The Beginner Photography Podcast

5 Photo Assignments to Kickstart Your Creativity This Weekend

• Raymond Hatfield

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#558 In this episode of the podcast, I wanted to shake things up by sharing five practical photo assignments that can help you build your skills no matter where you are in your photography journey. My goal was to get you out of passive learning mode and encourage you to actually take action—because in photography, ideas mean little without execution. Throughout the episode, I weave in personal stories and lessons learned from both my professional work and family life, emphasizing that constraints (like shooting with only 12 photos or at high noon) aren’t your enemy—they’re your creative fuel.

Key themes include being intentional with every shot, appreciating and mastering different types of light (even the ones we usually try to avoid), developing an efficient editing workflow, and learning to tell complete stories with your images. My hope is that by giving you these specific assignments, you’ll find not only growth in your technical skills, but also gain confidence and a deeper understanding of your personal style. I also encourage you to reflect on your process and results so you can identify what truly matters to you as a photographer. There were no guest speakers in this episode—just me sharing practical advice and my own experiences to help you get the most out of your camera and creativity.

THE 5 SKILL BUILDER SHOOTS

  1. The One-Hour Story
  2. High-Noon Portrait
  3. 5-Minute Editing Baton
  4. Same Subject, Four Moods
  5. The 24-Frame Roll

IMPORTANT DEFINITIONS & CONCEPTS

  • Three-Act Structure in Storytelling: Borrowed from filmmaking, this divides a photographic story into a beginning (context), middle (action), and end (resolution), guiding the photographer to create a cohesive narrative in a series of images.


DISCUSSION & REFLECTION QUESTIONS

  1. How does imposing creative constraints (like a shot limit) shift your approach to photography?
  2. After trying one of these assignments, what did you learn about your personal style or decision-making process?
  3. Can you identify an image you captured with intention? What elements made it stand out?

RESOURCES:
Download The 5 Skill Builder Shoots Kit- beginnerphotopod.com/skills
Recommended Reflectors - https://amzn.to/3GnD0J3

Sign up for your free CloudSpot Account today at www.DeliverPhotos.com

Connect with Raymond!


Thanks for listening & keep shooting!

Raymond Hatfield:

