My 2011 Photography Challenges

Vicariously stolen from a fellow blogger I present to you the photography challenges I will be attempting during the next twelve months.

Timed Challenges

• Take a photo every week for 52 weeks [52 photos in total]
• Take one photo that captures each season [4 photos in total]
• Take a photo every day for a whole month, on the same theme [28-31 photos in total]

Objects to Capture [34 photos in total]

• sunrise and sunset on the same day [2]
• the moon [1]
• 5 different buildings [5]
• cemetery [1]
• church [1]
• doorway [1]
• window [1]
• road [1]
• vehicle [1]
• candles [1]
• flowers [1]
• waterfall [1]
• bridge [1]
• barn [1]
• rocks [1]
• leaves [1]
• a city at night and during the day [2]
• railway tracks [1]
• wheel [1]
• balloon [1]
• a lone tree [1]
• many trees [1]
• ice [1]
• snow [1]
• fire [1]
• a river/stream [1]
• a pond [1]
• clouds [1]

Some rules! I'm not going to let myself get away with using the same picture for different challenges, so for example in the month I do my one photo a day challenge, I will still need a different picture for each week. Plus the object pictures will have to be separate to the timed challenge pictures. Yes, that may make things tricky, but if it was easy, it wouldn't be a challenge, would it! I also can't cheat, and use photos already taken, they have to be new.

I don't have lots of fancy camera equipment. I take all of my "good" photos with my Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ7 (I have a red one). Mostly I use the intelligent auto function as well, which I guess makes me a very lazy photographer! But I don't really know much about the technical wizardry behind taking photos, and to be honest I don't really care about it either. I just like taking photos. Using the auto function means I can concentrate on taking the photo, and only need to worry about things like composition.

Anyway, on to the challenges. For I have already begun!

To start me off, a shot I took two days ago on Boxing Day; we were out at about 9.30am, trying to get the car to start so we could drive to Wales. Temperatures were approximately minus five, and there was a thick layer of ice on the outside of the car. We scraped it all off the outside, at which point I realised there was ice on the inside of the car as well! One of the back windows was open a crack, which we think is what caused it. But it was incredibly pretty. A proper Jack Frost moment. Here is a shot I took from inside the car, looking up at the sky through the ice crystals.

This for me perfectly describes Winter. Crisp, clear blue skies, ice and bitingly cold air. So this is going to represent Winter in my Four Seasons Challenge.

All of the photos I will be taking for the challenges can be found on my Flickr stream, where you can also find the photos I've already taken which I think are worthy of sharing.