I'm so excited to share my first post in a new series, The Photo Challenge Next Door. It's a collaboration that Erica, my favorite next-door-neighbor-blogger (NDNB for short?), and I have been cooking up as a way to conquer our scary DSLR cameras. We're both switching our cameras to manual mode and not looking back. (Eeek!)

Every month we'll each share a photo that we took with our cameras in manual mode. There are sure to be some less than impressive photos. But we're committed to figuring things out and we can only get better from here (right?).

I'll post all my photos on The Photo Challenge Next Door page; just use the new button on the right sidebar to get there. You can see Erica's photos right here.

The Photo Challenge Next Door // October 2013

Nikon 3200, f/6.3 1/640

I'm trying to discover the beauty in my own neighborhood, which usually seems fairly plain and uninteresting to me. I took this on a family walk through a park near our house; I love the curly bark. Shooting with a wide aperture and focusing on details is fairly comfortable for me.