The first two Dogwood Photography 52 Week Challenges were an amazing success, with tens of thousands of photographers participating from around the world. We enter the third year of the challenge with the Community Challenge! This challenge has been created by photographers who participated in past year’s challenges to push themselves, and you, even further in your photographic journey. The Community Challenge is a great follow on to the other two challenges, but is also suitable to be completed as a stand-alone challenge. There is no specific start date for this challenge. Each photographer is on their own journey, and only competing with themselves from week to week. If you wish to form a challenge group and compete with others based on this list you are welcome to do so! If you form a challenge group drop me an invite I would love to watch the progress.
Weekly Challenge Categories:
Each week, the weekly assignment will be in one of 5 categories:
Vision:This category is designed to push you to go beyond sight, to insight; to take inspiration and make it a reality. Vision exists in your imagination and is revealed your photographs; expressing something otherwise invisible. Developing a Vision for your work is showing to others what you see in your mind’s eye.Composition:Composition refers to the way the various elements in a scene are arranged within the frame. Challenges will focus on setting up the shot and developing our personal composition styles; styles which can become our trademark. Developing your Compostion will allow you to set the stage to generate a reaction from your audience.Technical:Technical Aptitude is just as important as creative inspiration in photography. This year’s technical category is primarily focused on in camera processes, however, there will be some post processing techniques included.Creative:When this category comes up, you really have room to express yourself. You can interpret the assignment literally or figuratively. Unlike the other categories, the idea of this category is to let your artistic impression shine.Wild Card:Consider this a Show-and-Tell for grown-ups. You have freedom do shoot what and how you wish. Let us know if you’re trying a new technique, composition, style, subject, working on a specific project, or just exercising your freedom. Have fun!
How to share your images I highly encourage sharing your work each week. I know it’s hard to put yourself out there, but it is an important part of growing as a photographer. If you want to share your images with the rest of the people who are taking part in the challenge I recommend the following hashtags: #dogwood52, #dogwood2018, and #dogwoodweek[NUMBER] (ex: #dogwoodweek1, #dogwoodweek2). If you run into others who are also participating and sharing, be sure and comment on their image! Some places to share your work:
Join the Facebook Group Official Dogwood Photography Challenge at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dogwood.52.challenge/Share your work on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, or other hashtag friendly social media site with the hashtags listed above.Share your work in your favorite photography forum… and even encourage others to participate.Share your work via websites dedicated to photographers like Flickr.com or 500Pix.com.Put together a gallery show of your favorite images from the challenge! Select 12-20 of your favorite images to have printed and framed; and then arrange a photography exhibit. The show could be as simple as a dinner party at your house. You could also reach out to local coffee shops and community galleries to see if space would be available. There may be some incidental costs for showing your work, so you may want to contact early so that you can plan accordingly. Consider selling a few of your framed prints to help offset the cost.
THE CHALLENGE LIST
Scroll for Details
About the Author
Dale Foshe is a wedding photographer based in Wilmington, NC. He is the owner of Dogwood photography and shoots together with his wife Erinn. You can see more of their work on their website, follow them on Instagram and Flickr, or like their Facebook page. This article was also published here and shared with permission. [Lead image credits: Milica Vujicic (adapted)]