I remembered like just a few years earlier, I had rescheduled a session with a couple, and I had told them like, oh, noontime light is bad. You're gonna get those raccoon eyes. Why don't we just wait later until we have some more dramatic light, like in the evening? But this day I realized, wait, I'm not worried at all. And it was because my understanding of light had changed. Harsh light isn't bad. Harsh light isn't the enemy. It's being unobservant to the light that is the enemy. Hey everybody, Raymond here, your host of the Beginner Photography Podcast, brought to you by Cloud Spot. And let me ask you a real quick question. If you were only allowed 24 shutter clicks all weekend long, do you think that you could still make a photo that you love? Well, today I wanna share with you the five photo assignments that will help you do just that, whatever your skill level is. These assignments that I'm gonna share with you today will help to build your skills, help you stay sharp with those skills, and help you just to gain confidence when you are shooting. I am a firm believer in the idea that ideas are nothing and that action is everything. Even though I don't always take my own advice. and in the photography world, that means, rather than watch a six, the YouTube video on how to shoot in manual, maybe just start shooting a manual. Rather than watching a 14th video about that new camera that just came out, maybe just go shoot with the one that you already have. And in the same way that watching YouTube videos about fitness and nutrition, I'm sure they're gonna educate you, but it will all be for naught unless you actually start moving your body and, eating the right things. So, today's episode is a creative workout for your eyes. I'm not gonna recommend any new gear to buy. What you have is just fine. All you'll need is some structured reps. And I've broken it down into five assignments that are gonna build on top of each other, from story to lights, to editing, mood, and finally, intentionality. These are all things that I'm gonna be teaching in the upcoming beginner photography podcast workshop that is in person in Chicago here on May 3rd. I'm so excited for this. Even though I'm not super happy with the city of Chicago right now because, as I currently record this, the Cubs are winning two o in this series against the Dodgers. And hey, that's just not cool. But I'll try not to bring any of that animosity to the workshop, but no promises. Okay, let's go ahead and get started. But I guess first, before we do, I really want to make it clear that, I don't want you to just listen to this episode and say, oh, yeah, that's a good idea. I'll remember to do that. No, I, I want you to, to save this episode, and then make a plan to actually go out and shoot the assignments that I'm going to share with you today. Take action in your photography journey. Make progress. Okay, soapbox out of the way. Let's get started. Assignment number one is this, it's called the one hour story, and the setup is if you had just one hour and only 12 frames, could you tell a complete story? One of my favorite parts of spring and summer is going to the kids ball games. And my daughter has really picked up softball. It's become really important to her. So, as the, unofficial family photographer or I guess official family photographer, I want to take photos of the things that she loves. I wanna take photos of things that my kids love, but I also want to be there to watch the game, right? I wanna watch her progress. I don't just want to have memories of being behind a camera. So when I photograph her games, what I'll do to allow myself to photograph it and be present is I'll give myself a limit of taking just 12 photos. That way I can document it and again, be present to, to enjoy the game itself. Because that's one thing that I find is really important to being a parent is, what good are the photos if you're not there to actually enjoy it with your family as well. So you may be asking yourself, why am I just limiting myself to just 12 photos? Well, I have found, and you may, you know, for you it may be 10, it may be 15, but I have found that limiting myself to just 12 photos forces me to tell the story of the game rather than just take random shots. It forces me to think about the story of the game beforehand, and you don't know exactly how the game is gonna turn out. You don't know if they're gonna win or lose. You don't know, if your child is gonna hit a home run or, or strike out every single time, you don't know. But it forces you to think about, well, what is the story of every game? Again, before you show up to the ball field. And to think about that, you also have to think about what does every good story have? Every good story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. If I told you I had toast this morning, that's not really like that great of a story. But if I said, oh, I came downstairs and I was so hungry, we skipped dinner last night'cause we were just so late, coming home. And I open up the pantry and the bread is, is gone. There's no bread. And I'm like, oh, I really wanted toast this morning. And then I turn around, there's my son and he has, bread right there that he's already putting in the toaster for himself. So it's like, oh, great, okay. There actually is bread. And then turns out he was actually making the toast for me, which was super nice. And, it's fun to watch your kids cook for you. And, he put a little bit of butter on it, a little bit of a, a cinnamon and, and it was delicious. That's a much better story than just saying I had toast for breakfast. There's