"Ugly" Location Photo Challenge

When I'm not working, or marathon training, or riding BMX, or traveling with my boyfriend, or whatever else we all do that suddenly takes a 24 hour day and squashes it into a tiny ball comprised of a few precious hours of down time (sheesh!), I like to take photos.

In fact, I LOVE photography. Most of my YouTube history is made up of how-tos, info. on camera specs, photography ideas and editing tips. Up until now I've been using either A.) a point and shoot camera (pre-smart phone) or B.) My trusty smart phone.

Brandon Woefel is one of my all time FAVORITE photographers. This is one of his photos. 

Click here to visit his site.

A while ago I purchased a used Canon T3 DSLR from a friend and fellow amateur photographer. It was missing a few key items to make it work, and after procrastinating on that subject for about a year, I finally have it together and running and I can't wait to play around with it this weekend. (If anyone knows how to change the settings to shoot in the RAW I am all ears. Some Google research might be in order.) 😄

My "new/old" camera

(source)

Having not grown up with a lot I learned to make use of what I did have, and I applied that thought to my photography-- can I call it that yet??-- as well. I can't wait to learn to use my new camera, Light Room and Photoshop but there's no reason not to try this on an iPhone and some apps. I've been loving to take photos with my phone's camera and edit them in different apps, and recently I've been seeing a lot of "ugly" photoshoot challenges on the internet.

The point of an ugly photoshoot challenge is to shoot in a location that isn't necessarily used for traditional photoshoots. The location may not be ugly, but it IS challenging. Challenging is probably a better word for it, but for the sake of continuity I'll be using the original term here.

Some examples of locations are the grocery store (what we used), Hobby Lobby (this one is VERY popular), JoAnn's, a movie theatre, outside, in front of some dumpsters, in the thrift store (we did a mini shoot here), Home Depot, Lowe's, an underpass or somewhere outside that presents a challenge. As always, make sure you are SAFE wherever you go to take these photos. Your safety > a picture.

Thrift store fun

Earlier this year a friend took me out for my birthday dinner (it was DELICIOUS- thank you J!) and we stopped in to the grocery store after since she needed a few items. That's when the idea presented itself - why not do an ugly photoshoot challenge?? So we did.

We went to the awesome HEB grocery store for these

Adding some props to the shoot

Playing around with edits

A borrowed fur coat gave this a little something extra, wouldn't you say? 😜💁

We tried out a few aisles, eventually settling on the Valentine's Day aisle, and just had fun. There really was no rhyme or reason to our shoot, it was just fun to laugh and be silly for a minute. Editing them was probably my favorite thing to do. I have several apps I like that all do different things, so trying to come as close as I could to a professional or "real" photoshoot effect was both a challenge and a blast. They're not perfect but here's what I've come up with so far. If you like to take photos I encourage you to take the "ugly" location photoshoot challenge too! These aren't perfect, but I'm having fun and learning a lot!

IKEA with my boyfriend. 

He saw "quick chore" and I saw cool backdrop challenge lol! 

Poor Yuan. 😆

Hobby Lobby with the boyfriend 💘 

I love how he puts up with my obsession. 

#patient 

Now for a little disclaimer: If you do this, be mindful of what you are using, watch out for employees (depending on the store or what you try to do they might kick you out- we didn't get too crazy in any of ours, nor did we have a big professional camera hanging from our necks), and don't try to attract too much attention to what you're doing. This may help you not to get kicked out haha! Don't forget to have fun! The finished photos will speak for themselves. ❤💥