Join our Photo 365 Challenge for 2016

Happy New Year!

We hope that Father Christmas was kind to you this year and you got some delicious new photography goodies to play with over the next 12 months.

January is a classic time to set yourself new resolutions and challenges to make this your best ever year for photography.

Here at Digital Camera World we’ll be taking part in a Project 365 – or to put a bit more obviously, a photo a day for a year.

I’ve decided to split it into 52 themes – I’ve found in the past that having some kind of theme to concentrate on helps to hone my mind and look for photos, rather than just being a bit more random.

However, if you want to join in, you can do it however you want – the most important thing to remember about any kind of challenge or project is that it has to work for you, and you have to enjoy doing it. If you don’t, you’ll probably get bored quite quickly and it’ll become a chore that you don’t want to do any more.

Because I’m the type of person who likes to change my mind, I’m not setting out the 52 themes right away. I’ll likely pick them week to week, or build up a bank of ideas to draw from.

As 2016 starts on a Friday – my themes will run Friday to Thursday, with a new theme starting every Friday. Feel free to suggest new themes, use the themes I come up with, or go in a completely different direction – but we’d love to see how you interpret a challenge such as this.

This isn’t the first time I’ve completed a Project 365. In 2014, I challenged myself to use a different camera every single day of the year…. and unbelievably I managed to do it. I won’t be doing anything as ridiculous as that this year, but I’m looking forward to taking on a new challenge none-the-less.

Some weeks I’m going to challenge myself to subjects I don’t often photograph, with the hope that by the end of the year, my skills will be more rounded. And maybe I’ll discover a new subject I really enjoy – you never know.

I don’t want to be too strict with this 365 – I want there to be 365 photos, and 52 different themes, but I’m not too worried about exactly when they are taken. You may approach a 365 differently – some people will be extremely strict that each photo has to be taken on each day. I’ve done that before, so I feel like for me that challenge is ticked off, but again, you can do it however you want.

The first theme I’m going to go for, as it’s January, is “healthy eating”. We’ve had a month of excessive drinking, eating and all round merriment, and of course January is a time to pretend to yourself that this is the year that all your bad eating habits go out of the window. So, for the first week at least, I’ll be taking some photos which aim to reflect that.

Let us know if you want to join in with the project, or if you’ll be completing any challenges this year!

If you’re thinking of joining in, here are some tips for completing a Project 365…

1. Plan ahead
Don’t leave it until 23.59 to take your shot for the day (if you’re being strict on timings). Think about when you’re going to take your photo every day – if you can – and plan some specific shooting times so that you can always get the shot.

2. Don’t get behind
Try to get in the habit of downloading / uploading your photo (if you’re going to be sharing them on social networks etc) as soon as possible. Don’t let a 2-month backlog happen – it’ll be a chore to go through.

3. Have an idea bank of themes you can draw on
Thinking of new ideas on the spot (especially if you’ve left it until 23.59) can be tricky. Note a bunch of ideas down somewhere that you can always go back to if you get stuck. A fun idea is to write ideas on folded up pieces of paper and put them in a jar – draw an idea every time you get stuck (or write 365 and do it every day!).

4. Set out the rules in advance
There’s lots of ways to complete a 365, but it helps if you set your focus if you set the rules for your project in advance. Maybe you want to take the photo every day, maybe you want every day to have a different theme, maybe you want every week to be different, maybe you want to take the photo at a certain time every day – whatever your personal rules are, think of them now and try to stick to them.

5. Don’t be too hard on yourself
With all that in mind, try not to forget that this is supposed to be a bit of fun to help you improve your skills. If it’s starting to become a chore, think of ways you can change the rules a bit, and if you forget to take a photo and end up doing it the next day (or a whole week in one day!), don’t be too hard on yourself.

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