Find a camera club

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A great way to learn more about photography is to join other photographers to talk about photography and to go out and shoot together. Often the photography clubs will host photo outings or workshops where you can go out with others to shoot  different types of photos. So they might do a photo walk around town. Or they might setup a portrait shoot workshop or beach shoot with models. They might also have photo competitions or critique sessions. 

Photo Challenge

One of the best ways to get good at photography is to push yourself to take photos of subjects that you have not done before. There are a number of ways to do this. Here are a couple suggestions. 

1) Do an alphabet challenge. This entails taking a photo for each letter of the alphabet. It can either be a photo of each letter of the alphabet, or of a subject that starts with each letter of the alphabet. Get creative with it. Find something unique with each letter. 

2) Join a photo challenge group. There are a number of these on the Internet. The moderator will post a different topic either daily or weekly. Your goal then is to shoot something that fits that topic. Sometimes the challenge is not so much a topic but a different technique also. 

3) Decide to take a month and shoot something totally outside your normal style of photography. For example, if you normally shoot nature photos try doing portraits for a month. Find some friends and head outside and take their portraits. If people are your normal subject then spend a month taking a load of flower shots. 

4) Copy other works. This is all about using photos others have done as inspiration for your photos. Find a photo that you like that someone else did and try to duplicate it yourself. A lot of people will look at an Ansel Adams photo, find the place he took it, and take the same photo. Do the same thing, but stretch a little bit and find a similar place near you and try to get the same shot with the different location.