One of the best things about our photography courses is that it’s not all over at the end of the course. Once we’ve completed the modules, our students move into our graduate community where they continue to learn and play in a fun, supportive group online.

We love our grad group because we get to see our students continue to blossom after the course. And I have to say, I’ve had a lot of proud moments in that group! They never cease to impress me with their gorgeous photos!

We also like to actively encourage the continued learning and growth, and to that end, twice a month we set our grads a themed photo challenge designed to get them out, practicing and thinking creatively.

So far, we’ve had fun with themes such as:

Miniature

Sweet

Simplicity

Blue

Celebration

Close

Bite

Round

Game

Delicate

Creatures

Texture

Indulgence

Joy

Abstract

Negative Space

Lines

I can’t emphasise enough how important it is to get out and challenge ourselves in photography. This is true for beginners, enthusiasts and professionals alike. Even once we’ve mastered our cameras in manual mode and we have a beautifully developed unique style of our own, we can get stuck in a rut. It’s not uncommon once we’ve found a style we like, to get stuck photographing in the same way because it’s safe and easy. Whether that’s compositionally, or related to the light we shoot in, or even what we shoot. So getting out there and challenging ourselves to shoot something different, in a different way than we normally would, is food for the creative soul.

This is true for everything, not just in photography – in order to learn and keep learning, we must stretch ourselves outside of our comfort zone. That’s when the magic happens!

If you’re stuck in a rut, use one of these challenge themes and get out and shoot! Then come and show us your work here, we’d love to see it!

Now I’d like to share all the winning images from every challenge we’ve had to date.  Also, our miniature challenge had a particularly large number of incredibly beautiful entries, and you can see some of them here.

Our next round of Photography Courses begin soon!