27 creative ideas for urban photo challenges

Do you feel like roaming the city with your camera and creatively engaging with a specific theme? Then you’re in the right place! We’ve put together plenty of urban photo challenge ideas that you can enjoy alone or with friends:

1. Mailboxes: Go on an exploration tour, find mailboxes, and photograph them in their surroundings. If you want to make things easier, you can also search for mailboxes on Google Maps.
2. Doors: Every city has countless houses and, therefore, countless doors. Try to capture the diversity of doors with your camera. You can add an extra challenge by focusing only on doors of a specific color or finding as many different styles as possible.
3. Abandoned Shops: In every city, you’ll find stores that have closed down – some recently, others decades ago. These locations often have a special charm and invite you to create an interesting photo series.
4. Trash: In daily life, we often overlook how much litter is scattered throughout a city. Use your camera to capture the dirt and pollution, making it more visible.
5. Graffiti: Whether in a small town or a big city, graffiti is everywhere – sometimes scribbles, sometimes masterpieces. Explore the city with your camera and find the best graffiti art, the weirdest spelling mistakes in tags, or document how popular graffiti spots evolve over time.
6. Sidewalk Perspective: A change in perspective can lead to exciting new photographic impressions. Get down to the ground and try capturing the city from a mouse’s-eye view.
7. Discovering the Dark Side: Every city has places where crimes have occurred. These incidents and victims are often quickly forgotten. Seek out historical or recent crime scenes and try to capture them photographically.
8. Wildlife in the City: Whether in a metropolis or a small town, you’ll find wildlife in every urban area. From hares in city parks to deer in cemeteries or mice in backyards, the city’s fauna offers fascinating subjects. Go on an urban safari with your camera and capture the diverse wildlife around you.
9. People: People photography is a classic urban photo challenge. Look for interesting characters in the city and capture special moments: astonished tourists, loving couples, or smartphone zombies. Every scene tells its own story – capture it!
10. Sightseeing: Step into the role of a travel photographer and create a series of 20 photos that showcase your city at its best. The goal is to take images that inspire travelers to visit your city.
11. Minimalist Architecture: Clean lines and simple shapes are the focus of minimalist architectural photography. Discover fascinating details and structures in your city’s architecture and capture them in a simple yet aesthetic way. To emphasize architecture even more, try black-and-white photography to highlight lines and shapes.
12. Color Hunt: This urban photo challenge is all about finding and photographing objects of a specific color. You can make it even harder by setting an additional rule, such as only capturing red cars, white doors, or pink stickers.
13. Public Transport Line: Hop on a public transport line in your city and explore each station’s surroundings. Your goal: create a photographic series that captures the uniqueness and character of this route.
14. Time: For this challenge, photograph the same location at different times of the day to observe how it changes. Alternatively, document the place on different weekdays, months, or seasons to capture its transformation over time.
15. Construction Sites: There’s always construction happening somewhere in a city. Document the progress with your camera, capturing step by step how something new emerges. You can also do the reverse: if you know a building is set to be demolished, document its decay and demolition.
16. Hidden Beauty: Many beautiful things go unnoticed in the hustle and bustle of city life. Your task is to capture the hidden beauty of the city – small details, special lighting, or unexpected perspectives that often go overlooked.
17. People & Stories: Every person has a story to tell. Try to capture these stories through photography. This could be a photo series documenting a person’s life or individual shots that convey a story through expression, body language, or environment. Adding a short description can help the viewer dive even deeper into the scene.
18. Overexposure: Great photos don’t always have to follow classic rules. In this urban photo challenge, deliberately use overexposure as a creative technique. Whether photographing architecture, people, or street scenes, experimenting with extreme brightness can lead to surprising and artistic results.
19. Weather: Sun, rain, snow, or fog – every weather condition changes the appearance of a city. Use this as the foundation for a photo series, capturing different moods under various weather conditions.
20. Alphabet Hunt: Create a photo series by searching for words from A to Z in your city – from “Antique Shop” to “Zoo Tickets.” The words can be found on signs, posters, or any other text elements.
21. Lost Places: Search for abandoned places in your city and capture their unique atmosphere with your camera. Platforms like urbexology.com or lostplace.club can help you discover these locations – they offer a global directory for urban explorers.
22. Ascending House Numbers: Photograph house numbers in ascending order. Don’t just stay on one street – explore different neighborhoods to create a diverse series.
23. Photo Mosaic of Facades: Create a photo mosaic by combining facades of different buildings. Whether it’s colorful walls, varied window shapes, or architectural details, the diversity will make your mosaic unique.
24. Framing: Focus on creative composition and create an urban photo series where each image is framed naturally. Photograph through a hole, a fence, or a classic window – there are no limits to your creativity!
25. Then & Now: Find historical photos of your city and visit those locations to recreate the images. Your goal is to highlight the passage of time and show how the city has changed over the years.
26. Food: Capture the culinary diversity of your city in a photo series. Photograph fresh produce at the market, crispy bread at the bakery, and beautifully plated dishes at your favorite restaurants. Focus on the atmosphere and small details that make your city’s food scene special.
27. 40km Challenge: Combine sports with photography in this challenge. Try to walk 40km (or more or less, depending on your stamina) through the city in one day, taking a selfie after every kilometer.

Enjoy your urban photography adventure!