With Summer officially starting soon (yay!!!) I thought it would be fun to celebrate with a little Instagram photo challenge to help you document your kids this summer!

I've created 36 photo prompts, all with a summery vibe, and all with the goal of helping you take better photos of your kids (and maybe try out one or two new ways of photographing them too!) and document the season.

All YOU need to do is go out, capture them, then share them!

I’m a big believer in both shooting regularly to improve your photography AND of capturing our time with our kids, so this challenge should be a great way of doing both. Plus, it’s a great way for everyone to share their photos and get to know one another through the hashtag!

We all know the feeling of being in a creative rut -  those times when we don’t quite know what to shoot and feel a little lost, or else we are fed up photographing the same things, in the same place, and in the same way, and feel we need a bit of a kick up the rear end.

In both those cases a photography project or creative exercise can really help!

It sounds weird, but actually being able to shoot anything we want, at any time we want, is sometimes not great for feeling creative! It can lead to overwhelm and paralysis, and in those situations, actually LIMITING your options, or shooting to a strict, pre-defined theme, will actually let your creative juices flow a heck of a lot more freely.  

That’s why I spent a lot of time last year coming up with not one, not two, but TWELVE different photography projects or creative exercises you can, one for each month of the year :-)

In this blog post, I’m listing all 12 of these projects you can do in the coming year: so you never run out of ideas again! They also range from long(ish) projects that will span the whole month, to shorter ones that will just take you half an hour, so it really doesn’t matter how much time you’ve got, you should find something for you here.

Welcome back for your last creative challenge!  If you are brand new to the blog, every month in 2017 I have posted a creative exercise or a mini photography project for you to do.  This is the final one of the year, so I hope you can join me for it!

So, here it is:  the final challenge of 2017.

If you have been following along since the start of the year, I hope you have enjoyed them all!  We’ve had a great mix of challenges I think, definitely something for everyone.

Remember, you can do the vast majority of these challenges at ANY time, so I’ll be back next week with a post that rounds up ALL the different challenges and projects I have here on the blog, so that you can pin or bookmark it for easy reference for going forward.

But back to this final challenge, as we are going to take on a mini photography project for this final month: a December Daily.

Welcome back for another creative challenge! If you are new to the blog, every month for 2017 I have been posting a photography project / creative exercise for you to do.   There is only a couple of months left , but come back again on the first Tuesday of December for your FINAL assignment of 2017!  You can of course do these projects / creativity exercises at ANY time, so at the bottom of this post you will find links to the previous challenges too :) 

For this month's challenge we are going to be creating a photo series.

What is a photo series I hear you ask? Well, it's simply a group of photos that come together to create a common theme or story. 

Ready? Let's dive in! 

Welcome back for another creative challenge!  If you are new to the blog, every month for 2017 I will be posting a creative exercise / mini photography project for you to do.  So if you like the idea of a monthly flex of your photography muscles, come back on the first Tuesday of every month for your assignment.  

Yup. we've got another Scavenger Hunt, but this time for Fall. Now, this wasn't what I had originally had planned, but because I had so many people request it, via email and in our Facebook Group, I like to give you what you want! 

As per the Summer Scavenger Hunt, you've got a downloadable list of prompts, and all you need to do is go out is simply go out and capture what is on the list. 

Welcome back for another creative challenge! If you are new to the blog, every month for 2017 I will be posting a creative exercise / mini photography project for you to do.  So if you like the idea of a monthly flex of your photography muscles, come back at the first Tuesday of every month for your assignment.  You can of course do these at ANY time, so at the bottom of this post you will find links to the previous challenges too!

For this month's creativity exercise, we are going on a Scavenger Hunt!

Welcome back for another creative challenge! If you are new to the blog, every month for 2017 I will be posting a creative exercise / mini photography project for you to do.  So if you like the idea of a monthly flex of your photography muscles, come back at the first Tuesday of every month for your assignment.  You can of course do these at ANY time, so at the bottom of this post you will find links to the previous challenges too!

For this month's creativity exercise, we are going to switch gears a little bit (again! I like to mix it up 😄) and consider how we can document our lives, or the lives of the people we love, through photography. 

Once again, it's a simple idea:  we are going to do this using a "currently" list.  It's such a wonderful way to document what your life looks like right NOW,  and not only that, but it will get your creative juices flowing as you need to decide how to capture these thoughts, feelings and actions.  So, it's documentary, but with a creative twist! 

