Welcome to Embark!

We're so excited you've joined us!

We know that this course has the potential to skyrocket your skills as a pet photographer, and we can’t wait to see where it takes you! 

Let's first talk about how to find your way around in Embark.

Since you’re enrolled in this year’s course, you’ve been given access to a dedicated Embark area in our Community that contains everything you need to complete the course.

In fact, if you’re watching this video, you’ve already found your way here – welcome! Over on the left, you’ll see a list of all the pages you have access to as part of the course, including the course itself, which will load directly in the community for you.

The Feedback & Discussion board works basically the same as a Facebook group, but without the ads and constant distractions! We invite you to introduce yourself there now if you haven’t already. Let us know where you’re from and what you’re hoping to achieve through completing the course. 

Next, let’s take a look at how the course works.

Submission Schedule

When the course begins, you get immediate access to the full instructions for all the challenges. If there’s any bonus behind the scenes videos, you’ll be able to watch them too. You’re welcome to shoot for any of the challenges any time after the start date, but if you want that all-important feedback, we highly recommend following the schedule and getting your image submitted by the deadline for each challenge.

Images must be submitted by midnight on the deadline date, in your own timezone.

If you scroll down to the bottom of the Schedule page, you'll see a calendar. To add the challenge deadlines to your personal calendar, just click "download events". This will download an ICS file that you can import into your calendar of choice. All the challenges will turn up in your calendar like magic.

Email Notifications

To help you keep on track, you'll also receive email notifications when challenges are starting and ending, so you'll never have an excuse to miss these important dates. Along with these announcements, we'll also send you some regular encouragement, tips and example images, and we'll also post these in the Community. 

No one enjoys a messy email inbox, so to help you manage your Embark emails, you can set up a rule in your email program to filter these emails into a folder. They'll always come from [email protected] and they will always have Embark, in square brackets, in the email subject.

Challenge Content

For each challenge, there's a video for you to watch, which will give you all the info you need to know to achieve each shot. If you prefer reading to watching, the text underneath the video gives you the exact same information and images.

There's also a Cheat Sheet that you can download, which includes the brief and summarises each challenge. The best way to make use of this is to take a photo of this on your camera before you head out to shoot, so you can refer to it on your camera’s screen as you're reviewing your shots.

The challenge brief appears at the start of the video, at the top of the challenge instructions, and in the cheat sheet. This is very important information so please refer to it often when creating your challenge image!

For each challenge, we’ve provided instructions and guidance relating to Location, Lighting, Handling, Technique, Technical, Troubleshooting and finally, some suggestions for creating a creative Outside the Box image.

Once you've captured and edited your image, you’re ready to submit.

Submitting Images

So that we can properly assess your images, we need them to be in high resolution and to include the exif, or meta data, which gives us information about the camera, lens and exposure settings you used to create the image. This helps us to provide more helpful feedback.

We have comprehensive instructions for exporting or saving your image so it’s in the format that we need, so please refer to the Prepare page to find out how to prepare, resize, and save your images ready to submit. To make sure your images meet the requirements before submitting, watch the video on the Check page.

When you're ready to submit, head to the Submit page and follow the instructions there to upload. If your image does not meet the submission criteria, you’ll receive an error message letting you know what the issue is so you can fix it before trying again.

Pre-Submission Feedback

The Feedback & Discussion area in the community is the place to go if you’d like to get some feedback on your potential challenge images from your fellow challengers. We have some guidelines about posting images for feedback, so make sure you check out the pinned post.

We’d love to see you both requesting and giving feedback on other challengers’ images, as this is an important part of the process and will help you grow your skills.

Post-Submission Feedback

After the deadline, we load all the submissions into Lightroom and go through them one by one.

Each image is given constructive feedback, while the submissions are narrowed down to a Top 20, then Top 10.

This process is recorded, with the feedback videos posted in the community according to the schedule. Timecodes are included so you can easily find your image.

However, we highly recommend putting aside the time to watch these feedback videos from start to finish, not just skipping to your own image. They are packed full of great information and we’ve found that the challengers who watch them from start to finish usually are the ones who learn the most and see the biggest improvements in their work over the six month course.

The feedback videos live forever on the feedback archive page, which you have lifetime access to through the Community.

If you make the Top 10, you’ll also receive written feedback, which you are welcome to share with your followers.

Social Sharing

Images that make the Top 20 and Top 10 are shared on our social media channels.

Images that make the Top 10 are shared on our social media channels.

If you'd like us to tag and link to you when we share your images, you'll need to complete your social media information in the Community before submitting your challenge images.

If you earn an award for your challenge image, you’ll receive a badge which you can download from the Submit page. We suggest that you add your badge to your image, then post on Instagram and/or Facebook to share your achievement with your followers. If posting on Instagram, remember to tag us at @unleashed.ed so we can share them in our Stories to celebrate your achievement!

Blogging

We'll also be sharing the Top 10 images from each challenge on the Unleashed Education blog, so getting your image in by the deadline could also give you a nice little SEO boost. 

If you have your own blog, we encourage you to blog about your experiences completing the course too. These challenges will make great blog content for you to share with your followers. Just make sure you don’t share any of the briefs or instructions, however you are welcome to share the written feedback we provide if you make the Top 10.

Embark Awards

After the final deadline, we'll be assessing the portfolios of everyone who has completed all the challenges by the final due date.

Even if you haven't stayed on track and met the deadlines for the individual challenges, as long as you get all your images in by the final deadline, you're in with a chance! 

We'll be selecting an overall winner, second place and third place, along with winners of each of the individual challenges. It's an event to look forward to! The Awards will take place in the Community – we encourage you to RSVP for this so you can attend live, but of course there will also be a lifetime-access replay.

Support

If you have any questions about the challenges, your images, or anything else that's Embark related, the easiest way to reach out will be in the dedicated area for Embark in the Community.

Please tag us if you need a direct reply from one of us. You’re also welcome to send us a direct message in the community, or simply email us at [email protected] 

For general pet photography questions not related to the course, feel free to post them in the Members Chat if you’re a Premium Member, or the General Discussion area of the Free Community.

What's next?

After Embark, you'll be eligible to move on to the next course in the Unleashed Challenges series - Emerge – even if you haven’t finished Embark yet. Emerge will open for earlybird enrolment straight after Embark, but the course will not start until the next year.

If you fell off the wagon completely and would like to participate fully in this course again, you're more than welcome to re-enrol the next time we run it. Alternatively, you can switch to the Self Paced version of the course so you can complete it, without feedback, in your own time.

We'll be sending out more information about these options, towards the end of the course.

That's it! Once again, welcome, enjoy the challenges and we hope they inspire you.

We can't wait to see what you create!