September 2021

September is a favorite month!

As children, September meant a time for new clothes, new school supplies, and the anticipation of meeting new teachers, seeing old friends and hoping to make new friends. As adults, there can be so much to look forward to such as hot drinks, homemade soups and stews, bonfires, thick socks, warm blankets, misty mornings, cinnamon, hot apple cider, not to mention the changing of the leaves which fall and crunch under your feet while enjoying outdoor hikes without bugs.

The autumn months bring lots of changes and Mother Nature gives us many reasons to embrace those changes. Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, "The only constant in life is change." Autumn can be a reminder that in the midst of our surroundings always changing and developing, our bodies and our minds are always changing and developing as well. During the autumn equinox, the days and nights are the same length which really gives our world a sense of balance. The temperatures drop to the tune of falling leaves – which really allows us to see the beauty of letting go and can be a time for mindfulness and self-reflection.

As a photographer, it can help us focus on how critical it can be to embrace the present moment because of the impermanence of life. In turn we can enjoy those things and moments that we want to document before they are gone. There is a sense of preservation that comes with autumn – when animals prepare for winter by storing food and getting ready for hibernation and farmers work endlessly on their fall harvests. Autumn offers us all a chance to preserve our own safe havens and by working on our own comfortable spaces we can learn about what makes us feel safe and warm.

These ideas tie right into our 365 photography journeys. We can use the comfort that comes with autumn and savor the days, the time with family, the coziness the cooler weather brings…

Winnie the Pooh said it best: “It’s the first day of autumn! A time of hot chocolatey mornings, and toasty marshmallow evenings, and, best of all, leaping into leaves!”

Have fun this autumn doing those things and enjoy the beautiful colors this season brings us!

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