July Creative Photography Challenge

I can't believe how fast this year has flown by!  Can we already have 6 challenges under our belts? It's hard to believe that a new month is already here, though I had a blast playing with movement and shutter speeds last month!

Our July challenge is: 

              Light

Light is everything in photography!  You probably already know this, but the word photography actually means "drawing with light".  Light is all around us...sometimes it's bright and natural, sometimes it's dark and dim, sometimes it's artificial and colored.  A good photographer needs to know how to use all kinds of light and how to be creative in it, so that's what we're going to work on this month!

Some things to think about with light:

There are so many aspects to light that we could seriously dissect one bit of it every week for a year, so being creative with light in only a month of time is going to be tricky.  We will barely scratch the surface!

Light is all around us in many shapes and forms.  It can be bright and big, small and defined, colorful or practically non-existent.  Before taking a picture, we should ALWAY look for good light.  No matter how amazing the location or how interesting a subject may be, if the light is bad, pictures will also be bad.  In other words, you can't take a good picture in bad light.  

Always be aware of the light!  Yes, I said always!  Make it a habit to take a mental note of the intensity and color of light wherever you are and depending on the time of day.  As you practice being aware of the light around you, you'll start to get a sense of what light you like shooting in the most!  

Study how light falls onto your subject.  Be aware of the shadows, highlights and mid-tones, as well as how the light wraps around and falls off of your subjects and start seeing the different aspects of light.  One fun way to do this is to choose a stationary subject in your home, such as a vase, then study it throughout the day as the light changes.  You'll never think of light the same way again!

There are SOOOOO many kinds of light: side, dappled, front, harsh, soft, low, bright, filtered, artificial, back, front, shaded, beams, high, colored, flat, flickering...and I'm sure more that I'm forgetting.

Then, let's add on top of that the number of light sources from where light can be produced. As you can see, there are really a lot of ways we can use light in July to make some creative images!

Though really could study creative light for a long time,  we are going to somehow do this in just one month!  You are welcome to focus on creating images with any light you would like to.  I'm going to break it into four categories for me personally, and for the IG hub.  These are pretty general and can include a few kinds of light, which is how I like to experiment in my creativity.

1. Low light (either indoors or evenings with a small light source)
2. Harsh light & shadows (bright & direct light, harsh light and dappled light)
3. Directional light (side light, back light, front light)
4. Artificial light (light from any man made source)

To participate this month on Instagram, please use the tag: #2017creative_light.  

We are pretty active over on the Instagram hub that goes along with the challenges!  We feature images that have been tagged, as well as share tutorials, lessons and tips on things that pertain to the challenge that month.  Go here if you'd like to follow along with us! We would love to have you hang out with us on IG!  We will be focusing on the different types of light each week and have some guests lined up to give us all their take on light using  dSLR's and phones!  We will be announcing which themes for each week on the hub itself, so please head over there and follow so you can participate with us.  The hub has just reached 1000 followers and we will be having some giveaways this week that you may not want to miss!

If you're not on Instagram, we've started a Creative Inspiration Community page in FB so we can push our posts directly there.  If you'd rather see posts there, find and follow the page here!  We use it solely to push our posts from IG to FB, so there's not much interaction over there.  It's basically set up so anyone not involved with IG will see what we share.  

If you haven't joined the Facebook group yet, and would like to, go here. It will send you to the FB group page, and you'll need to request to join.  You will have to be approved before you can get in, as it's a private group.  Ya know, to keep the weirdos out. ;)

Thank you to all of you who have joined me in this challenge!  It's been so fun to be inspired by your creativity, and learn along with you, and having you along on the ride has helped push me to stay on top of this project.  <3