Beyond The Camera

Beyond The Camera is perhaps my most demanding challenge of the 2012 set. It involves stepping away from taking images and actually finding ways of using those images. There’s a commercial element to these challenges, sure, but that does not equate to making money. Of course it would be great to publish a book or two and have them sell, but I cannot expect that to happen. It would be wonderful to find a niche market in the eBook world and carve out a name for myself there, but it would be incredibly presumptuous to even begin to think that such a thing could happen. As for making an iPhone / iPad App (maybe an Android one, too) is probably totally out of this world, but if I don’t try to stretch myself, if I don’t put these incredibly ambitious (and perhaps foolhardy) ideas out there, then I’ll never even try to push myself beyond the camera.

Details:

Easy – Publish 2 New Photobooks.

This challenge is all around compiling and publishing books, most likely through Blurb.com (although how the book is to be published is not stipulated in the challenge).

Easy – Make 3 Large Prints.

Again this is a simple challenge, although surprisingly it is something that I’ve only ever done once before.

Easy – Produce a 2013 Calendar

I missed the opportunity to create a calendar for 2012, I don’t want to miss that chance again.

Medium – Sell 5 copies of an eBook.

I have no idea at the time of writing how I am going to begin this challenge, let alone complete it. Research into eBook creation / marketing / online selling is definitely required here. This is definitely an area of publishing that interests me.

Medium – Enter 3 Competitions

I’ve only entered two photo competitions to date, and didn’t get past the first sift in both cases. Perhaps 2012 will be a more competitive year for me?

Hard – Create an App.

Without doubt this is the single hardest, most ambitious, and most likely-not-to-be-achieved challenge of the entire 2012 set. I have downloaded a copy of Xcode, so technically I have all the tools I need to create an iOS app at my disposal. What I don’t have, however, is any recent experience with programming (it’s been a decade or more since I wrote my last program) or really any idea of what kind of app I would want to make. It would be photography based, but currently I am all out of ideas. Still, I am excited by the prospect of working on this challenge, even if I am not sure I could ever really complete it.