52 Week Photography Challenge 2019

My husband recently came across an article talking about a year-long photography challenge, and he shared it with me. Last year I participated in a 52 week genealogy writing challenge, and he thought I might like to try photography this year. Always eager to improve my skills (and looking for an excuse to get out and do so), I signed up for the challenge. There are no winners or losers, just the satisfaction of learning from 10,000+ other photographers from around the world. There is more information about the photography challenge here.

For Week 1 the topic was Story Telling: Self-Portrait with the instruction that we "take a picture that tells us who you are, without actually showing your face". Since I was out photographing in Tower Grove Park on a picture-perfect 66 degree day Saturday, I decided to give the topic a shot.

Here are two photos I took, but decided not to submit. The first I believe showed too much of my face, though other people in the challenge submitted ones that clearly identified who they were. The second one I liked, but there were quite a few photographers who had the same idea and submitted their own shadows.

self portraits

In the end, I settled on the following photo, which I took of myself reflected in a pond. I had my niece hold onto my belt loop so I didn't fall in!

selfie

So far over 750 photos have been submitted on the private Facebook page. Many others are posting their pictures on Instagram, using the hashtags #dogwood52 and #dogwood2019. The talent and creativity in the group is outstanding! I'm looking forward to absorbing photography knowledge from them over the next 51 weeks.