Recently I was talking with a photographer friend of mine about how to grow as photographers and how to grow the business side of what we do as well. We both felt like we wanted to be more engaging and to connect more with people. We asked the question: "How do you get people to care about what you are doing and have them want to be a part of it?"

So, how do we do that? What makes you more interested in what I do? He liked the idea of blogging as a means to connect more with people. I hope that it is something that makes what I do more personal to other people. Plus, writing out what I am doing should hopefully make me more deliberate and intentional about my photography.

Now, what does that have to do with the title above: "Focus - Photo Challenge"?

While we talked, he came up with the idea of a weekly challenge to "compete" against one another. The thought is that each week one of us will provide a project/topic/theme for the week along with any restrictions to it. We will work on the project throughout the week (without knowing how the other is working on the same theme) and then submit the work to each other on the next Monday. We will get a chance to critique, praise or suggest ideas for the other person's finished product. The point would be to push each other to improve and encourage each other to try new things and grow. I know I don't want to display my work to another photographer without feeling pretty confident in what I have done. Plus it will be very helpful to get input from someone with different taste or experience or expertise. The next week the other person picks the theme, and we go through the whole process again.

The theme for week one: Shoot the same thing, anything, differently each day.

My "thing" is water. I love to see water, to hear it, to be near it. I picked it in hopes that I could convey many of the different natures of water - movement, stillness, reflection, refraction.

My first idea for the week was water drops. I have wanted to try shooting this for a while. I need to improve a lot on my lighting and focus, but it was a fun experiment.

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Day 2 was a challenge for sure. I had wanted to try something I had seen before that had to do with a pattern being refracted through a wine glass. My lighting was way off for the effect to work, so I scrapped that and went with bubbles(!). I used my same setup for the light refraction but put the pattern under my wine glass rather than behind it and moved my flash next to the glass. I added some canola oil to the water and added a few drops of dish soap to separate the oil. Then using my macro I dove into bubble land.

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Day 3 did leave me with much time for pictures. My family went to the Titanic exhibit at the Ft Worth Science Museum, so I did get a chance to take a shot of the waterfall in the courtyard. I've taken pictures of it before, but tried to do something a little different with it.

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For day 4 I wanted to get some water in motion. I've shot the spillway at the Trinity a few times before, but it is a really cool spot - especially with all the recent rain. Again, I tried to get something different from a place I have already photographed.

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Day 5 led me to the downtown campus of Tarrant County College. I had never been down there before, but I knew there was a nice water feature. It is a really beautify set of buildings. The emphasis in this shot seems more to be the campus and highrises, but the water is still prominent.

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For day 6 I wanted to get some reflections on water. There was rain in the forecast, and I didn't know if I would have any other chance to get to some water. So, this is some standing water in the creek in our yard.

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So, there it is. Photo Challenge Week 1 is done. Now to come up with a theme for next week... Leave a comment if you have a suggestion.