a beginning. Oh. I was, I was hungry and I really wanted toast for breakfast. There's a middle, oh, no, there's no toast. What's gonna happen? Oh, there's my son with the bread, and then there's an ending. Oh, he actually made the toast for me. And it's fun to watch your kids grow into this role where they're old enough to actually make stuff for you. There's a beginning, a middle, and an end. So when you bring this into photography, when you bring this into storytelling or when you bring storytelling into photography and you're not thinking about photography as just one frame, you're thinking about it as a series of frames, then it becomes a whole lot easier, you know? So, I always think of photo one as the establishing shot. If you think about any movie, it usually starts with some sort of like drone shot, coming into this building or, or like a wide landscape of a farm or, something like that. Something that tells you here's where the story is taking place. It's establishing, where we are, what are we doing here? So for me, this may be a photo of the tournament banner while the girls kind of walk by through the shot. Maybe it's slow shutter, get a little bit of motion blur in there. Photo two may be some variation of the girls in the dugout, hanging their bags or grabbing their gloves, to go practice, before the game. You gotta get a photo of an at bat. You gotta get an action shot while they're out in the field. A reaction shot, of the parents is great. if there's a hit or a run scored. And by the end, I either want to get a shot of all the girls, you know, cheering and high five for their win, or maybe grass stained on their shoes, you know? But in 60 minutes, in 12 frames, I need to capture the complete arc, the anticipation, the action, the victory or defeat. And I'm telling you, when you take just 12 shots, seriously, try this. Even just once when you take only 12 shots, when you limit how much you can shoot, and there there are 12 meaningful shots, you're going to remember those moments way better than if you had just rapid fired off 300 shots, hoping that you got one good one. Constraints I have found fuel, my creativity. And when looking into other artists and how they work, I find a similar theme coming up time and time again. So with this assignment, you're forced to slow down and you're forced to plan because you're limited not only on time, but also the number of photos that you can take. So I want you to try to trade in the, the spray and pray method for intentional storytelling because that is a muscle that every photographer needs, whether you're shooting your kid's birthday party, or a destination wedding. So here's the assignment and here are the step by step instructions for you to practice. Step one, I want you to pick a one hour window of something that you already have planned. Maybe it's a Saturday morning farmer's market. Maybe it's a ball game with your buddies, or even maybe you're hosting a backyard barbecue, whatever. It's, so set that timer for 60 minutes and it can start, the moment that you take your first frame, whatever. And if you're shooting digital, turn off the automatic image preview. I don't want the photo to pop up. Once you take it. Don't worry about is this good, is this bad? How can I get this better? Just do your best to get, get it in camera and shoot. Step number four, pre-visualize the three act structure, the beginning, the middle, and the end. Establish the scene, what's the action, and then how did it end? Step number five is to shoot in sequence. Don't go back and shoot different photos because the story changed. Seriously, if you're just learning how to tell a story, just stick with the original story throughout. Even if the story changes, this will help you build that muscle so that then you can, be more flexible later on. But right now, just stick to the original story. And then, this isn't really a, a step but bonus points if you stick to just one focal length, like a prime lens, I recommend 35 millimeters. That's a pretty good all around, you know, you can get some wide stuff for the establishing. You can get close enough with your camera to get some, some emotion, some moment into your photo as well. And then when you're done with all 12 photos. Ask yourself, when you look over these photos, would a stranger, would somebody who was not there, be able to understand the story? What frame is the emotional peak and what photo was a waste of a click? Knowing these things again, the point of them is to give you insight on who you are as a photographer, you can't pick who you are as a photographer and then go towards that. You have to kind of let it naturally come up. When you give yourself constraints of how to shoot something, you're gonna see how you just naturally want to frame naturally, what moments you want to capture, how you tell a story, how you expose. And it's in that, that you're going to realize what kind of a photographer you are, so that going forward you can be more aware of those things, focus on them, and then capture better photos. All right, assignment number two. And I can hear everybody pre getting nervous right now because, if you are somebody who gets nervous, who maybe gets a little clammy at the thought of shooting portraits at noon when the sun is high in the sky causing those, oh, so despised raccoon eyes, then this one is going to help you out so, so much. A few years ago I was doing an engagement session, during the fall and traditionally in the fall, it's pretty cloudy, all day. So, I wasn't too worried about harsh light or anything. We're pretty good. Well, as luck