My Embark 2024 Experience
This year I signed up for Embark, the foundation course in the Unleashed Challenges series through Unleashed Education. Embark consists of 12 unique challenges every two weeks. What a wild ride the last 6 months have been!
I was very hesitant on signing up for Embark because I was not sure how I would handle the feedback that everyone always talked about. They don’t call Charlotte and Craig “eagle eyes” for nothing! By the middle of the course I had a shift in mindset when it came to receiving feedback. No longer was I afraid of “being wrong” in my work. In fact, I looked forward to my bi-weekly Tuesday nights! I would sit down after my toddler was in bed for the night and just soak in the vast amount of knowledge these two have given through video for every. single. image. Sometimes I wouldn’t crawl into bed until 1:30 in the morning because I couldn’t stop watching and learning!
This entire experience was both amazing and more difficult than I had imagined.
Trying to balance getting submissions in on time on top of working a full time job and being a toddler mom was tough. There were many times where a certain challenge required multiple attempts and many Saturday nights were spent trying to perfect an image before the midnight deadline arrived. Getting to watch my peers succeed and improve with each submission was beyond words. I loved the Facebook community that was created where we could all bounce suggestions off of each other. It helped to make sure our images were the best they could be.
I am so honored that one of my images was selected as the overall winner for that particular challenge. My portfolio was also marked as Highly Commended out of an astounding 71 completed portfolios – a new record in Embark. The 1st, 2nd and 3rd Overall placements had absolutely stunning portfolios and they deserve that recognition! The placements I received for each individual challenge were just the icing on the cake compared to everything else that I experienced in the last 6 months.
I present to you my final portfolio images for Embark 2024:
With that said, I am SO excited to have a break where I can sit down, relax and enjoy the holidays. At the same time, I can’t wait to get started on Emerge, the second course in the Unleashed Challenges!
