What I Really Won

154 challenges, a few wins, and a lot more ideas than I expected A few recent BudgetPixel blogs made me think about the challenges from angles I had not really considered before. DavidP wrote about the frustrations, unpredictability and psychology of competing. Sealine wrote about trying to find something original inside increasingly narrow challenge prompts. And vrieming took a much more statistical approach with the BudgetPixel Hall of Fame and all-time standings. Reading those posts made me curious enough to look back at my own challenge history. That turned into a slightly larger project than I expected. I had entered 154 challenges . I had won nine , finished in the Top 3 twenty times , and reached the Top 10 sixty-three times . Those are nice numbers. I am not going to pretend that winning does not feel good. It does. I check the results, I enjoy seeing an image place well, and first place is certainly more pleasant than finishing somewhere near the bottom. But once I started looking through all 154 challenges, I realized those were not actually the numbers that interested me most. The reason I kept participating had very little to do with trying to build a challenge record. I think I learned that much earlier on NC. After enough challenges there, I realized that constantly trying to predict what other people might vote for can slowly change the way you create. Instead of asking yourself what you would like to make, you begin asking what you think everyone else would like to see. That never interested me very much. So somewhere along the way my approach became simpler: What can I do with this challenge that feels like me? Quite often, the answer involves women. Strong women. Women doing things that are still too often handed automatically to male characters. And very often, WLW. That theme appears whether the challenge asks for it or not. A Western becomes a female outlaw story. A science-fiction challenge gets glamorous women worked into the world. An action scene can become as much about the relationship between two women as the danger around them. Sometimes that probably helps me. Sometimes it probably costs me votes. I honestly have no idea which is which most of the time. And that is fine. Because the more interesting thing started happening after the challenges were over. Some of those images refused to remain challenge entries. They became stories. They became songs. Sometimes they became both. And when I finally counted those too, I found a statistic I liked considerably more than my nine wins: 154 challenge entries had produced 53 stories and songs. That was the point where this stopped being a blog about standings. It became a blog about what challenges can give you when winning is not the only thing you are looking for. What I Am Actually Looking For The challenge itself is usually just the starting point. I am not trying to make the most neutral interpretation possible, and I am not trying to remove the things I like from an image just because they might make it less universally appealing. If a challenge gives me enough room, I usually bend it toward the subjects I already enjoy: women, strong women, WLW relationships, historical women, outlaws, adventurers, vampires, warriors, fashion, danger, romance, humor, or some combination of those. That does not mean every challenge becomes a story. Most do not. Sometimes the image is simply the image, I submit it, the voting ends, and I move on. But every so often something clicks. A character feels larger than the challenge. A scene seems to have a before and an after. Two women in an image suddenly have a relationship I want to know more about. A historical setting starts asking questions. A title begins to sound like a song. That is usually when the challenge stops being a competition entry and becomes something else. And that is also why I do not spend too much time worrying about whether a personal interpretation is the safest choice. One of my first-place images, Runaway Mine Cart , featured two women clinging to each other while the mine came apart around them. Another winner, Late Night Club , centered on two women together at a club. Even my Futuristic Sci-Fi Cityscape somehow ended up with giant advertisements featuring women in lingerie. So the themes do not disappear when I win. They are usually still there. That matters to me more than whether I managed to guess what the voters wanted that day. The Best Entries Sometimes Keep Going This is where the challenge statistics become much more interesting to me. Fossil Hunter became The Bone She Was Told Wasn’t There . Caught in the Rain became The Hand That Found Her . Bounty Hunt became The Last Bounty at Mercy Creek I , The Last Bounty at Mercy Creek II , and The Ballad of Rachel Boone . Mars Survival became the three-part Last Light of Mars . Harbor Under Fire became the three-part Last Night of Thalassia and a song. Samurai Battle became The Burning Shore of Kyushu and a song. Hacker Girl and Spy Girl both helped lead to VANTA: BLACK PROTOCOL and the song BLACK PROTOCOL . And Girl Biker did not remain a single challenge image for very long at all. It eventually produced Queens of the Blacktop , Back on the Blacktop , Velvet on the Highway , and Blacktop Queens . Those examples are much more representative of why I keep participating than the nine first-place finishes are. A challenge can rank well and disappear from my thoughts the next day. Another can finish somewhere in the middle and still give me an idea I am working with weeks later. Those are two completely different kinds of results. When the Prompt Leaves Less Room There is one criticism in the recent challenge discussions that I agree with completely: some of the newer challenges have become too specific. I do not mind restrictions. Actually, restrictions can be useful. A good limitation can force you to think in a direction you would never have chosen on your own. But there is a difference