March Photo Challenge

I’ve mentioned it before on this blog that I’m a bit photographically (is that even a word) challenged. Even if you haven’t read my past blog posts on the whole photography thing it’s pretty obvious, I got a C in my photography class junior year of high school. I’m also not what one would call a talented graphic designer either as evidenced by my PicMonkey created artworks, but it’s photography where I want to improve.

We all know the first step in improving is practice, and frankly that’s part of my downfall. I have been committed these last 6 months in utilizing an editorial calendar and planning out the content I want to write about. It’s been a huge help for me in the writing aspect and it’s helped my blog, I have consistently grown in page views over the last few months.

Though when looking at my blog business plan and where I want to be by the mid-year point and what on my blog could improve the most to give me the biggest bang for my buck. It’s photography.

Even though I have my editorial calendar and my posts planned out softly a month in advance and writing them 2 (ok usually 1) week in advance I struggle with planning out the images. I usually forget about the images until I’m under the gun. Even then if I can think of some great picture to take I run out of time, or I try and it won’t turn out the first 10 (100) times I try and take it so I give up and head to PicMonkey.

So I decided to up my game.

For the entire month of March, I’m going to challenge myself to use real live pictures for every post I post.

With one exception…any of the posts that are about my fiction books will probably have the cover as the lead image.

Two exceptions…my Fab 5 Friday posts that highlight other posts I love. I use the images from the posts I link to and put them in a collage.

Three exceptions…just kidding. Just those 2.

Other than that, no PicMonkey fall backs. I will still use PicMonkey to enhance my photos. Adding layers and text and all that fun stuff but they will START from images using my DLSP camera and one of the 3 lenses I have that are supposed to do awesome things.

I’d be lying if I said this doesn’t scare me. The only thing that makes me feel a little bit better about being able to achieve this is I will be in Ireland for a week this month. I’ve planned on a weeks worth of Ireland related posts with pictures so at least those won’t have to be thought out as much. Or at least that’s what I’m hoping. You may see a lot of pictures of drunken people at the local pub.

I’m also not going to cop out and get away from my 7-day a week posting schedule. Though really only 5 days will need original images.

Regardless of all the exceptions I’m still nervous. It’s going to take a lot of pre-planning and thinking of what to shoot well in advance.

But I’m going to try and hopefully by April my photography skills will be noticeably improved.

What are you going to challenge yourself on for March?

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