would have it, we had a second summer that weekend, that we had planned for all of these fall photos and I mean, I'm talking, it was warm and not a cloud in the sky, as pilots would say. It was severe, clear, and my wife said to me like, wait, isn't it bad light at noon. And I remembered like just a few years earlier, I had rescheduled a session with a couple, but because of this exact same thing, and I had told them like, oh, noontime light is bad. You're gonna get those raccoon eyes. Why don't we just wait, later until we have some more dramatic light, like in the evening? But this day I realized, wait, I'm not worried at all. And it was because my understanding of light had changed. Harsh light isn't bad. Harsh light isn't the enemy. It's being unobservant to the light that is the enemy. When you're shooting at high noon, there are several things that you can do to capture portraits that well you'll be proud to share. So let me share them with you right now. Number one is to rotate your subject. If you're in the Northern hemisphere like we are here in the States, the sun is actually not directly overhead, but it's to the south of us. So what does that mean? It means that by facing your subject north, or just to where the back is more towards the sun, you'll be able to more easily get even lighting on their face. Tip number two is to bounce light. The reason why you get those raccoon eyes, with the light overhead and that the eyes is, is because the eyes are sunk in a bit from the forehead and the cheeks. So the forehead and the cheeks get the brunt of the light, and the eyes are then stuck in shadow. So how do you reduce shadows? You have to add more light. Okay. So how do you add more light? You just get close to something bright. The sun could be hitting a white building or a shack, and that whole wall now acts as a light source. So if you get close to it, the light will then be coming from the side rather than overhead. And when it comes from the side, then the light will fill in the face and you won't get the raccoon eyes. Step three is to block the light. Now I have never been outside and not been able to find a tree or something that I can use as shade to shoot under. Maybe I'm lucky, I don't know. But if you're shooting outside at noon, it'll typically be at a park or something. So if you're shooting at a park at noon, rather than looking for trees,'cause there's probably a lot of trees, look for shadows on the ground. Look for patches of shadow on the ground because if there's a shadow. They're shade. And if they're shade, then there's a pocket of indirect light where you can get a photo of your subject with a face evenly lit and looking beautiful. In worst case, let's say absolute worst case, you're shooting out in the desert on the equator high noon, and there are literally zero trees or pockets of shade. What do you do? Well, then you need to invest in one of those large pop-up reflectors because, they all have like this cover on it to where you can, again, reflect the light. But if you take off the cover, it's a transparent layer and then you can hold that over your subject's head, putting them in instant shade. I used to do this quite often. Especially at, at weddings because, if you're outdoors and your bride is wearing a white dress, that white is just gonna blow out. It's gonna be so bright. So I have a link in the show notes to the set of handheld reflectors that I have. You can use them handheld while shooting, which is cool. One hand on the camera, one hand with a reflector. They're pretty great. You don't need to buy them again. I highly recommend that you use the other tips first, rotate your subject, bounce a light. Just find some open shade. But then, for peace of mind, if you want to check out these reflectors, the link is in the show notes. They're great. I've had them for years. I love them. So here is that step-by-step action plan for practicing shooting a portrait at noon that you're gonna be proud to share. One, ask Google what time is solar noon for the day? It changes every day. Solar noon is when the sun is highest in the sky, and it's not always at noon. In fact, it's rarely at noon. In fact, only two days of year it's at noon. Okay? But anyway. I want you to go out during this time at Solar Noon, because that is when it's the absolute worst conditions that you can imagine, so that when you crush it, you'll know that you'll be able to tackle light anytime and go outside and shoot, and again, get photos that you're happy with. Step two, take your friend, your spouse, your kid, whoever, and go out during that time for a quick shoot. Step three is to try the three tips. Rotate your subject, turn it back towards the sun. Find something that bounces light to fill in any harsh shadows, and then block the light by either shooting under shade tree or under a reflector. And then when you put those photos back on your computer, I want you to note what made the biggest difference when shooting so that it can become your next go-to next time you're out shooting in the afternoon or in harsh light conditions. So there you go. Three ways to capture portraits with great light. Even at noon, by the way, if you're thinking, yeah, yeah, these are great. I should try these, but I don't really trust my memory. Don't worry. I got you. You can grab my five Skill Builder shoots pack with all of the assignments here that I'll, that I'll share with you today. Absolutely for free. It's five printable assignment cards with instructions, supply lists, and even a tracking worksheet for each assignment so that you can recognize what are those biggest