Are you out of ideas? Check in here on Mondays for a weekly 7-day photography challenge to get your vision roaming!
Each week the challenge requires that you take 36 images during the following 7 days. Your deadline is always next Monday morning for the current week’s challenge. The challenges might be thought provoking, might be silly, and could even be tedious.
The purpose of taking thirty-six images – equivalent to one roll of film – rather than just one or two images, is that thirty-six forces you sit with the project, rework it, rethink it, conceptualize it during the week. Your first or second image might be good, but when you create all thirty-six images of one challenge/assignment, you’ll begin to see little things that might make you want to move in another direction.
Use your camera as the cropping tool.
Don’t waste your pixels! Another point of the challenge is to get down and tight with taking images, using your camera as a cropping tool, rather than cropping images after taking them, during processing. None of the weekly subjects will have broad sweeping images as a response … Think of it this way, it’s not so much to have a window or a door or an arch *in* the photograph as it is to have the photographs be *of* the subject of the challenge.
Taking one or two images for the weekly assignment may complete it, but thinking about the project for seven days and taking thirty-six images will allow you to deeply explore it.
Once you’ve taken the images, load them into a gallery on your blog and come back to that challenge’s post and post the link to your gallery post in the comments below by the following Monday!
Oh, at this point, this project is not about being adept at using PhotoShop. Basic manipulation of the images is ok – auto levels, curves, contrast, color correction when needed – but these projects are more about mental focus, creating discipline, getting control of composition, meeting deadlines, and learning to use your camera as the canvas and the cropping tool.
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The PhotoClub Challenge this week is the study of “Clarity”.
Clarity can come in many forms – the clarity of a substance, like water or glass; the clarity of thought; the clarity of intention … For this project the word clarity is yours to define.
Read through the PhotoClub description above to make sure you get why you are doing the challenge. Make sure that the compositions of your images of “Clarity” are 100% about the challenge.
Use your camera as the cropping tool and post full/uncropped images.
The challenge is 36 images of “Clarity” as the main subject in the photographs, all taken in the next 7-days and posted in a gallery post on your blog or web site by next Thursday. Post the link to your gallery below by commenting on this post and we’ll come over and comment on what we see – how and if it visually answered the challenge.
Always experiment with variations on the weekly theme within the subjects of the challenge – composition, contrast, shape, texture, colors, shadow …
Remember: These are not images that just happen to have Clarity *in* them, but rather they are images, or rather intentional studies done this week, *of* Clarity. It’s all about the intention.