Challenge Time!! | Announcing our Very First M4H Challenge!

Be sure to read everything for directions on how to play along!! And tonight at 6pm Eastern Join me on my fan page at Facebook.com/myfourhens for a Coupon game! The details on how to play are in the discussion area there!

I am so excited to embark on this journey with you all! I really feel when we challenge ourselves not only as artists but as people we leave room for growth not only in our personal lives but in every other possible area imaginable! I have wanted to do more for the photography community as a whole as a way of giving back to all the people that helped so selflessly as I have come into my own and watched my own business flourish! I am a pay it forward kind of gal but also believe we are never complete and there is always room for change, improvement and knowledge, especially when it comes to photography. In Photoshop alone there are a million ways to do just one thing! These challenges will not only provide a means to find your inner artist but to learn to think more so out the box. I hope to grown myself and become a better photographer and am a strong supporter of projects to help accomplish that. I have now taken on the Project 365 THREE times and though I have never been able to successfully complete one (some day) I will say that my skill and eye have developed tremendously in the short time I did take on these projects! The more you practice anything the better you will get! Its almost always a given!

If you are wondering how these challenges will work they are super simple. I am going to provide a “Theme” and my hopes are that you will internalize this theme and come up with your own interpretation. Because I believe that photography is subjective as is all art the winner will be chosen at random to give everybody an equal opportunity to win and to spare hurt feelings. I will be drawing from the pool of submissions though to feature a few favorites here as well! To enter you will have to post your submission on your own blog and then link back here. If you would also like to share your photo in my Flickr group though you are also more then welcome! (In fact that is where I will be pulling the photos to share here from so I hope you will!) You can find the Flickr group HERE. You may also of course share on my Fan page HERE as well! And even if you don’t I hope you will come by and say hi! To make sure you are entered though you must link back here with your blog post submission! And there will be some awesome prizes each week some by me and some by amazing sponsors of mine! The photo does have to be taken FOR this challenge so you can not submit an older photo unfortunately unless otherwise specified (some challenges it may totally be allowed). I will allot 72 hours though to do so and hopefully that will give you enough time to bring your vision to life! Really I just want you to have fun though so no worries if you can’t do every single one! Be sure to share with your friends too! The more the merrier and the larger our group grows the better the prizes will be!Also the photos do NOT need to be edited with my photoshop actions and textures. If you do want to upload them to my flickr group or fan page though they must be either totally hand processed or using my actions or textures (or both) to save confusion. I don’t want to misrepresent someone else’s actions or textures as my own! I do appreciate your understanding! Also do note if you do not have a blog just link your photo uploaded to a flickr account and that will totally suffice!

Heres your first Challenge!!!

The First week I have put a ton of thought into what would be the perfect jumping off point. I think the one word that would be best to jump off on would be INSPIRE. If you are on my fan page you will notice I was throwing feelers out there over the weekend! The term is totally subjective and there are SO many ways you can spin it. Your photo can be based off something that you find inspirational, someone you find inspirational, a favorite photo you or someone else has already taken, something your child does that really evokes a special feeling, an idea you have had for a while, a favorite website, a clothing ad, a building in your neighborhood, a song, seriously anything your heart or mind can dream up!! I think as photographers we see the world SO differently so I think it will be wonderful to see what people can come up with. You do NOT need to be a photographer to participate either. A mom with a camera, a scrapbooker, whatever! Come play along! Grab your cell phone, point and shoot, dslr, film camera, vintage camera ANYTHING! Just jump in!

Lastly the prize this week is going to be a 20.00 Gift Certificate to Zulily.com and a 20.00 Gift Certificate to my SHOP here and can be used towards anything 🙂 The winner will be chosen 24 hours after the contest closes! If I do choose your photo to feature I will contact you to ask permission first but feel free to watermark your photos with your photography logo!

And because this thread is worthless without photos here is my take! I decided in lieu of it being a challenge I would challenge myself. Here is a non person photo with a texture LOL Go me right?!

And the reason I photographed this is because despite the fact a good amount of my photos are indeed of people (especially children) I find a TON of inspiration in nature, especially in the locations I choose! These yellow flowers bloom in my front yard for a VERY short amount of time and I get excited to photograph this particular bush every year!! In case you are wondering what I did to this photo I used the “Dove” action from the Fable action set and then I ran a couple of tools from the Ultimate Photographers Tool kit and finished with a texture from My Eye Candy Texture Set (specifically texture 17R)

And just a couple more from the same day 🙂