The 365 Day Photo Challenge Written by Elijah Fisher Photos by Elijah Fisher
365
days. A whole year. Some of you may have heard of the 365 Day Photo Challenge. If not, I’ll explain. It is exactly what it sounds like; you take a photograph a day for 365 days. Some people do it for longer, other people for less, and others with different variations. We will get into some variations a little bit later. The entire point of this challenge is to develop your photography skills. A better way to think of it is as an exercise where there are multiple ways it can help develop your skill. One way it can help you is with building proficiency with your chosen camera. Or it can help you develop a habit of taking pictures. When you go further, it can help you choose to target different areas of your photography where you want to improve quality. It can target both quantity and quality, depending on the way you use the challenge.
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In 2018, I chose to do the photo challenge. In full disclosure, I did not finish; when I started my fall semester in college I ended up quitting. In October I ended up not posting frequently enough as per my restrictions on the challenge and that
led to me feeling discouraged and quitting about the beginning of December. I still feel that I had a whole lot of experience gained from the challenge in all areas of photography and all the areas that I mentioned you can gain skills from the challenge. First of all, I would say it gets you into the routine of using your camera. It helps you develop a habit of looking for photographs and seeing what people and environments around you are photogenic and photographic. This is one of the ways that I improved the most during my year. Secondly, I would say you become much more competent and familiar with the equipment that you are using. It is always fun to know your camera and be able to get a shot quicker because you understand your dials and how they relate to the science behind photography. This does not just apply to having a physical camera; you can learn the controls on your phone a lot better by taking a bunch of pictures over and over again. You might say that you take plenty of pictures on your phone already, but it is different when you are try-
