July 2021

Welcome to July!

For many of us, we are smack dab in the middle of summer. This is a time for celebrations and fireworks. July 1st marks Canada’s birthday while July 4th is Independence Day in the United States. I’m sure wherever you are in this world, you will be celebrating something this month. Celebrations will continue to be a bit different this year, but the good news is that we are getting there. Life is slowly getting back to normal. This summer our celebrations will hopefully allow for more time with family and friends. Backyard BBQ’s picnics, beach days, camping and road trips may be on your to do list for this month.

It’s been a long year and a bit since we’ve been able to congregate with others. Life will get busier and you may find yourself with less time to focus on your photo of the day. That’s ok. It’s time to reconnect with people. We all know how much we’ve missed the contact. Maybe you can fit the day’s prompt into your activities each day. Maybe not! But, if you can, take that photo. Capture these moments. We’re creating memories and how awesome is it to be able to photograph these special times. Hopefully they’ll make us smile when we look back at them. And who knows, maybe you’ll be capturing history!

Remember to share your memories with us. We love to see how you’re celebrating your month of July. We’ve come to know your families over this past year and we like getting these daily glimpses into your lives. We see your children and grandchildren grow and their smiles and laughter lift us up. We’ve come to know your partners and love their willingness to help you with your daily photos even if it is reluctantly provided. Isn’t it wonderful to get to know so many new people solely through their photos and comments?! Maybe someday soon we’ll once again be afforded the opportunity to meet up for a photo walk. I can’t wait!

Travel is still restricted but we get to learn so much about different places around the world through each other's photos. I know that I have amassed quite the bucket list of places to visit from viewing the photos you have posted. If you’re traveling this summer, share your photos and let us live our travel dreams through you.

Enjoy the celebrations in your life this month. Spend time with your family and friends and make the most of new freedoms as they arise. It’s been a long time coming. Take the photos and capture the memories. Share them and show us how you’re embracing the new normal.

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