2026 MeWe Bingo Challenge!

It’s here! The 2026 MeWe Bingo Challenge! Building on the success of our last three year long Bingo Challenges, we’ve come up with 24 all new toy photography challenges! Each one designed to keep you creatively inspired as well as growing your technical skills.

But first

Before I talk about the 2026 MeWe Bingo Challenge I want to take a moment to celebrate the toy photographers who completed our 2025 Bingo Challenge. We had a small, but mighty group of photographers from our MeWe Community who used the challenge as a framework for staying motivated all year. Which gets to the heart of why we support these challenges: to inspire and push us outside our comfort zones.

While the prize of a new Lensbaby lens is always a great incentive to keep going, the real prize is a year’s worth of images that any photographer would be proud of. Which is why I asked some of our participants to share their favorite image from 2025. Under each image is the photographer as well as the prompt that inspired the image.

These images showcase the unique interpretations possible when presented with the same prompt. While the images are based on the 2025 prompts the results are very different. And the best part of the challenge for me personally is seeing how proud each photographer is who completes the challenge. These challenges are important because it’s easy to get sidetracked from our creative pursuits. Congratulations to all our members who completed the 2025 challenge!

Now that we’ve taken a moment to celebrate the 2025 challenge, it’s time to introduce our new challenge! With the help of Mark, Chellie and Barb, we have a brand new Bingo board. These 24 new challenges cover a range of technical and story based challenges. Just like past years, these challenges are here to keep us motivated and stretching us to try new techniques.

While it seems like it would be a slam dunk to create 24 images in a year, from my expereince its not that easy. Which is why we call this a challenge! To avoid scrambling at the end of the year to capture those last few images, a photographer needs to be taking on a new prompt every other week.

We will support the Bingo challenge in our MeWe community by occasionally overlapping with our monthly challenges. In addition, I will be hosting quarterly Zoom meet-ups as a community check in and social hour. Mark your calendars for March 28th and June 6th. Simply join our MeWe Community for links to the on-line meet-ups as well as information on our monthly challenges.

Lensbaby

I want to take a moment to thank the Lensbaby company for offering the generous prizes for our last three Bingo challenges. As a Lensbaby Trailblazer I’m able to leverage this connection to ask for a very generous prize – a new lens! How cool is that?

This year, Mark Phillips was our lucky winner of new Composer Pro II while Beth O’Meara and Mary Wardell each received a $50 gift card. Past winners of a new lens have included Sunny Ang and Janan Lee. I’m grateful to be associated with a company that has been very generous in supporting our community.

In conclusion

2025 was a good year and I expect the 2026 MeWe Bingo Challenge will be no different. I know that the world feels as if it’s filled with issues and concerns that are larger than life. And I absolutely do not want to minimize the importance of this moment. But it’s in times like these that reinforce the need to carve out a creative practice. Putting a priority on my creative practice has helped me to navigate the emotions that feel too big to process. While putting my own needs first feels counterintuitive, I find that I have a deeper capacity for resilience.

If you are searching for a safe and supportive environment to practice your own creativity, I invite you to join our MeWe Community. Joining and finishing the 2026 MeWe Bingo Challenge will be the cherry on the cake of your 2026 creative journey.

Shelly