Photo Friday: Thirty Day Challenge

This week’s Photo Friday is a little different.

The Thirty Day Challenge 2009 launches on Monday night at 8.30pm Eastern US time with the pre-season Thirty Day Challenge TV Show. We’ll be talking a lot more about the Thirty Day Challenge over the next few months and highly recommend you check it out.

Over the past 5 years, the challenge has brought out some of the best (and the worst) of many participants – it’s almost like the Britain’s Got Talent of the Internet world!

One area where creativity seems to abound is in the photos and graphics that have appeared over the years, so this Photo Friday is dedicated to:

Thirty Day Challenge: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The Ugly was by far the easiest to demonstrate (as you will see), but let’s begin with…

The Good

Over the years there have been some interesting profile pics, and in 2007 we all had fun creating our personal South Park avatars.

But last year Ed Dale trumped them all with this fantastic cartoon avatar of himself (incidentally, if you can remember where he had it made or are the creator, please let us know so we can give you proper credit – 30DC site is under development so we couldn’t check).

The Bad

I have decided to feature the “evil” creative skills of Karen Kramer in the Bad, not because they are drawn badly but because they are bad in the naughty sense of the word.

Karen published a bunch of photoshopped photos in her post Thirty Day Challenge Team is Not Who You Think They Are. Go and take a look; I especially love Caro Poppins, teacher and head honcho of the 30DC moderators.

And Karen was responsible for creating a JibJab video displaying the “man candy” that we enjoy throughout the challenge. Again you’ll find this on her blog but check out this screenshot as a taster:

The Ugly

There are many, many photos and graphics that I could add to this section of the Thirty Day Challenge Photo Friday. There have been some pretty unattractive sights over the years!

Last year, everyone became obsessed with Mankinis, and in particular Ed Dale in a Mankini. Since Ed was never (thank God) going to pose in one for us, an awful lot of photoshopping went on.

To see the best of these pictures and to find out exactly why this became an obsession, take a look at Eric Gehler’s Ed Dale Mankini Squidoo page. It isn’t for the fainthearted – you have been warned!

The graphic on the left is the tamest of the lot and was created by Paul Söderholm (http://www.gnurf.net/)

Now it’s Your Turn

There are so many more Thirty Day Challenge photos. I found quite a few just researching this post but didn’t want to break anybody’s copyright. And it’s not just the silly stuff here – over the years hundreds of photos have been taken of participants and meet-ups, as well as all the photos Ed takes of his family, workspace, travels and anything to do with Macs and iPhones!

If you have some favorite photos to share please add a link to them in the comments below. We’d love to see them all.

And, if you are new to the Thirty Day Challenge and considering taking part in 2009, don’t look at these photos and think it is a close-knit clique that enjoys lots of in-jokes. Many people take the challenge year after year, but many, many more will be starting it for the first time this year. We’d love to see you there, and pretty soon you’ll have a bunch of photos to add of your own.

You might also be interested in these related SWBN posts:

1. SWBN Podcast #006: Ed Dale, Business Beginnings and the Thirty Day Challenge Ed Dale has been a HUGE influence on the members...
2. SWBN Podcast #008: Ed Dale on Being a Babe Magnet (Oh, you can’t beat those far out linkbait blog post...
3. SWBN Podcast #007: Ed Dale on Getting it All Done In this second part of our Ed Dale meets the...