2020 Photography Challenge: Shooting the 4 Seasons

One way to get better at photography is to shoot the same subject over and over, improving the image with every shot. Often, photographers do this repetitive shooting in a short period of time, leaving once they get a nice shot. However, some of the best learning happens when you return to the same subject days or months later, after you’ve thought of ways to improve the shot.

With that in mind, we’ve created a photography challenge for 2020 that focuses on repetition and the four seasons. To complete it, you’ll choose 13 subjects or locations to photograph four times each.

The four seasons (winter, spring, summer, autumn) are an obvious way to structure this challenge, but you could also use different weather or times of the day. For instance, you could plan shots for the morning, midday, evening, and night. Or you could shoot a location in rainy, sunny, cloudy, and foggy weather.

The main point is to have repetition, spaced over time with different circumstances for each shot. Whether you focus on seasons or weather, it doesn’t matter. You’ll learn a lot either way.

You can also decide whether to shoot from the same angle every time or vary your shots with different perspectives or techniques. Variety will give you more creative freedom, but repeating the exact same shot can be beautiful, too, showing the passage of time or the effect of weather.

b k – Four Seasons – Longbridge Road

Repeating shots can be great for learning, and it’s easy to do. The hardest part may be choosing the subjects and then remembering to photograph them again after a couple of months.

To help you with that, we’ve created a print-out for organizing your shots. You can use this document both for keeping track of subjects and writing down quick thoughts about each shoot. It’s similar to having a photography notebook, only smaller and lighter. Folded up, it should easily fit into a camera bag, even a small one.

2020 Photography Challenge

Each page has space for seven subjects, so for this challenge, you’ll need to print two pages. Then, you’ll have space to shoot 52+ photos – one image for each week of the year.

Now all you need to do is choose 13 subjects and start shooting them! If you enjoy long photoshoots, you can even plan to do all 13 subjects in one day or weekend. Then, you could repeat the same shoot three more times throughout the year, so you’ll have four big shoots instead of one photo every week.

Choose whatever subjects and strategies work for you! For inspiration, here are some subjects that work wonderfully for photos of the four seasons.

Inspiration for Pictures of the Seasons

When brainstorming for this challenge, try to think of subjects that easily fit into your life. Otherwise, if you choose subjects that are inconvenient to shoot, you might have a hard time working them into your schedule. You want this challenge to be fun, not a burden!

For more inspiration, check out our challenges from previous years:

In addition to this general photography challenge, we’ll continue to announce monthly challenges in our newsletter. Unlike this general challenge, the monthly challenges will have deadlines and specific subjects, and we’ll select images from them to publish. If you like deadlines and competition, be sure to follow our newsletter for the monthly challenges.

We hope that between this year-long challenge and the monthly challenges, you’ll be motivated to keep shooting and learning in 2020. As always, we love seeing the images you create, so tag your photos #thephotoargus on Instagram or submit them to our Flickr group!