Happy New Year everyone and welcome to 2024!
Here at SlickPic, we’ve been thinking a lot about how SlickPic Academy (“SPA”) can be of the most value to photographers around the world. We started the Academy about 4 months ago and have been introducing you to world-class photographers and educators willing to share their hard-won experiences and incredible photos. Hopefully, this has given you more to think about in your own photography.
We have an ambitious SPA “roadmap” for 2024, and we’re going to kick things off strong with a cool Photo Challenge campaign.
Think of it as a little motivator to improve your photography skills every week (or however often you want to participate). Check out this blog post on all the benefits of participating in consistent photo exercises like this challenge.
Anyone can participate and learn from the Challenge. Here are the highlights and general flow:
- There will be 52 weekly “challenges” over the course of 2024.
- Each week is a different challenge that requires you to capture, edit, and upload a maximum of 3 images to a weekly album. You can certainly draw from your back catalog, but we encourage you to use this as an opportunity to shoot new work!
- The “upload” link will be shown in each week’s listing.
- The weekly album will open up at 12:01 am PST on Monday mornings and close at 11:59 pm on the following Sunday.
- It’s quite helpful to add titles to your images and a description.
- If you have a SlickPic account, your SlickPic screen name will be displayed under the photo. And if you have a public gallery, clicking on your Screen Name under the photo will open your gallery (a good way to attract more attention to your gallery!)
- For security purposes, we turned on the right-click-save protection feature of SlickPic.
- You can upload photos at any time while the week’s challenge is open, but you’ll get the most feedback when more people check the album, so it’s best to upload early.
- Please check periodically for other people’s photo submissions and please Like, Rate (star), and/or Comment on them. Hopefully, these photographers will reciprocate and comment on yours, so everyone wins. The albums will remain public and visible to everyone all the time.
- During the week, the album will be visible to the public and we encourage everyone to provide Up/Down ratings and constructive comments. That’s how we learn and grow!
- Near the beginning of each month there will be a live review via Zoom where a renowned photographer will share their thoughts on the prior month’s images. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn more about capturing winning images.
- Should you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected]
Throughout the year, we want to offer a mixture of traditional assignments (e.g. “Rule of Thirds”) and also some that can give you a pause, and lean into your creativity.
To give you an idea of what’s to come, all 52 challenges are as follows:
- January 1 – Best of 2023
- January 8 – Intentional Camera Movement (ICM)
- January 15 – Silhouettes
- January 22 – Leading Lines
- January 29 – Still Life
- February 5 – One Color
- February 12 – Diagonals
- February 19 – High Key
- February 26 – Reflections
- March 4 – Low Light/Night
- March 11 – Bokeh
- March 18 – Food
- March 25 – Abstract
- April 1 – Black & White
- April 8 – Macro
- April 15 – Panorama
- April 22 – Architecture
- April 29 – Portrait Photography
- May 6 – Negative Space
- May 13 – Patterns and Textures
- May 20 – Forced Perspective
- May 27 – Symmetry
- June 3 – Urban Decay
- June 10 – Film Noir
- June 17 – Water Photography
- June 24 – Symmetry #2
- July 1 – Center Composition
- July 8 – Double Exposure
- July 15 – Candid Portraits
- July 22 – Motion Blur
- July 29 – Backlit Scenes
- August 5 – Golden Hour
- August 12 – Self-Portrait
- August 19 – Rule of Thirds
- August 26 – Tell a Lie
- September 2 – Squares or Triangles
- September 9 – Hallways or Staircases
- September 16 – High-Speed Photography
- September 23 –Wildlife Photography
- September 30 – Framing
- October 7 – Shadows and Highlights
- October 14 – Part of a Whole or Fill the Frame
- October 21 – Long Exposure
- October 28 – “Ugly” Location
- November 4 – Rule of Odds
- November 11 – Nature Close-Ups
- November 18 – Circles or Curves
- November 25 – Give Thanks
- December 2 – Your Home Town
- December 9 – Visualizing Music
- December 16 – Holiday Season
- December 23 – Something New
Please enjoy the SlickPic Academy 2024 52-week Photo Challenge.
