I am so excited to be participating in Photography Awesomesause’s Winter Photo Challenge 2013-2014!! I can already tell this is going to be a great opportunity to get me out there on a weekly basis fine tuning and perfecting my photography skills. Plus, instant weekly blog post win!

This week the challenge is backlighting. For those of you that may be wondering, here is a quick definition of backlighting:

“Backlighting refers to the process of illuminating the subject from the back. In other words, the lighting instrument and the viewer are facing towards each other, with the subject in between. This causes the edges of the subject to glow, while the other areas remain darker. The backlight can be a natural or artificial source of light (source).”

Backlighting is dramatic and technically “wrong” in a lot of ways (if you are studying photography, you know what I mean) but it is also incredibly beautiful. You can see lots of examples of backlighting used properly here.

I didn’t find out about the challenge until today, but fortunately for me, I happened to be at Morikami Park this afternoon taking some nature photos, something I haven’t done in a long time. Although it wasn’t planned, I actually got a photo that fit the bill for the challenge!

I look forward to getting more creative as the weeks go by and actually getting the chance to plan out my photographs. This is going to be fun!