between a restriction and a blueprint. Some of the older challenge titles were wonderfully simple: Red. Angel. Vampire. Girl Biker. Knight. Butterfly. You were given a subject and then left alone to decide what it meant. That kind of prompt gives me room to ask the question I enjoy most: What can I do with this that feels like mine? More recent challenges often go much further. The title already contains the unusual concept, and then the description adds the setting, action, atmosphere, props, characters and sometimes even the visual mood. At that point, the challenge becomes less about inventing an interpretation and more about executing the scene that has already been described. That can still be fun. It can still produce excellent images. But it is a different kind of creative exercise. And for someone like me, it removes some of the part I enjoy most. I want enough room to take the prompt somewhere personal. Maybe that means replacing the expected male hero with a woman. Maybe it means making the relationship between two women more important than the action around them. Maybe it means introducing humor. Maybe it means taking the challenge in a direction that is technically still valid but not remotely what most people will probably do. That is also where the risk comes in. The more personal the interpretation becomes, the harder it is to predict how voters will react. Sometimes the unusual version gets ignored. Sometimes it stands out. Sometimes it wins. That unpredictability does not bother me nearly as much as losing the freedom to have the idea in the first place. Because if I have to choose between an image that feels safe and an image that might lead to another story, another song, or another character I want to keep, I already know which one I am more likely to make. The Ranking Is Only One Result This is probably the simplest way I can put it. I have won nine BudgetPixel challenges. I hope I win more. Winning is fun. But 36 different challenges have already inspired at least one story or song, and together those challenge ideas produced 53 separate stories and songs . That is the statistic I like better. The ranking tells me how one image performed during one challenge. The other number tells me what happened after I stopped looking at the leaderboard. It tells me that a bounty hunter became Rachel Boone. That a storm on Mars became three chapters. That a girl biker became a whole series. That a fossil hunter became a woman whose discovery embarrassed generations of experts. That a challenge image sometimes became the first frame of something much larger. And that is probably why, after 154 challenges, I am still entering them. Not because I expect to win every time. Not because I think the rankings are perfect. And certainly not because every prompt gives me unlimited room to play. I keep entering because every new challenge still has the possibility of becoming something I did not have the day before. Sometimes that is a first-place image. Sometimes it is a story. Sometimes it is a song. Sometimes it is just an idea worth keeping. And sometimes that turns out to be the better prize. What the Challenges Became Songs Riding the Fireline — Meteor Rider — #1 of 49 SHE BEATS THE STORM — Thunder Drummer — #5 of 52 WHEN THE WALLS BEGAN TO DANCE — Living Graffiti — #1 of 73 Sabine Wolfe, P.I. — The Shadow’s Secret — #39 of 72 Who Needs a Dog or a Cat? — Pets Causing Trouble — #42 of 78 The Ballad of the Four Clever Ladies — Cyber Renaissance — #6 of 76 The Ballad of Rachel Boone — Bounty Hunt — #1 of 70 Η Τελευταία Νύχτα της Θαλασσίας — Harbor Under Fire — #24 of 70 紅の暁 — Samurai Battle — #2 of 81 Angels Drink White Wine — On the Cloud — #8 of 66 WHEN HEROES RUN IN — Rescue Mission — #9 of 53 Three Nights of Fire — Festival Night — #11 of 63 The Night Billie Hart Rode In — Train Station Farewell — #20 of 63 La Fauconne d’Argent — The Last Charge — #24 of 58 The Song for the Dragon Rider — Dragon Rider — #4 of 65 BLACK PROTOCOL — Hacker Girl — #2 of 58 / Spy Girl — #5 of 66 ريحك تناديني — Desert Nomad — #4 of 61 Between Moon and Sun — Moon Priestess — #1 of 57 紅蓮の背に宿る龍 — Tattoo — #13 of 56 She Who Walks After Fire — Fancy Armor — #1 of 58 رقصة الأفعى — Snake Charmer — #6 of 60 不失之箭 — Archer — #3 of 64 Polly O’Rourke (Shout for More!) — Pirate Queen — #35 of 68 Das Gelbe Gretchen — Hooded Figures — #22 of 38 深淵の抱擁 — Creatures Underwater — #5 of 43 Blacktop Queens — Girl Biker — #7 of 42 Stories Alice Wayne: The Bride as Collateral — Living Shadow — #14 of 45 The Bone She Was Told Wasn’t There — Fossil Hunter — #12 of 46 The Hand That Found Her — Caught in the Rain — #12 of 71 The Price of Silence — The Shadow’s Secret — #39 of 72 The Last Bounty at Mercy Creek I / II — Bounty Hunt — #1 of 70 Last Light of Mars I / II / III — Mars Survival — #22 of 68 The Last Night of Thalassia I / II / III — Harbor Under Fire — #24 of 70 The Burning Shore of Kyushu — Samurai Battle — #2 of 81 When the Stars Come Home — Spaceport Departure — #12 of 82 Room Key No. 13 — Hotel Lobby Mystery — #29 of 63 Through the Fire — Rescue Mission — #9 of 53 N’Kala – Three Nights of Fire — Festival Night — #11 of 63 The Sheriff of Silver Creek — Train Station Farewell — #20 of 63 Where the Lantern Light Finds Us — Farmers Market — #11 of 53 VANTA: BLACK PROTOCOL — Hacker Girl — #2 of 58 / Spy Girl — #5 of 66 The Legend of Das Gelbe Gretchen — Hooded Figures — #22 of 38 The Umbral Murex: The Pearl-Binder of the Deep — Creatures Underwater — #5 of 43 The Lunara Lupina: The Female Werewolf Files — Fictional Creatures — #33 of 40 QUEENS OF THE BLACKTOP — Girl Biker — #7 of 42 BACK ON THE BLACKTOP — Girl Biker — #7 of 42 VELVET ON THE HIGHWAY — Girl Biker — #7 of 42 The Final Variable — Cyber Girl — #17 of 32 Other Challenge Reflections In It to Win It? — DavidP To Play Or Not To Play? — DavidP Evolution of a Challenge Entry — Sealine The Hall of Fame: BudgetPixel Daily Challenge All-Time Standings & Records — vrieming