A couple weeks ago, I stumbled upon a small Facebook group that a photographer created to inspire and challenge others weekly. I decided it would be a good out of the box experience to actually push myself a little out of my comfort zone. The goal is that each week a theme is posted related to one of 3 catergories of photography which are portrait(my personal forte) landscape(something I should shoot more of) and finally artistic(which I need in order to boost my creativity) Small group, fun challenges, it will be good for you to have weekly assignments and explore different realms. At least that is what the voice in my head told me. So I excitedly joined this group(and so has many others so now it is a large group), and headed off to see what week 1 assignment was. Ummm Houston we have a problem! I know I said I wanted to get out of my box, and push myself in 2016, but the very first assignment is a self portrait. I know for many of you that takes selfies daily you are laughing and saying easy peasy, but for me that is out of the box extreme as in panic attack, fear of needles type phobia. I started out taking pictures years ago, simply so I could avoid being in them. I have been known to wrestle phones away from people, so I could delete pictures they took it me. Outside of not being very photogenic, I just find it odd to see pictures of myself and now I am being asked to take one of myself, and edit it. Totally weird! I figure this first assignment will be the most challenging of all for me, after this, I can sit back, relax, and have fun. I am going to be taking you guys along with me for the next 52 weeks, and I would love if you would join in with me on this challenge. Each week I will blog the challenge and post the image I submitted for it. Feel free to take your own picture and post in my blog comments for that week. It can be with your phone, a point and shoot or any camrea, make it fun and who knows you may find out you have a knack for it. For those of you following this and already shoot seriously you may want to check out and join the challenge directly. You can find them on Facebook or go to dogwood.photography/52weekchallenge

So here it is week #1 self portrait.

#dogwoodweek1

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