Whew, 31 days later, and I’ve finally completed my first photo challenge. All photographs were edited only with Instagram, cropping to their prescribed square, and using a filter about half of the time, which was a challenge in itself. As you may know from my post on The Arts of Editing, I’m not a big fan of heavily editing photos; what I see is what you should get. But after reading an interesting article on which photos get seen/shared the most on Instagram, I decided to embrace that medium and use the filters available. I found that I had a tendency to use “Hefe” more than any other filter, as it’s basically just a warm vignette.
The other big challenge I had was making sure that I posted pictures of subjects other than my kids. And with these prompts that would have been very, very easy. As it is, they appear in nine out of thirty-one photos.
The most challenging pictures were Watch, Beauty, and Friendship. I don’t own a watch, so I couldn’t take a picture of the item. But that afternoon, Jacob was snuggled up in bed watching a show, and I found myself watching him and Molly, so I thought the slightly different interpretation was allowed.
For both beauty and friendship, I was stumped. I didn’t want to do something too obvious (eg: mirror or beauty products, or people holding hands) for either of them. As I looked around my room trying to get inspiration, my copy of Roald Dahl’s The Twits caught my eye. Dahl was my first favorite author, and I always liked his description of how good or bad thoughts manifest themselves in our outer appearance. I’m really pleased with how my photo of his words and Quentin Blake’s drawing came out.
I’m also so happy with my photo of Jodi Picoult’s dedication page from Leaving Time, her most recent novel. I happened to pull it off my shelf to start reading on the 28th, and was struck by the serendipity of finding that quotation on the day that I needed it.
Other notes: yes, those are mismatched socks in A Gift bag; no, that’s not actually a Sunset, I couldn’t get a good shot of it that day, but shout out to Groovy Toad Tie-Dye for an awesome Onesie; the Color Block is from the blanket I’ve had since I was born; I got Molly dressed in Stripes before I remembered that was the day’s challenge; I can usually find A Bird (or four) on our bird feeder, especially after it’s been refilled; I swear,
This photo challenge wasn’t quite as easy as I thought it would be. The prompts were sometimes difficult to envision, and I didn’t always find my subject as soon as I wanted to. But I really enjoyed pushing myself, and I’m very excited to do another one.
If you’d like to participate with me in the next challenge, check out my post on my June Photo Challenge. I’ll be posting personal photos on Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook so you can follow along there, or check back in about a month for the completed challenge.
Meridian Photography 
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