I love Scott Kelby.

Back in 2006 when I was still a very green photographer I stumbled across his “The Photoshop CS2 Book for Digital Photographers” and soaked it up like a sponge in water. In fact, to this day I still go back to many of the work flow and editing techniques that he demonstrates in that book(although now I’ve upgraded to the CS4 book) for every session I process.  The things that he says just make sense to me and every time I follow his “advice” I feel like I’m getting closer to being the photographer I want to be.

I’m also an avid reader of his blog. Last summer I participated in (and locally won) his World Wide Photowalk challenge which I think was one of the best experiences I’ve had while out shooting – it was entirely comfortable and safe, and yet extremely challenging and exciting. I’m greatly looking forward to this year’s walk, but in the meantime Scott recently posted a challenge that had a much similar effect on me; Shoot with a digital camera as if you were shooting film. Cover the LCD screen, shoot only 24(or 36) photos, no peeking at the images for 24 hours, make an actual print, and donate the cost of film & processing to Springs of Hope Kenya. Extra credit if you stick to one ISO setting and don’t edit your shots afterward.

I’ll do just about anything Scott tells me, so I was all over this. Take a couple dozen shots and don’t look at them? Piece of cake.

Or not. I realized quite quickly that it was more of a challenge than I had initially expected. Digital photography is so easy to cheat with, and you pick up little habits that you don’t even notice until the digital convenience factor has been removed. Like what you ask? I had no idea that I check my exposure by looking at the play-back on the LCD screen! I was pretty embarrassed to realize this habit of mine about 12 shots in when I noticed on my in-camera meter that I had been WAY under-exposing all of my images. Had I been shooting a roll of film I would have wasted half of it! Once I started using the light meter, it seems that my shots came out just fine, but what a funny little habit I didn’t even know I had.

My other great weakness it seems is in-camera composition. I tend to compose a shot wide and then fix it later in post. I realize that this is something that a lot of people do, and there’s nothing wrong with it, but I didn’t recognize this mentality in myself until I opened the images in photoshop and reminded myself that I couldn’t edit(or crop!) them. This is something Iin particular that I intend to look at more closely when I shoot from now on, because as someone who has a background in fine art, good compositions are kind of a big deal to me.

I also discovered that I have strengths I wasn’t aware of. In all of my shots the focus was manual and I nailed it every time. I didn’t know that I could do that an I have a new confidence in those skills now.

Anyway, below are my 10 decent images from the challenge, and although they’re not the best thing I’ve ever done I’m still pretty proud of them. Click on any of the thumbnails to open a lightbox gallery and scroll through the images.

I can’t even tell you what the gnome was is about – don’t ask. If you took Scott’s challenge this weekend too, share them with me! I’d love to see what others produced and hear your experiences. And even if you didn’t participate in the challenge but are feeling generous I encourage you to consider donating to Springs of Hope Orphanage, $10 goes a long way toward helping out some very special kids.