Hello and Welcome to the OCF Challenge!

This challenge is packed with tutorials and lessons for you to work through at your own pace. I hope you this content will help you to fall head-over-heels in love with OCF, and totally confident with creating light.

We are so excited to have you here and want to share a few helpful tips before you get started:

Practice Makes Perfect

This course was originally designed as a 30-day course to quickly build your confidence and skills with OCF. If you have the time, dedicating a month to finish the material will help you to reach your goals at warp speed. However, I realize that daily practice is nearly impossible for most people, just try to practice as often as your schedule will allow. The more practice you get, the quicker you will see your confidence and skills improve.

Do what you can and if that means you only get a few minutes to work on a setup, that is fine! Just make the most out of that time and be intentional with how you spend it.

Make it Easy 

If you have the space, I would recommend leaving your OCF easily accessible during this course.

If you need to put it away after each use I would suggest you take it apart as little as possible. This is going to increase the chances of pulling it out each day to practice. If you have a corner of a room/closet space, store your gear there and leave your flash mounted to your light stand so that it takes little fuss to grab it when you have the time.

Download Often

Check out your images during your sessions. Sometimes tiny viewfinders on our cameras can hide issues with our light and setup. It is helpful to download and view your images on a larger screen before you complete your session or as soon as you can after completing the session. When you do this your your lighting setups and any adjustments you made are still fresh in your mind.

Take Notes

It is hard to remember all the adjustments you may make during a session. I recommend you keep some notes on your light setup for each challenge, especially if you are new to OCF. I do this by grabbing a phone shot of my light setup and/or flash settings.

Engage

Engage with the other students in an encouraging and honest manner.

Share your work and any questions you have in the comments section below each lesson. You can never ask too many questions and no question is stupid. We are all here to grow and learn.

Share Your Work 

When posting images for feedback, please put what type of feedback you are looking expecting. Kelly and I try to keep our feedback OCF related and we generally don't go into composition/design etc. unless you specifically ask for an in-depth image critique.

Learn at Your Level

We are all at different levels in our use of OCF and we have tried to design lessons that can be tweaked for all skill levels. If you feel an exercise it too easy, level it up to your own skill level. Try something new and push yourself past your comfort zone.

We are looking forward to being part of this light seeking journey with you. :)

Happy creating!

-Leah and Kelly