The original Dogwood Photography 52 Week Challenge was a huge success, with tens of thousands of photographers participating from around the world. In celebration of those who have completed the first challenge, a new challenge is now here! The challenge for 2017 has a higher difficulty level than the original challenge. While this challenge is a follow on to the original challenge here, it is also suitable to be completed as a stand alone challenge. There is no specific start date for this challenge. Each photographer is on their own journey, and only competing with themselves from week to week. If you wish to form a challenge group and compete with each other based on this list you are welcome to do so! If you form a challenge group drop me an invite I would love to watch the progress.

Weekly Challenge Categories:

Each week, the weekly assignment will be in one of 3 categories:

Story Telling: Good photographers can take beautiful images of something. Great photographers can take an image that tells its story. This category makes use of compositional rules and directed prompts to push you towards not just looking at the beauty of something, but to find a way to tell that something’s story.Technical: Technical Aptitude is just as important as creative inspiration in photography. With that in mind this category is a mix of in camera and post processing techniques designed to expose you to new technical skills and techniques.Artistic Impression: When this category comes up, you really have room to express yourself. You can interpret the assignment literally or figuratively. Unlike the other two categories that are more focused, the idea of this category is to let your creativity shine.

How to share your images

I highly encourage sharing your work each week. I know it’s hard to put yourself out there, but it is an important part of growing as a photographer. If you want to share your images with the rest of the people who are taking part in the challenge I recommend the following hashtags: #dogwood52, #dogwood2017, and #dogwoodweek[NUMBER] (ex: #dogwoodweek1, #dogwoodweek2). If you run into others who are also participating and sharing, be sure and comment on their image!

Some places to share your work:

Join the Flickr Group Dogwood 2017 to share your work at: https://www.flickr.com/groups/dogwood2017Join the Facebook Group Dogwood 52 Chatter to talk about the challenge at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/photographychatterShare your work on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, or other hashtag friendly social media site with the hashtags listed above.Share your work in your favorite photography forum… and even encourage others to participate.Share your work via websites dedicated to photographers like Flickr.com or 500Pix.com.

THE CHALLENGE LIST

About the Author

Dale Foshe is a wedding photographer based in Wilmington, NC. He is the owner of Dogwood photography and shoots together with his wife Erinn. You can see more of  their work on their website, follow them on Instagram and Flickr, or like their Facebook page. This article was also published here and shared with permission.