Long Weekend Recap

As I am writing this post I'm counting down the hours and minutes until 12:00am when my favourite author releases her next book, and finishing up season four of Gossip Girl on Netflix.

I hope everyone enjoyed their August long weekend. Our long weekend was spent hauled up in our condo with our old roommate for a writers weekend. We had been planning this weekend since the spring and originally we were going to go to Niagara Falls but with the new addition of the car we decided to spend the weekend here at home and save a lot of money.

We redesigned the living room by bringing in our small folding table and set up Richard's and my computers. Even now they are still there because both of us were to lazy to put everything back, but I wont be able to stand this layout much longer. There are computer cords everywhere. We did have a pretty nice setup with food and snacks though.

We all got a lot done but, on the large scheme of things we also weren't as productive as we hoped we could have been. Richard and Janine were able to work on their individual writing projects and got just over 2000+ words each. I spent most of Saturday doing crafts and resetting and reloaded my iPod full of movies and music. Sunday was spent on a photo adventure getting caught up on my July photo challenge, and Monday was spent lazying around.

Here is my July Photo A Day Challenge recap. I don't know why it was such a struggle to keep on track last month but I'm hoping to keep on track this month.

January/February/March/April/May/June

June Photo A Day Challenge

We are now half way through the year, and this month for the FatMumSlim photo a day challenge was the hardest one for me to complete. Not because I found the prompts hard but because this month has been crazy busy that I wasn't even able to take or post the days on time. I ended up having to take about 17 photos in one day just to get the month completed on time.

January/February/March/April/May

You know the drill here are the prompts followed by my photos. Enjoy!

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.

March Photo A Day Challenge

I am officially addicted to these challenges. I already love taking photos but with this monthly prompts put up by Chantelle over at Fat Mum Slim, I now take photos everyday. I also feel that I'm learning more about photography from it. I think my composition and style has improved over the three months I've done them. To see my January and February Challenges just click on the them out below.

January Challenge

February Challenge

Here are this months photos and daily prompts. 

February Photo A Day Challenge

Today I'm going to make this super quick cause I'm not feeling well. So I realize I haven't done a post in a long time, but I've been busy this month a lot and I hope to write something tomorrow about what we did in the month of February.

I did another photo challenge on Instagram like I did in January, which you can see here. So if you're a follower of mine on there or on twitter you may have seen all or some of them.

This challenge is put on by Chantelle over at Fat Mum Slim. Without further ado, here was February's topics followed by my photos.

 I did a couple extra photos where I couldn't decide which photo I liked more. So below are my second photos for day nine- details and day 26 light.

Looking forward to doing the challenge again next month.

January Photo A Day Challenge

I did another photo challenge on Instagram in the month of January. So if you're a follower of mine on there or on twitter you may have seen all or some of them. Or if your Richard, you were asked to assist in taking some, or asked for your opinion.

Paula: Do you like this photo? Or this photo?

Richard: Is there a difference?

Paula: Not really. The angle is slightly different in the second one.

Richard: OK. Umm the first one then. 

Paula: That's the one I liked too! *begins editing photo*

Richard: *goes back to his beer and W.O.W.*

Some of these photos I was really 'phoning it in', but there are quite a few that I really like. I'm going to be doing the challenge again this month, which is put on by Chantelle over at Fat Mum Slim.

Without further ado, here was January's topics followed by my photos. Enjoy.