Photo Creative

Current Challenge: Countryside

The countryside offers so much more than rolling hills and pretty landscapes. It’s a place of work, wildlife, history and quiet beauty. For this challenge, I’d like you to create an image that clearly conveys the countryside. 

Your subject is entirely up to you: a sweeping landscape, livestock, a farmer at work, country lanes, tractors, dry stone walls, wildlife, a motorcyclist enjoying a winding road, an ancient church or castle... anything that instantly says "countryside."

If you live in a city, make a day trip and put in some work and effort if you need to. Seek out an interesting location or event and make a trip out of it. (Do this alone. Friends and family will get bored, you’ll feel obliged to hurry and that won’t yield your best work.)

Then use your creativity, light, composition, lens choice and camera technique to create the strongest image you can. Don't just record what you see. Create a photograph you're proud to share.

• Shoot appropriately for the light and vice-versa. Choose your light carefully.

• Tell us a story or feeling. Look beyond pretty scenery. Include people, animals, machinery or details that clearly reveal the countryside.

• Use your lens creatively. Wide-angle lenses can emphasise space and scale, while telephoto lenses can isolate subjects and compress rolling landscapes.

• Think about composition. Use gates, hedgerows, fences, tracks or rivers as leading lines or frames to support your subject and draw the viewer into the scene.

• Be patient. Great photographs come from waiting for the right light, weather or moment rather than taking the first picture you see.

Some of the strongest entries may not be landscapes at all, but photographs of life within the countryside. That usually produces a much more varied and interesting set of images.

Dates and info below ⬇️