Photography Challenge - Week 45

5 November - 11 November

If you’re looking to try new things and improve your photography, why not get involved in our weekly challenges? We’ve got 52 weeks of photography challenges to help inspire you. Each topic is designed to be achievable whether you’re shooting at home or in a studio, use natural light or studio lights, have years of experience or just a few months. We started posting weekly challenges more than a year ago and they’ve been so popular we thought we’d continue to run them if you want to try something new or catch up on any that you missed. You can view the full list of challenges here.

This week's challenge is...

Cosmetic Swatches

Upload your image to our members Facebook group using the hashtag #KTEWeeklyChallenge or tag us on Instagram, where we’ll share some of our favourites on our stories each week.

How to get creative

From fashion magazine to e-commerce websites, images of cosmetic swirls and sweeps are everywhere.

Knowing how to shoot these images isn’t just good for your portfolio, it also provides an opportunity to practise and perfect some important photographic skills.

Controlling exposure levels to achieve pure white is just one of the challenges you’ll face this week (if you're shooting on white), along with creating the perfect swirl, achieving gradient lighting, and controlling reflections in glossy subjects.

The good news is that shooting these creative images is simpler than you might think. The key to all of it patience! Below is some recommended content that will help you with this week’s challenge.

How to photograph cosmetic swatches

Creating clean white backgrounds

Packshot product photography

How to use continuous LED lighting for packshot photography

About the challenge

We’d love for all our members to get involved in our weekly challenges, but to ensure everyone gets maximum benefit from these, there are a few guidelines...

Members can submit any one image (taken at any time) for the challenge but in the spirit of the challenge we encourage you to post images taken during the week. A second image can be uploaded to show this (i.e with your phone in shot with the date showing).
All images submitted to our Facebook group will be displayed in a members gallery on Karl Taylor Education.
Images should be 2000px on the longest side.

Keep an eye on our Facebook page, exclusive members group and Instagram stories for the latest challenge. Share your images in our exclusive members Facebook group to feature in our weekly galleries on Karl Taylor Education or share your images on Instagram with the hashtag #KTEWeeklyChallenge and we’ll share some of our favourites on our stories each week.