takeaways and aha moments for you. And again, you can grab it for free over@beginnerphotopod.com slash skills. that's beginner photo pod.com/skills. You just enter your email, I'll send them to you right away just in time for you to go out and shoot with them this weekend. Beginner photo pod.com/skills. All right. Time for assignment three. Assignment three. We're getting out of the field. We're going back home. We're getting in front of the computer because this is the five minute editing challenge. Maybe you've heard the stat before, but it's something to the effect of like, for photographers, the average amount of time that they're actually behind the cameras, like less than 10%, the other 90% of their time is taken up by, all the things, administrative, but also editing. Editing is a huge, huge, huge time suck. And for beginners, I know that it's probably closer to 99 1, so that's why I'm really excited about this challenge. When I was in film school, we learned how to draw the human figure. I majored in cinematography, but then I also double majored in production design. So we had to figure out how to draw the human figure in case we wanted to like draw outfits. I don't know, I. I never got to that point, but we had to learn how to draw the human figure. Before this day, if you would've told me something like, I'm gonna have you draw somebody. With as much detail as humanly possible, and I'm gonna give you 10 minutes to do so, I would've thought that's crazy. That's definitely not enough time. So on this day, I was shocked when our teacher came in with a stopwatch and said, you have 10 seconds to draw this person. And then they started the stopwatch. It was immediate chaos. We were confused. because you knew right off the bat you're not gonna be able to get the details of their hair, and their face. It was just, you know, and then that's when the timer went off. What I had though, it was not a stick figure. it was more of an outline of the person in all of their major body shapes. The forearm has a different shape than the bicep. The hand has a different shape than the fingers. The torso has a different shape for each person. The waist has a shape of its own that's independent of like the legs. And the teacher said, all right, congratulations. You did it. You now have 30 seconds to draw this person. And then they hit the, the timer on the stopwatch. While that was still hectic, you were able to get a lot more detail than well than I imagined. So in 30 seconds I got things like the fingers, I got the toes, I got the basic face. And when that was over, we were told to do it again. But this time we had a minute. And then when that was over, then we had five minutes and then we did one where we had 10 minutes. And during that 10 minute drawing, guys, I felt bored to tears. I was going back and like adding in more details just to fill in the time. It was amazing to see how in the beginning I didn't think that I'd be able to complete this drawing in 10 minutes. And here I was done. And again, bored with with time to kill. What it taught me was that if you give yourself a hard limit, you're gonna find the most essential part of what needs done quickly, and then you're gonna be able to get it done. As photographers we can endlessly tweak sliders and our eyes will, eventually go soft from looking at the photo too long. And even then we won't have any idea if we're done with the photo or not. This assignment is gonna help you to realize that you can do a whole lot more in a whole lot less time than you thought that you could. Here's the step-by-step action plan. Step one, pick a set of four photos. They should be similar, but not the same. Maybe taken, in succession shortly after each other in the same location. Open up a timer on your phone and set it for 10 seconds and go. Focus on the main two editing panels. If you're in Lightroom, their exposure and color. If you can get exposure, contrast, highlight shadows, and then white balance and color dialed in. You're 90% of the way there with every single image. Once the timer goes off, stop even if you're mid slider. And then step four, set your new timer and repeat. So we're gonna start with 10 seconds, and then you're gonna do a 32nd edit, then a one minute edit, and then finally a five minute edit. As time get goes on, you'll be able to get more creative with the different controls, such as, masking and texture and clarity, color grading, and even tweaking certain colors of an image. And then even getting into like the, the sharpening as well. And like I said, once the timer goes off, that's it. Stop export your image even if you're mid slider adjustment. And finally, once all of the images are exported, pull them up side by side and ask yourself, is the image that you edited in just 30 seconds, 10 times worse than the one that took you five minutes to edit? Or you able to get the majority of what you wanted similar results in just a fraction of the time? What you'll learn is that real quick. What is essential to getting an image good enough? And then from there, you'll simply just keep adding in the extras to make it stand out. And I bet by five minutes you're gonna be bored to tears and no more wondering, am I done yet? All right. I'm really excited for you guys to try that one right there. And that brings us to assignment number four. Same subject for moods. A few months back I shared in the beginner photography podcast community, which if you're not a part of, why not? You can join right now for free. It's the most supportive place on the internet for new photographers@beginnerphotopod.com slash