photography challenge

#SeeYouInSeptember

If you enjoyed Susannah Conway’s #AugustBreak2019, please consider joining us for a month of show-and-tell. 

#SeeYouInSeptember is about creating new connections, and seeing the world through different lenses. It’s easy-peasy: Just translate the daily phrases into photos, and then upload them to social media with our hashtag. No need for costly equipment–a cellphone camera will do. Think of it as recess for your imagination, which always wants to play.

Skip a day or two, if you wanna, but remember to add the hashtag #SeeYouInSeptember. That’s how we’ll find each other! Reveal to us your magic tricks/apps, if you’re so inclined. And psst, don’t forget to add the daily word/phrase!

Sound good? Let’s do this! Here’s a quick example, to help get you started:

I’m reading…several books at a time. And you? #ImReading is the prompt for Day 2 of the #SeeYouInSeptember photo challenge (I snapped this with my iPhone and added a fun overlay with the Rhonna Designs Magic app.)

(Thanks, Pamela Celeste Reese, for co-creating this month’s challenges with me. Can’t wait to see where this one leads us, and to meet new friends along the way!)

HOPES

She said, I don’t care what you do for a living.
She said, I don’t care what kind of car you drive.
All I want to know right now is what do you believe in
And what it means to you to be alive.

–Don Henley, “Everything is Different Now“

It’s a siren song, social media. We post glittery images on Instagram, obsess over our likes and mentions. We chime in on trending Twitter threads, not realizing in those moments of self-righteous fury, that we are, in effect, choosing chaos over positive action.

I’m worried, dear readers…worried that we’re drifting away from the ideals that we’ve always believed in, as individuals and as citizens of the world. I’m concerned that, in focusing our energies on the here and now, we’re losing sight of the dreams that we’ve been working toward, for ourselves and the greater good. So when today’s prompt, HOPES, came into focus, I saw it as an opportunity for introspection. Maybe also, a non-confrontational, open dialogue about the things that matter most.

Beyond your hot-takes on Twitter, deeper than your filtered selfie snap…all I want to know right now is what do you believe in, and what it means to you to be alive.

(Sunday, Day 11 of  #AugustBreak2019)

Sitting at the threshold of here and there

P1220473

I sit on my front porch almost every morning, steaming coffee mug in hand. From this vantage point, I can watch coyotes scramble up the hillside–silhouettes that erupt from gauzy shadows, and then vanish in the dark. I hear songbirds, warbling their morning tunes in a nearby sycamore tree, and the whir-thump of the morning newspaper, out for delivery. Hummingbirds cross my field of vision, making territorial clicks as they dart between the window feeder and the fuchsia, a safe haven in which they build their nests.

The marine layer lifts. Wispy, cotton-candy clouds are set aglow by the sunrise. I breathe deep the cool morning air, eyes wide open so that I don’t miss a single, wondrous thing.

On the kitchen counter: my computer and daily to-do lists. But I pour myself one last cup of coffee, savor the last vestiges of dawn before heading inside. Routines can wait, I tell myself, and no real harm has ever come of sitting a while longer, at the threshold of here and there.

 

 

August was…a happy blur

A special little boy, looking for all the world like Christopher Robin, dashes through the park in a summer rainstorm

Funny, the way summer seems to pass more quickly, the older we get. Hours, days, weeks…they slip right past us, in the blink of an eye. And then, whoosh! We’re rushing headlong into autumn.

Feels like we just started the #AugustBreak2015 photography challenge, but here we are, at the end of the month. I confess to blurring past a few scrapbook pages. Life intervened, so I flipped to the next page and moved forward. But I’d sign up again, in a New York second! So much fun, to transform the daily prompts into photographs, and to stretch my storytelling capabilities in new directions.

I appreciated your suggestions and encouragement, and most of all, that you shared your summertime memories with me, too. See you in September!

If you want to scroll through the entire collection of photographs in my #AugustBreak2015 scrapbook, click here. The last prompt of the month, represented above, is August was…