Welcome back for another creative challenge! If you are new to the blog, every month for 2017 I will be posting a creative exercise for you to do.  So if you like the idea of a monthly flex of your photography muscles, come back at the first Tuesday of every month for your assignment.  You can of course do these at ANY time, so at the bottom of this post you will find links to the previous challenges too!

This particular exercise is absolutely wonderful for those times when you are feeling a bit creatively blocked or stuck in a rut - you know those times when you just aren’t feeling motivated to pick up your camera, and when you do you feel like everything you take looks blah and boring. 

The reason we are having this creativity exercise this month is this is because that is EXACTLY how I have been feeling of late! 

Photography has been a major part of my life for a long time now, and between writing blog posts, doing live streams in the Facebook group, answering questions, recording lessons and creating courses on the subject, I feel like the actual part of taking the photos is something that I have fallen out of doing!  I know that this feeling is pretty common with professional photographers, because their creativity in essence becomes their job, which in and itself can get repetitive. However, it can - nay, it WILL - happen to everyone, regardless of whether you are a hobbyist or a seasoned pro. 

So, for this exercise, we are going to be limiting ourselves with how we shoot (because believe or not limitations HELP your creativity!) but only with regard to location and time.

Welcome back for another creative challenge! If you are new to the blog, every month for 2017 I will be posting a creative exercise for you to do.  So if you like the idea of a monthly flex of your photography muscles, come back at the first Tuesday of every month for your assignment.  You can of course do these at ANY time, so at the bottom of this post you will find links to the previous challenges too!

For this month's exercise, we are going to use an often overlooked composition tool - framing. 

Framing your subject is ja really powerful way to bring your viewers attention to what’s important in your image, while also bringing an extra element of interest, so it's a great composition tool to be able to pull out of your back pocket. 

The good news is it’s not hard to do, it's only a question of being able to see the possibilities around you when shooting - and that's what this creative exercise will help you do! 

Each month for 2017, I'll be sharing a monthly photo challenge that with either get you capturing your daily life,  improving your photography skills, or get you feeling more creative.  So, if you like the idea of a monthly short project, make sure you come back at the start of every month for your assignment!  

The last two months have been focused very much on capturing our daily life, so for this month's exercise we are going to switch gears a little bit, and focus instead on learning to think more creatively.   

And as you may have guessed, for this exercise, we are heading into the kitchen :)  

There are times when we will want more than just one picture of a event or activity, and there is where the photo essay comes in! Telling a story through images can be made much easier when we use several frames, rather than attempting to capture everything in just one shot.

To try to get the whole breadth of the story across, here's a shooting "framework" you can try to use to help make sure you  capture it all when taking multiple images of the same activity.

Want a creativity exercise that not only helps improve your photography skills but also helps you capture memories that you'll treasure? Then you'll love doing a "Day in Your Life" Project! 

Before I get into how to carry out this creativity exercise, I want to let you know that this is the first of a series of "challenges" that I'll be sharing right here on the blog, every month for 2017.  So, if you like the idea of a monthly short project, make sure you come back at the start of every month for your assignment.  (Read on the end of the post to see what to do for this one for January!)

As a photographer, it’s pretty common (dare I say unavoidable) to go through different peaks and troughs with regard to your creativity.  There are times when you feel so incredibly inspired that you can't wait to pick up your camera for another day, and you have so many ideas for images that you can't possibly take them all!  However, on the flip side, there are also bound to be days when you don't feel inspired to pick up your camera at all, much less know what to photograph with it, or what to try next. 

Or you may be a new photographer, wondering what you on earth you can photograph, and needing a little push to get you going again - and maybe even to learn something new!

This is my second year of a Project 365 as a photography project, and I think it's been one of the best things I have committed to as a photographer - firstly because it helps improve your photography skills, and secondly because you capture so many random moments and things that otherwise might not have bothered to capture!

However, it can be difficult to commit to taking a photo a day - although it can only take a few minutes to take a picture, there are times when you feel there is nothing to capture that day, or you simply are too busy to remember to do it! So here are a few tips to help you complete your 365 this year. 

I've been feeling a little blocked creatively of late - it's something that always happens when I am feeling particularly busy or overwhelmed, and picking up my camera can feel more like a chore.  At times like these, or just when you feel you need a little push to try something new,  a creativity exercise is a fantastic photography project to undertake to lift you up out of a rut. 

The following is a classic artists exercise, and it's helpful regardless of what stage of your photography journey you are on - if you are a beginner, it's a great way to begin to see light and shadows and so on, and if you are more advanced, it can be challenging to come up with different compositions or use of light.  Either way, it's very simple -  here's what you do: