This time, under the new name, THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE.

On September 21, 2015 THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE burst from its tomb like Lazarus. Resurrected by a groundswell of support. The theme for the first week was NIGHT. There were submissions from Angie, Becky, Micky, Michelle, Dawn, and Vest. It was good start, but I expected it to peter out quickly. Here we are, 5 years later. To my amazement, the strongest this weird little experiment that Vest and I started in 2010 is somehow the strongest it has ever been.

I thank everybody that participates. Either every once in a while or every week. It really is one of my favorite parts of running this website. To everybody that thinks about participating, but just hasn’t pulled the plug. Remember, it doesn’t have to be a masterpiece. The idea of THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE isn’t to create a masterpiece. The point is to create!