group. Again, beginner photo pod.com/group. Alright, so anyway, I shared two photos in the group. Both images were of a farm taken just moments apart, and yet they were two completely different images. I was driving home when I saw this beautiful farm, so as I tend to do, I pulled over to take a photo of it and the sky. It was beautiful that day. Right? It had like, one of the things that, I love about Indiana is. if you've seen the movie Toy Story and Andy, the kid in the movie, the main character, his wallpaper in his room is like all these beautiful clouds in the sky. And I feel like that those clouds are very much Indiana and we didn't have those clouds in California when I grew up. So anyway, I just, I just always see those clouds and I like them, so I pulled over. A beautiful day. the sky was full of those beautiful puffy clouds, and I pulled out my camera to snap a photo. I looked at it and I thought, okay, cool. I'm done. That looks good. I turned around to walk back to my car, and as I did, one of those big clouds moved outta the way of the sun, and the sunlight was just, it was so warm and it was so inviting and it felt like the day didn't really start until that moment, even though it was already like early afternoon, like it was that powerful of a sun and it was also like October. So like it was crisp in the air, but like that sun just felt real good on your skin. So I turned back to look at the farm and I'm telling you completely different. It popped. So I put the camera back up to my face and I grabbed another shot. When I got home and loaded the images on my computer, you could see the striking difference between the two images and specifically how they felt. One of them felt cold. It felt flat. It made the farm almost look lonely. The other one was vibrant. It was warm, it was energetic, and even though there weren't people in the photo, you could tell this was a working farm. These two photos were taken just moments apart from each other of the same subject, same lens choice. The only thing that changed was the light. This assignment is designed to show you, without a doubt how much of a role light plays in creating mood for your images. So what are you gonna do? Just wait for the clouds. No. Here's the step-by-step action plan for you to complete this assignment. Step one, I want you to choose a subject that you can revisit easily throughout the course of a day. Maybe this is a coffee mug on your kitchen table. Maybe it's your child's stuffed giraffe. Maybe it's even your favorite tree in the backyard. It could be anything. I. Okay. Step two, lock in a composition. Maybe mark a spot with a tripod. Just leave the camera set up there all day. Or just remember exactly where you were, where you needed to stand, and how you held the camera so that you can take a photo and the framing stays relatively consistent. Step three, shoot four images. You're gonna shoot one in the morning light. You're gonna photograph the subject within the first hour after sunrise. The second photo is high noon. The third photo is golden hour. and here's a, here's another tip about the composition. Try to lock it in. Try to set up your composition so that your subject is backlit during golden hour, which is the last hour before sunset. And then the fourth photo that you'll take is actually at night. This is where tripod helps because you'll need a longer exposure. Okay. And then, this isn't really step four'cause it's part of step three, but step four is to expose for the subject. Every single time your exposure is gonna change with the changing of light. So if you need to speed up your shutter speed or open up your aperture to properly expose your subject, do that and pro tip lock in your white balance. Use only one white balance for the entire four photos. If you're shooting a subject outside, set your white balance to cloudy, even if it's not cloudy. If you're inside, set your white balance to daylight since it'll be daylight coming in through the windows, but by setting your white balance manually rather than auto, you'll be able to see the changes in color and mood more definitively. cause the camera's not gonna change those. And then when you're done, look at the four photos together. Which photo tells the strongest story? Which one has the most mood, which one has the least. Once you know what type of mood you prefer in an image, you'll be able to look for similar lighting conditions, or plan for similar lighting conditions. Next time you go out to shoot. Bring more mood into your photos, people come on. And with that, we have reached assignment number five, the last assignment that I got for you today, and it is the 24 frame role. If you're old enough to have shot on film, you already understand this challenge. But if not, I think that you'll understand that. Or maybe you've realized that people talk about film with like such regard, right? One of the things that you hear most often is that shooting film forces you to slow down. Well, what does that mean and why do you wanna slow down? I thought that, we wanted everything faster, right? Well, here's the thing. Just because you have an expensive fancy camera does not guarantee that every photo is gonna be great. You can take a great photo with a cheap camera, and you can take absolute garbage with an expensive camera. The differentiator between the photos is intention. Without intention, all of your photos, they're just snapshots. Intention brings story. It brings art, it brings feeling into your images. And there's very little incentive to shoot with intention with digital because you can shoot it, look at the