April 2021

Hello April

Just think, as of April 10th you will have completed 100 days of taking a photo. Can you believe you've made it this far? Maybe you've missed a few days along the way, that's ok, just stick with it. We love that you're here It's not an easy journey completing a photo a day and we've all struggled at times. But, sticking with it is so rewarding and you can't find a better group to support you along the way. We see new life in nature during Spring. You can take a hint from the season and start anew with your 365 project if you've been falling a bit behind.

We've made it through a year of the pandemic and hopefully we're on our way to coming out the other side. For most of us, the weather is starting to improve. Spring is in the air. It is time to get out and embrace it. One of my favourite things about a 365 project is that it gets me out of the house exploring new areas of my city. I've only been living in Ottawa for 3 years and I have discovered areas of this city that my husband has never seen and he has lived here for over 30 years. I contribute these discoveries to this 365 project. It helps me embrace the seasons to their fullest!

Spring is a time of regrowth and change. It's a time to come out of our cocoons and spread our wings. Spring brings about lovely colours and new flora growth. The landscape changes from grey and blah looking to bursts of colour as new flowers start to bloom and trees bud and sprout new leaves. There is no better time to grab your camera and soak in all that nature and your area has to offer. Flowers are great for macro photography, the new terra makes it a great time for landscape photography and the budding colours make great backdrops for portraits.

Our days are getting longer and we have more time in our day to capture our photos. Farmer's markets are starting to open, outdoor events are starting up again giving us more options for our daily prompts. Hopefully this gives you motivation to get out there and discover of what spring has to offer. Here's to the next 100 days! We can't wait to see what you capture!

Explaining the Prompts

The weekly themes designed to fire up your imagination, increase your skill level, learn new techniques and share your joy of the photography world!

PICTURE YOU week just might challenge you the most! Getting in front of the camera is important in so many ways. It teaches us how others feel when the camera is pointed at them and it allows us to be more comfortable in our own skin. When we include ourselves in a picture, it documents our days, but you don’t HAVE to be in the photo at all if it does not fit your style. There is freedom in this week, but we do challenge you to turn the lens around and get in front of it! (You have a million pictures of your family, but none of yourself, right)? Each PICTURE YOU week will have a GUEST PROMPT where a member from our community will be given the opportunity to write a prompt for us to follow! The guest prompt is designed for you as valuable members to stretch your creative abilities and show us what you’ve got!

PICTURE MORE is ‘technical week’. The prompts will let you explore your creativity with a technical agenda. This is the week to try new skills, revisit old ones and maybe learn some really interesting tricks. You might just surprise yourself with your technical genius! One of the greatest things about photography is its diversity. We will be exploring camera angles, symmetry, breaking the rules, negative space and other tricks to make your photography evolve! During this week we will be stretching ourselves with skills that may range from techniques such as light trails, long exposure, lens zooming and panning, or we may switch things up and add some processing fun!

PICTURE COLOR is all about color, a specific color on a Sunday chosen by one of the creative team that will be featured exclusively! Sometimes you will easily find these colors and other times these colours may be more difficult to find. Be patient - sometimes the color will just ‘pop’ out at you in the most unpredictable way! The color prompt week will most definitely make our galleries look lovely!

PICTURE STYLE is all about your style within different styles! Landscape, street, night, travel, portraiture, still-life, wildlife photography and other picture modes are going to be stylized to create some amazing photographs. We will also be playing around with shutter speed and double exposure to give your photos a different “pop”.

EXTRA CHALLENGES: Each month we are including SELF PORTRAIT, WHERE I STAND and MACRO MONDAY challenges. We also have the new QUARTERLY CHALLENGES. First up is PICTURE YOUR WORLD, where you hopefully will return to the same place each quarter to take the same photo (see the seasonal changes), second is the SCAVENGER HUNT that went down so well last year and finally we thought that SONG LYRICS will give us all a bit of a challenge, all totally up to you, if you want to incorporate this into your daily photo.

Daily Prompts