Shoot This 52 Week Photo Challenge in 2017 to Improve Your Skills

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My original 52 Week Challenge in 2016 was a huge success, with tens of thousands of photographers participating from around the world. In celebration of those who have completed the first challenge, a new challenge is now here!

The challenge for 2017 has a higher difficulty level than the original challenge. While this challenge is a follow on to the original challenge here, it 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.

Weekly Challenge Categories

Each week, the weekly assignment will be in one of 3 categories:

Story Telling: Good photographers can take beautiful images of something. Great photographers can take an image that tells its story. This category makes use of compositional rules and directed prompts to push you towards not just looking at the beauty of something, but to find a way to tell that something’s story.

Technical: Technical Aptitude is just as important as creative inspiration in photography. With that in mind this category is a mix of in camera and post processing techniques designed to expose you to new technical skills and techniques.

Artistic Impression: When this category comes up, you really have room to express yourself. You can interpret the assignment literally or figuratively. Unlike the other two categories that are more focused, the idea of this category is to let your creativity shine.

Sharing Your Photos

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, #dogwood2017, and #dogwoodweek[NUMBER] (ex: #dogwoodweek1, #dogwoodweek2).

If you run into others who are also participating and sharing, be sure and comment on their image!

The 52 Week Challenge

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Want the challenge as a downloadable and printable PDF? Here you go:

Good luck!

About the author: Dale Foshe is a wedding photographer based in Wilmington, North Carolina. He offers his services through Dogwood Photography. This article was also published here.