Changes and a New Year

As we approach the end of PhotoChallenge.org‘s first full year, I’m quite satisfied with the work you all have accomplished. Last year at this time, I was announcing the beginning of this blog, and helping you all transition from following them at my personal blog, to here. I won’t detail each Challenge we’ve facilitated now, but I will point out that we started off strong, on the heels of 2007’s December Challenge.

Throughout this year, I’ve had some ups and downs with the administration of this blog. Each bimonthly Challenge has had a very different level of participation. I know that there are many variables that have caused this; poor topic selection, poor advertisement (on my part), but most of all, I’ve simply not engaged enough with you, the reader and the participant.

It’s not like the tools aren’t right there for the grabbing. We have a great Flickr group, to aid in communicating and tracking the Challenge submissions. To aid in this effort, I’ve added a Twitter account, just for following the PhotoChallenges, throughout the year.

This past year’s pattern of Challenges has been a bit unique. We’ve done one Challenge, every other month. Plus, we’ve had the 2008 Challenge, of which only one person has participated all year long (and it wasn’t me!). The bimonthly Challenges have been profitable, though. I’ve seen some great work by many of you, and several who I know had to push themselves to accomplish the task, grew tremendously.

I love giving back to the photography community. I’ve never attended any photo classes. I grew/grow as a photographer because so many great people out there, in real life and online, opened up their lives and shared what they had learned. Attending photowalks introduced me to quite a few of you, and that contributed as well. The point I’m making is that I have learned and grown because other photographers gave back, and I gleaned from their experience. That’s why I do this. Even if I have a bad month, I’ll still be here for even just one photographer.

So, as I sat down to evaluate how I can do a better job, for you, I decided that I would seek some outside help. You may have caught the post, inviting anyone who wanted to step up and lend a hand. Someone did.
That someone is Jeremy Brooks. I’ll let him introduce himself, and tell you a bit about his own photography, later. I’ll leave you with this; Jeremy has been not only one of my biggest supporters, here and in general, but he has also been one of the most active participants in all the PhotoChallenges, thus far.

So…

  • Come back soon, and catch Jeremy telling us all we need to know about him.
  • Check out the 2009 Photo Challenge announcement!
  • Get a quick start on the first bimonthly challenge, the January Challenge!