Photo A Day Photography Challenge

So its no secret by now that I love doing the Photo A Day Challenges from Chantelle over at FatMumSlim. This challenge is amazing, and throughout the 5 months I've been doing them I can see a difference in my photos. I've always enjoyed photography but even in school I found it difficult. Mostly because it didn't matter what I liked but what the teacher liked. My photography teacher was always about meaning. Most of the time I came up with some symbolic meaning for why I took a photo of a lamp post or a field. God forbid I just saw it and took a photo. 

Teacher: "What does this photo mean to you?" 

Me: "I saw it and thought the flower was pretty"

Teacher: "Why is it pretty? What does the flower symbolize?"

Me: "Nothing, it was just pretty?" *shrug*

Teacher: "Well that's not enough information Paula. I want you to work harder on what these photos mean to you."

Me: "You know actually I think the flower symbolizes innocence and ...bullshit...bullshit...bullshit...my feelings...more bullshit...and there's the A+ I wanted...thank you so much psycho teacher, keep sniffing that glue."

However now I can take photos of whatever I want. Yes some of my photos have a lot of emotion and thought behind them. But sometimes I see the sun peaking through some leaves in a tree and think "Wow that's really cool!" Camera click and moving on. I still find myself doing quick photos just so I can get the prompt for the day done but for the most part I'm really enjoying a lot of my photos. For instance in May there are only three photos I don't like. 27-28-29, I could have done better.

Everyday I'm finding myself getting more and more passionate about photography, and whats even more fantastic is that we seem to have gathered a little photography group. We have some days planned throughout the next couple of months devoted to Saturday Photo Adventures which is fantastic.

Anyway back to this challenge, I realized when I was putting together May's Calendar that I never posted my April Calendar. If you want to see my previous months you can do so here. Enjoy. Comments are always welcome. 

January/February/March

So something pretty incredible happened in May. My photo for May 25th Neighbourhood was chosen as one of the top 4 photos for that daily prompt. I've never had one of my photos chosen and while this whole thing isn't a competition, we don't get a prize or anything, its still an accomplishment to have my photo chosen out of hundreds that get submitted. Its little victories like this that make me happy. Also it turns out the person who was choosing the photos, who now lives in Australia, use to live on my street. Small World.