Thanks for visiting the Trevor Carpenter PhotoChallenge. Trevor Scott Carpenter set out in late 2007 with the first of these PhotoChallenges, and it has grown into an awesome learning tool for photographers of all levels from all over the world.
The current goal is for our community members to commit to one of many photo challenges that will stretch their photographic skills. You won’t find tutorials in aperture and shutter speed. You won’t find tutorials on using Adobe Photoshop. What you will find is a constant community of interacting photographers. Learning all of that is important. However, where many photographic learning falls short, is with hands-on experience. That’s why going to a real art school is so good. You get to use a lot of good equipment, and you get to constantly interact with other photographers.
The Flickr-experience is good, but not great. Many have set unfair expectations for their experience at photo-sharing websites, like Flickr. Then, when they don’t get the constructive criticism they expected, they loose hope.
The Trevor Carpenter PhotoChallenge is the link between you the photographer, and your photo-sharing site. This is where many of us can join together, and commit to view and critique each other’s photography.
Now, unless otherwise stated, each of the photo challenges here will follow a common set of guidelines. These are not hard rules. They exist mostly to help us all know what to expect. Breaking the guidelines will have no consequence, other than a diminished experience for you.
- Each submission should be shot during the time frame of the specific photo challenge.
- Each participating photographer should be involved in our Facebook Community or our Flickr Group at the very least. This will allow us all to interact with you, in a safe “public” place. We can then comment, encourage, and critique your work. The most common site is our Facebook Community followed by our Flickr community. These communities will allow you to submit your photos, making it even easier for us all to find and enjoy your work.
- Each submission must follow the stated tagging requirements. All submissions should have the #photochallenge tag. However, each challenge will also have its own assigned tags. (for example: The April Challenge, of 2008, had #aprilchallenge and “aprilchallenge2008” as tags.)
- Make every effort to keep up with the challenge’s schedule. The 2017 Challenge has a weekly submission. If you miss a submission, just pick up where everyone else is, when you return. You can always post past challenge images in the comment section of your current image submission.
- The most important guideline is to have fun participating so don’t leave home without a camera.
I hope these guidelines help clarify what is expected of us all, during the challenges. Take a closer look at each photo challenge’s announcement post, for any additional recommendations.
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I really like the challenges that ask for a story to acfompany them. So wide spread around the world provides great history and learning. Have loved how joining #photochallenge2015 had got me out and about each week, looking with “different” eyes. Thanks guys!
Would you consider to allow sharing on 500px?
Hi Martin,
You can publish your image on 500PX and then share to the Facebook Group or the G+ Group.
Hope that answer’s your question.
Steve Troletti
Will that work for smugmug as well?
I am new to this…tag my wordpress blog is possible for photo sharing?
Do I understand correctly? Use the tags on WordPress blog for photo sharing?
The tags are primarily for Flickr, but will help on Facebook and/or Google+. If you choose to post your submissions to your own blog instead, or as well, using the tags there will also be good.
I just found this awesome looking opportunity and hope to join in regularly. when is the deadline for the weekly post?
Trishannc, as you saw in our Guidelines, we encourage people to do certain things, but we really don’t enforce rules.
With that said, it’s generally best for you to create the photograph and post it by the end of the week.
For example, I’m just finishing the processing for my photo, for week #1, and it’s 6pm on Saturday evening, for me. I’ll post it tonight.
Glad to have all the new participants!
Hi, I’m new to this photo challenge and I am looking forward to getting started and interacting with everyone and improving my skills and creativity! 🙂
I’m new to online challenges, but looking forward to growing my photography skills and interacting with those in this community.
William, we haven’t really done an all day thing, because we are spread throughout the world. Yes, most of us are in the USA, but we really do come from all over.
However, the online community at Flickr has served us quite well. The majority of us follow the daily themes, and include all the proper tags, so that each other’s work is easy to find. Then we all try to view and comment on each others work.
If you’re on Flickr, make sure to add each day’s tag, usually “2009Challenge###”, where the ### changes each day. If you’re not on Flickr, feel free to toss a comment on the post for a day’s theme, with the link to wherever you post your photos.
Excellent creativity in the organization of this site, I’m an amateur photographer who enjoyed back in PR something similar, a group of well known photographers would link up once a month for a photo shoot out at various locations through out the Island. We all shared and critic each others work, provided advise, guidance and overall friendship. I was hoping to find something similar, this looks pretty close to what we did. Does the group involve here get to link up together for an all day outing? Please advise.
Trevor, yep it helps, so I must watch your site at 1am here at Portugal 😎
Thanks.
Rechena, we generally post around 6pm (1800 hours), Pacific Standard Time. I believe that is GMT -8. I hope that helps.
Hi, ussually at what time the day before, its cause I’m on the other side of the ocean 😉 and I would like to participate, but I would like to know the theme before I came to work. Usually when I arrive at work the topic is already posted… I’m in Portugal – Europe.
Regards, and keep up the good work.
Bob, we generally announce the 2009 Challenge topics the day before. That is done on purpose. Our hope is that through the limited time to plan, each photog will grow in their ability to accept their environment and circumstances. This will push your skill level, hopefully.
Is there a list of all the daily photo challenge daily topics for the year? I can only find the posts after the fact. I am trying to find the Challenge subjects a day or two in advance.
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I’ve only been doing the challenges since the 2nd week of May, but I’m finding the more I participate, the more the creative side of my brain has been kicking in. Sad to say, it had been on hiatus for a long time, but these challenges are stretching it, getting it back in fighting form 🙂
I like the premise, “commit to view and critique each other’s photography.” I hope that as people get to know me better through my participation that they’re feel more comfortable to do the critiquing aspect, because I know from previous experience, that really does help to improve your skills.
Thanks, Trevor, for organizing this all!