photo, change something up and shoot it again. And before you know it, you know you've taken 15, 20, 25 photos before you get one good, one of a subject. When you're limited by the amount of frames that you can shoot, you're forced to slow down. You're forced to think about the shot. You're forced to ask yourself whether it's even worth pursuing or just leave it alone and not shoot it. When you only have 24 frames that you're allowed to shoot, each one becomes more valuable. So now you went from a one in 25 keeper rate by shooting digital to a one in three or a one in four when shooting on film. And that's a huge improvement. By restricting the amount of images that you can take, it forces you to pre-visualize how you want to capture the shot, and when you pre-visualize. You're shooting with intention. When you're shooting with intention, you're no longer just capturing snapshots. Honestly, this is more like a mindfulness training disguised as a photo challenge, but here is the step-by-step action plan for the 24 frame role assignment. Number one, pick a 48 hour window to shoot your 24 photos. Something like Friday at 6:00 PM to Sunday at 6:00 PM That'll work great. Step two, set your ISO and lock it in. In the film days, the film that you chose dictated your ISO. If the film sensitivity was 400 or 800, it was that way for all 24 or 36 photos. So to keep this challenge similar to the film experience, to help slow you down, I want you to do the same. If you plan on shooting mostly outdoors, I would choose something like 400. If you plan on shooting mostly indoors, I would probably choose 800. Step three, set a hard limit of 24 exposures. On my camera, I could see the total number of images on my memory card, so I just format the card before the challenge so that I can easily keep track. Another thing that you might do instead is since you can't look or review any of the images that you take on the back of the camera until the 48 hours is up, you can put a post-it note on your camera's LCD screen, and then just make a tally every time you take a photo. Step four is to write down a mini shot list of what you expect. And then leave plenty of room for surprises, right? you're not trying to capture a story with the 24 photos here, like we did in the first assignment. What you're trying to do is get good at taking good photos with less clicks. So write down kind of what you expect to see, what you want to capture. And then again, be really open to surprises. So shoot for a list of just like four or five things that's enough. And then step five. This one's for all. Um, masochists out there. Finish the roll and then wait. After you shoot all 24 photos, wait until your 48 hour window is up before you load them onto your computer and see what you captured. Again, we're really trying to round out that film experience here, And then I want you to note a few things when you're reviewing the images. Do you have a favorite photo that you took? Why? Was it the light? Was it the moment? Is there one photo that you almost passed up and didn't shoot? And then what do you think about that photo? Are you glad that you didn't, or do you wish that you did pass it up? What was missing from that moment for you to say? Oh yeah, I need to capture this because I think that it's in that hesitation between, do I shoot this or not that the most amount of growth and personal style lives, For those photographers who shoot landscapes, what makes you say yes to the scene and no to another? For those who shoot portraits, which makes you say yes to pressing the shutter now versus half a second from now. It's that information that's gonna help you grow and fulfill the story of who you are as a photographer, and that's what's gonna make you unique. I am really excited for you to, to try that challenge right there. that is one that is, one of the most helpful and it's also one of the hardest to do just because that waiting period, it's tough. I get it. I get it. So that's all five assignments right now. You can take a deep breath. You can look at what you learned in the past, 30 minutes a time or so, and let's recap the assignments and why they're so important to helping you grow as a photographer. We had assignment number one, the one hour story, 12 photos, one hour, one story. This assignment warms up your vision and your restraint. Assignment two, the high noon portrait. This isolates and strengthens your light shaping and seeing muscles. Assignment number three is the five minute edit to help you speed up your decision time, and focus on the essentials. Assignment four was four moods, one subject. This stretches your creative awareness and expands your toolkit for how to capture mood. And assignment number five is the 24 frame roll. This one locks all of those photo muscles into place. And don't forget to grab your free five Skill Builder shoots printout by heading over to beginner photo pod.com/skills. You're gonna get the assignment cards for everything that I shared today along with a step-by-step instructions and even a shoot tracker all for free. Beginner photo pod.com/skill start this weekend. Why not? Pick one that sounds the most interesting and exciting and get to work. Taking the time to listen to this podcast is all but wasted if you don't put what you learn into action. So ask yourself, are you gonna let this time that you just spent listening to this episode go to waste? Or are you gonna use it to become a better photographer? Choice is yours, my photo friend. That is it for today. Remember, the more that you shoot today, the better of a photographer you'll be tomorrow. Talk soon.