About the OnePhoto.Club – a photo a day is an adventure replay

OnePhoto.Club is a social community for people who love travel and outdoor adventures.

We’re not a normal “general use” Mastodon instance.

Instead, we’re a semi-private club that functions with special restrictions and traditions. This experiment in thematic constraints and curation leads to an uncommonly fun and unique social web experience.

What we’re about

The primary purpose of OPC is to share photos from our travel and outdoor adventures as a regular practice of re-living our trip memories.

As a result, we only allow posts on travel and outdoor adventures.

Yep, that’s it—just trip photos and related discussion.

“A photo a day is an adventure replay.”

Research indicates that the personal satisfaction we get from the possessions we own quickly decreases with time. Like that 70″ television from last year’s Black Friday sale, it’s a depreciating asset—its value starts to decline the first minute we start using it.

Experiences, on the other hand, tend to be remembered better than they actually were when they happened. The old saying “the older you get, the better things used to be” rings true. It’s also why such a thing as Type 2 Fun exists. In some ways, experiences become assets that grow in value over time—they appreciate like an investment account. The more you remember them, the more value you get.

Memories are important to relive—again and again

But too often, our cherished memories of a trip get lost in the daily shuffle of life, or hidden away in a box of mementos, or simply overwhelmed in a crowded photo album on your phone. The more often you reflect on how much fun that trip was, the more it appreciates in value.

One Photo Club prompts are one way to help bring memories of our trips back into our conscious view. It’s a regular practice that aims to ensure that we spend a few moments reliving the experiences that we care about.

Themes and prompts

Many of the photos posted to One Photo Club are inspired by our theme prompts, most notably #opcWeeklyTheme, #opcSpecialTheme, and #opcOnThisDay.

These prompts help provide structure and foster camaraderie and are a fun way to look back through our trip photos.

#opcWeeklyTheme

A new #opcWeeklyTheme is announced every Wednesday and runs daily until the next weekly theme is announced. Please hashtag the week’s theme and include #opcWeeklyTheme, too.

#opcSpecialTheme

Special Themes are one-day-only themes tied to a particular occasion. Many of them are OPC’s take on “National [insert topic] Day” that you might see elsewhere. Similar to Weekly Themes, please use the announced hashtag along with #opcSpecialTheme.

#opcOnThisDay

Another favorite prompt among OPC members is posting a photo taken on this day of the year from a previous year. Please include both #opcOnThisDay and the year in which the photo occurred.

Follow @themes for theme announcements

Both the #opcWeeklyTheme and the occasional #opcSpecialTheme are announced via the @themes account, so you’ll want to follow it and turn on notifications. To do that, go to the @themes profile, click follow, and then click the bell icon next to it.

Subscribe to the OPC Themes Calendar

In addition, you can subscribe to the public calendar feed in your calendar app of choice. This allows you to see what’s scheduled in the future and can also serve as a daily reminder. The title of each event contains the hashtags to use in your post.

You can add the below ics link as a subscription in your calendar:

https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/bcc95f4d7fd5fb8973b6205cf98da173810c0228cd86bc5b6ad33ee6bc06dd9e%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

You can also participate in our themes without joining as a member by using the hashtags mentioned above.

Other Themes and Conversations

One of the benefits of joining the social web is being about to participate in other themes related to travel or outdoor adventures, such as #MountainMonday, #SundaySunset, or #WaterfallWednesday.

And while photos play a central role here, we’re not solely about photos—you can post polls, text-only posts, and even short video. Just keep it all on topic.

For Amateurs, Pros, and Everyone Else

Your photos don’t have to be the most amazing ever, or the most interesting ever either. You don’t need to impress anyone. This is simply a shared social exercise in reliving past trips through photo sharing.

In fact, since we tend to share more regularly about our biggest, most memorable, or most epic trips already, you can use this club to highlight some of the other trips you’ve taken.

Joining the Club

We’re in a private testing period right now as we transition club members over to the platform, but will be opening up to new users later in February.

Please contact Scott for more information on joining. If you join without checking in first, you’ll be removed from the site without warning.

Why is it called “One Photo Club?”

The original club launched in December 2022 and had a one photo a day post limit. While we abandoned this restriction when we moved to the social web in January 2024, we kept the name as a nod to OPC’s history.

But really, the name still fits quite well.

The goal of posting (at least) one photo a day from your prior adventures is a really fun and rewarding way to connect with others online. Instead of doomscrolling like you might on other apps, you’re instead scrolling your own photo archives or the posts of fellow club members.

A Few More Rules

This is a good vibes only community. Simply put, don’t be a douchebag. Also, let’s keep the conversations centered around our core theme.
We’re about people, not brands. So this is an ad-free zone (including logos as profile photos). Feel free to link to your own site if you have something relevant to add, but you shouldn’t see OPC as a distribution channel for your hustle.
We only post our own photos here, so don’t use anything AI-generated, or repost someone’s else photos (even with credit). Again, the whole point here is relieving our own trip memories.

Moderation + Federation

We’re excited to delve into the social web and make new friends. But as a community that focused solely on travel and outdoor adventures, we also maintain a curated federated feed.

That means that we generally avoid following or interacting with accounts that often post on other topics.

So while we happily interact with others on the social web, we may not boost or follow you from our OPC accounts (many of us have other accounts for this). But don’t worry, we’ll see your travel and adventure posts via the hashtag relays we rely on.