Welcome to the year of photos podcast. I’m Mike and I’ll be guiding you through the weekly photography challenges.
My background is 15 yrs as an event photographer, I write about photography workflow and host the Ask a photographer podcast.
Why do a photography challenge?
As you can understand doing anything for so long can get repetitive, which is why I created this photo challenge for myself.
After 15 years of photographing for work, I simply needed to keep my ideas fresh so it benefited my customers. But more importantly to keep my sanity in check, to simply photograph something else.
These weekly challenges made me think differently and pushed me to get something different, And as more ideas came to mind I repeated the challenges to stretch myself creatively.
So I thought it would be useful to share my challenges through this website and podcast in a hope that someone else could benefit from it as well.
How to take part in the challenge?
To take part in the challenge you don’t need any special equipment. In fact if you’ve only got a mobile phone that’s perfectly fine.
The purpose of the challenge is to get you photographing more, and planning your next photo session.
It doesn’t matter on your skill level as a photographer. beginner or someone that’s photographed for years will get something out of these challenges.
To keep you motivated I will be posting challenges weekly on Friday’s ready for the weekend.
So subscribe to the podcast and it will automatically show up in your feed, As a bonus you’ll hear my smooth radio voice 🙂
If you want to save your eardrums and prefer to read, not a problem I won’t take offence.
You can simply subscribe to the RSS feed where the latest challenge will show up in your news reader.
Planning your photo challenge
Don’t stress if you can’t do every photo challenge when a new one comes out.
I want you to photograph for yourself and no one else. I simply want you to get better at photography and to try new things.
But….
If you do find yourself struggling to keep up, try this.
When a new challenge is released, use the suggested photo ideas or come up with some of your own.
Take the day to brainstorm some ideas and plan the photo session. E.g. Time of day, location and list of things to try.
The next day go out with your ideas and work your way down the list. Don’t stress if you get stuck, keep it simple and you can always do the challenge again if you feel it didn’t go well.
If you do need that extra motivation. Tell a friend about the weekly challenge, It’s more fun when you can do it with someone else and come up with photos ideas together.
If you do decide to share your photos. Use the hashtags #yop #yearofphotos so we can see your photos and follow you.
That’s it for today, clean your lens and charger your batteries, tomorrow we start with the first photo challenge.
