Considering creating your own photo challenge? In this blog post, we’ll go over 6 steps to help you create your own photo challenge!
A photo challenge is a fun and creative way to help yourself take or share pictures.
Photo challenges can be simple or complex, follow themes and/or have daily prompts, and vary by duration.
There are countless photo challenges already in existence. The most common are time-based photo challenges like the 52-week challenge or photo-a-day challenges. But if you’re looking to create something more tailored to your needs, creating your own photo challenge can be a smart route to take!
Over a year ago, I created my 365-day photo challenge using the steps outlined in this blog post.
By the end of this post, you should be able to create your own photo challenge!
6 steps to help you create your own photo challenge
1. Determine the goal of your photo challenge
What is the reason you are doing a photo challenge in the first place?
Are you starting a challenge to help yourself take more pictures or more so to share more photos?
Make sure your challenge is geared towards helping you achieve your goal(s).
The goals of my 365-day photo challenge were to:
- make myself use my camera more,
- sort through and edit pictures I had taken in the past,
- practice editing my photos in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop,
- and most importantly, to show my work (as Austin talks about in this book.)
Once you’ve determined the goal of your challenge, it’s a lot simpler to do the next step.
2. Set some rules for your photo challenge
When you’re starting a photo challenge, it’s crucial to set some rules for your challenge.
Make sure your rules are clear, simple, and easy to follow.
The rules for my 365-day photo challenge were:
- Share a photo every day on Instagram for 365 days.
- I did not have to take a photo a day, I just had to share a photo a day.
I decided to focus on sharing a photo a day. Because I believed it aligned with all of my goals.
If your main goal is to take more pictures, you should probably focus on taking photos.
If your main goal is to show/edit your work, the goal of sharing a photo can work for you too.
If taking or sharing a photo a day is too much for you, you can decide to take/share a photo a week.
Find out what works for you and go with it.
3. Determine the duration of your photo challenge
Another crucial step in creating your photo challenge is to determine how long it will be.
If you’re unsure about what to commit to, I recommend committing to something that both scares you a little but that also feels semi-realistic at the same time.
You can start small and commit to a 30-day photo challenge, or go big and commit to a 52-week or 365-day photo challenge.
Decide how long your challenge is going to be and stick with it.
4. Decide if you want to share it with others or not
When you create your own photo challenge, I recommend deciding if you want to share it with others or not.
You can easily commit to a photo challenge and tell nobody about it. But if you know you will need an outside force to help keep you accountable, you can do it with a friend or commit to sharing it online on a social media platform.
Interested in sharing your photos online but nervous about putting your work out there in front of all your friends and family? In that case, you can create a separate account (and even disable your friends and family from being notified about your new account) or share it as a story instead of a feed post.
For my 365-day photo challenge, I knew I needed a platform to help keep me accountable. So I shared my daily photo on my old photography Instagram account. I deleted all my old photos and went from there.
I will admit that sharing online was tough for me at first, but I powered through those feelings, disabled my likes, and shared the good, the bad, the over-edited, and everything in between.
And soon I stopped caring what others thought.
If you think you can handle completing it alone, you can do it alone and tell no one.
If you think you need something to help keep you accountable, find a friend to do it with or a platform to share on.
Choose whatever you think will help you complete it.
5. Decide if you want to have a focus/theme
Now that you have the bare bones of your challenge, you can decide whether you want to focus on simply taking/sharing pictures or if you want to have a particular theme or focus.
For example, you can focus on particular types of photography. These can include:
- Travel Photography
- Documentary photography
- Street photography
- Landscape photography
- Portrait photography (maybe selfies)
- Abstract photography
- Pet photography
- Black and white photography
- Nature photography
You can decide if you want to focus on the same type of photography for the entire duration of your challenge, or if you want to focus on different types for different days, weeks, or months.
My focus was on travel, street, and documentary photography. But I was flexible in my challenge!
Recommended Read: Photo Challenge List: 15 Ideas to Help Spark Your Creativity
6. Create a system to help you accomplish it
Now that you have goals and rules for your photo challenge, a plan to take your pictures, and have decided how long it will be, whether you will share it online with others or not and if you will have a specific focus, you have to remember to see it through.
You should have a plan in place for when you will take your pictures, when/where you will share them (if you do), and when you will make time to sit down, sort through, and edit them.
My system included the following: I scheduled at least one photo outing a week and brought my camera on walks with me often. After shooting, I always uploaded my photos and sorted through which to keep and which to trash. Then I uploaded my good photos to Lightroom CC and edited them over the next couple of days in small sessions or on my phone when I had a moment (perks of having Adobe Creative Cloud). Then from there once they were edited, I would add them to the album I used to plan my posts on my Photos app on my iPhone.
Random tips to help you accomplish your challenge
While sharing a photo for 365 days, I figured out ways to make it easier on myself.
The following tips kept me consistent when I was traveling (practically full-time), in full-time grad school, during multi-day trail running trips when I didn’t have service, moving across the country, settling into my new home in the United States, and much more.
Schedule a time to take pictures:
To have pictures to share, you need to take pictures. So schedule a time to take your pictures or to share your pictures. If you’re struggling to figure out ways to get out with your camera, you can read my post that covers 5 tips to help you take more photographs.
Set a daily alarm to share:
About two weeks into my photo challenge, I set a daily alarm to go off at 6:00 pm to remind me to post my picture. In the beginning, this was very helpful, as some days got ahead of me. But towards the end, I often posted beforehand. You can use this tip to help remind you as you begin your challenge.
Plan ahead:
If you’re completing a photo challenge, you’ll need to do some planning. Whether that’s planning when you will take photos (which we talked about above) or which photos you will share. If your focus is to share a photo a day like mine was, then I recommend planning at least a few photos in advance.
For the first month or so of my challenge, when it was time to share my photo for the day, I went into my Lightroom and selected a photo. And it took way too much time. Slowly, as the challenge progressed, I realized I needed to start planning my posts ahead of time. Soon after this realization, I started planning just enough photos to not be scrambling for a photo to post last minute. However, never too many which led me to not have to take pictures.
If you’re thinking of planning your photos, there are plenty of apps out there to help you do this. However, I just used the iPhone Photos app. You can create a new album in your photos app, add the photos you want to share to your album, and drag and drop them in the appropriate spot to plan out what your feed will look like. Simple, easy, and free! As a heads up, my photo albums spontaneously started to rearrange themselves when my album approached 200 photos. So every time my album came close to that, I would start a new photo album and had no problems.
Summary: How to create your own photo challenge
A photo challenge is a GREAT way to help you practice your photography.
There are all kinds of photo challenges out there already in existence. But if none of them feel like the right challenge for you, you can create a more aligned challenge for yourself.
When creating a photo challenge, start with determining the goals of your photo challenge, then set some rules for yourself, determine how long your challenge will be, whether or not you will share it with others and if so, where, and if you will follow a theme or not. Then make sure you have a system in place to get through your challenge!
