Welcome everyone to the WEEK 1 of the 2018 10th Anniversary Photo Challenge at the Trevor Carpenter Photo Challenge.
For those of you who are new to the Photo Challenge, here’s a brief history so that you can get an understanding of where we came from and what we are celebrating.
In 2007, Trevor Carpenter who eventually founded the PhotoChallenge.org, began a series of Photo Challenges which he shared from his personal blog at trevorcarpenter.com. They started as a series of personal photographic challenges that quickly attracted a crowd of photo enthusiasts to his blog. In January 2008, Trevor founded with the help of Jeremy, the PhotoChallenge.org in order to cater to the new found enthusiasm generated around his personal photo challenges.
Gary joined the group shortly after and I personally joined the team in 2009. We eventually took a little hiatus in 2011, coming back even stronger in 2013. The original challenge was running from a blog with photo sharing handled through a Flickr group. However, with the creation of our Facebook group, we quickly grew from a few hundred members to a community of over 3500 photographers of every skill level imaginable.
Although we made a flamboyant return, the celebration was short-lived. Trevor Carpenter was diagnosed with leukemia while I was living in Switzerland. Later on Jeremy and Gary left the group to pursue other personal projects. Compensating for the loss of contributors and Trevor’s fluctuating health, I had to stir things up as I was flying solo for most of the year. This is when I decided to introduce GUEST CHALLENGES for the 2016 Photo Challenge. It was a great idea, allowing the Photo Challenge to evolve and bring forward some wonderful talent. In 2017, a new group of contributors was put together to modernize and bring a refreshing change to the Photo Challenge. This is when Jeanie Sumrall-Ajero, Maaike Groenewege and Eric Minbiole joined Trevor and I.
Trevor’s health deteriorated in 2017 and he eventually lost his battle against Leukemia. It was a terrible loss for the community as Trevor’s warm-hearted ways had created friendships around the world through sharing a love for photography.
Today we celebrate, we celebrate 10 years of Photo Challenges as they were brought to us by Trevor and every following contributor thereafter. We also celebrate the incredible community that formed on Facebook and Flickr around the Photo Challenge.
We’ve had to change our domain name to keep on going and thankfully the folks at Tempus Aura Studios offered to host the Photo Challenge in honor of Trevor Carpenter. This is when we changed our name from PhotoChallenge.org to “The Trevor Carpenter Photo Challenge.”
We no longer have access to Trevor’s first challenges as his personal blog has disappeared. We also don’t have all of the actual first Photo Challenge, but we have most of it, including Trevor’s entries as he shared his participation images through Flickr and the Photo Challenge blog. Unfortunately some material shared from long gone social networks has disappeared forever.
The original challenges were Monthly Challenges with weekly submissions. We’re going to bring some of them back once a month as a weekly theme starting with the first ever Photo Challenge by Trevor.
The first official Photo Challenge was released in January 20008 and was entitled “MY NEIGHBORHOOD,” although a little similar to a guest challenge we had in 2016, it was a way to share who we were and where we come from with our new found Photo Challenge Community Friends.
I know being New Year’s Eve we’ll have a pretty low participation rate as everyone is getting ready to celebrate the new year, travel back home and get back into the usual pace of life. This should be a fairly simple Photo Challenge as we kick off our 10th Anniversary Celebration.
YOUR CHALLENGE – My Neighborhood :
Here it is below, the link to the first ever Photo Challenge that was launched 10 years ago. https://photochallenge.tempusaura.com/2008/01/the-2008-challenge/
Here are some of Trevor’s entries for this challenge back in January of 2008. There were five entries to the blog in January 2008 of which four were Trevor’s submissions for the month.
https://photochallenge.tempusaura.com/2008/01/soggy-camarillo/ https://photochallenge.tempusaura.com/2008/01/welcome-home-ronnie/ https://photochallenge.tempusaura.com/2008/01/great-work-so-far/ https://photochallenge.tempusaura.com/2008/01/2008-challenge-week-3/ https://photochallenge.tempusaura.com/2008/01/2008-challenge-week-4/
We’re going to do things a little differently this time around, as I mentioned we are shrinking these monthly challenges to a week-long challenge as we will be bringing newly created challenges, we’re not just celebrating a decade of photography, we’re also moving forward into the future to create a long-lasting legacy of Photo Challenges.
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- TECHNIQUE — I’m not a fan of text book procedures but we need to apply the basics as we’re creating a photograph and not a snapshot. Composition and exposure should always be part of every challenge. If you’re like me, you’ll be breaking all the rules, but to break them you have to know them…
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- CREATIVITY — In any given challenge, you’re challenging yourself as every challenge is adapted to many types of photographers with different abilities, strengths and weaknesses. Every photographer, even the most experienced photographer can learn something new by applying themselves and pushing their comfort zone one step further than ever before. Don’t let technique stop you from shooting crooked horizons, HI-KEY exposures and whatever funky idea that comes to you in order to create that unique image that’s truly yours.
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- TIME — No challenge is complete if you don’t invest some time. We all have a different style, but it takes time to think in order to turn our photographic vision into a photograph. That’s why I like to use a tripod. It makes it easier to free up your hands, think and experiment. Sometimes you have to wait for the proper lighting, create your own lighting or even come back at another time of day to capture your vision.
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- EXPERIMENT — You’re there already and there should be no rush to leave. This is the time for you to learn. I myself will shoot at different apertures, different ISOs and even change lenses and camera. Use your filters to enhance your images. Colored filters for B&W, Neutral Density Filters and Circular Polarizers all have a purpose. Why not try an infrared filter? Move around and photograph your subject from different angles and height.
CHALLENGE SPECIFICS – MY NEIGHBORHOOD :
This is a storytelling/editorial Photo Challenge. As much as you can be tempted to take a cityscape of your hometown or your adopted homeland, there’s much more to this challenge than photographing a bunch of buildings.
Don’t be afraid to focus on the small things that are unique to your region and/or your locality. Just like in architecture, you don’t only photograph the whole building as close-ups of architectural details may be just as valuable.
A post shared by Steve (Stefano) Troletti Photo (@_steve_troletti_photo_) on
As an example, if you live in the Gruyere Region of Switzerland, you have the Fribourg pre-alps and their summer feeding grounds for cattle. You have a castle, cows and local cheese makers as well as the milk coop where their renowned dairy products are manufactured. You have regional clothing and Gruyere men are known for their beards. This leaves an infinite number of photographic possibilities that are important to your region and your neighborhood.
People are an intricate part of what makes your region unique. In our modern world it’s as easy to find a society of historical decent as much as it is to find multiculturalism.
A post shared by Steve (Stefano) Troletti Photo (@_steve_troletti_photo_) on
Religion, politics and regional culture influence our way of life, the way we build our cities and has an overall effect on how we view the world in our own little unique way.
A post shared by Steve (Stefano) Troletti Photo (@_steve_troletti_photo_) on
Don’t be afraid to portray your differences as it’s what makes you uniquely, YOU! That said we encourage freedom of expression through photography but highly discourage conflictual criticism of an image simply because one does not endorse a specific government, religion or way of life. This is a safe place to share our photographic vision, it’s not because we don’t all agree all the time that we can’t respect and embrace each other’s differences. The Trevor Carpenter Photo Challenge is based on having fun through photography while respecting one another. It’s also a family-friendly group so no full nudity, pornography, hate or overly gory and violent images.
COMPLETING YOUR PHOTO CHALLENGE:
As this specific Photo Challenge is more of an editorial storytelling Challenge, we encourage you to accompany your image with a SHORT ONE LINE description in order to make the contribution more personal and informative for our fellow community members.
HOW TO PARTICIPATE IN THE 2018 TREVOR CARPENTER PHOTO CHALLENGE
You will be creating and contributing ONE SINGLE image for each weekly Photo Challenge. Each of those images have to be created the week of the challenge by you. Please don’t use someone else’s work or an archived image from your back catalog. It’s pretty self-explanatory, if you don’t create a brand new image for every challenge, you’re not challenging yourself.
Waiting for the perfect light for the latest photochallenge.org
A post shared by Steve (Stefano) Troletti Photo (@_steve_troletti_photo_) on
You can publish your image directly in our Facebook group or you can share them from popular photo-sharing sites such as Flickr or 500PX. For 360 Photo Spheres we recommend KUULA.CO or VEER.TV
Our community is very active on our Facebook Group but you can share your images on our Flickr Group or 500PX group.
When sharing your images with the community, we recommend using the following hashtags to identify the challenge you are participating in and make it easier for individuals to search for related posts and images.
This 2018 hashtags are #10thanniversaryphotochallenge #2018photochallenge #photochallenge #tempusaura
LINKS TO PARTICIPATE IN THE CHALLENGE
Each week a challenge will be posted on our web site. Each challenge gets published on Saturday and is valid for participation from Sunday to Sunday. http://photochallenge.tempusaura.com
You can sign up for email notifications and get every challenge delivered directly to your inbox as they are published.
Join our Facebook Group : THE TREVOR CARPENTER PHOTOCHALLENGE group on Facebook hosts our large friendly community : https://www.facebook.com/groups/trevorcarpenterphotochallenge/
Join our Flickr Group : https://www.flickr.com/groups/photochallenge-org/
Join our 500PX Group : https://500px.com/groups/trevor-carpenter-photochallenge
Using our 2018 Hashtags, share your work on Twitter, Instagram and other Social Networks.
FYI: If you want to submit more than one image or catch up for a week you missed, we invite you to post your additional images in the comment section of your current image
Don’t be afraid to share photography articles related to the current challenge or ask questions about gear, technique or anything else related to improving photography for the Trevor Carpenter Photo Challenge Community.
