Weekly Photo Challenge: Escape

Image courtesy of Cheri Lucas Rowlands

Escape. Depending on your current mood and headspace, or time in your life, this word can evoke different emotions and conjure a variety of images. Maybe the end of your semester is near, and you yearn for vacation and release: the desire to disappear and run away, the need to unplug and shut off. Or perhaps you imagine quite the opposite: Lost in a maze. Stuck in a room, feeling boxed in, with the worst company. Frustrated in your own thoughts, wondering what to do next.

I took this photograph on Cala Tarida, a beach on the island of Ibiza, off the coast of Spain, during a fun afternoon of cliff jumping. Here, I’ve captured a friend just after he took the plunge — it’s one of my favorite images because it captures a sense of both freedom and exhilaration.

In a new post created specifically for this challenge, share a picture that means escape to you.

We look forward to seeing what you come up with!

–Cheri

—-
New to The Daily Post? Whether you’re a beginner or a professional, you’re invited to get involved in our Weekly Photo Challenge to help you meet your blogging goals and give you another way to take part in Post a Day / Post a Week. Everyone is welcome to participate, even if your blog isn’t about photography.
Here’s how it works:

1. Each week, we’ll provide a theme for creative inspiration. You take photographs based on your interpretation of the theme, and post them on your blog (a new post!) anytime before the following Friday when the next photo theme will be announced.

2. To make it easy for others to check out your photos, title your blog post “Weekly Photo Challenge: (theme of the week)” and be sure to use the “postaday″ tag.

3. Subscribe to The Daily Post so that you don’t miss out on weekly challenge announcements. Sign up via the email subscription link in the sidebar or RSS.

Coming Soon: Photography 101

Photo by Cheri Lucas Rowlands

Here, we focus on the art and craft of blogging — sharing tips to write more and better, hosting writing challenges to push ourselves and polish our craft, and establishing a space to interact with and learn from others.

Everyone’s “blogging process” is different, from our approach and content to our reasons and goals. For most of you in this community, words take center stage. Yet blogs are very visual platforms, and telling our stories with images is a huge part of the process. Our weekly photo challenges, ever so popular, illustrate this.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Pattern

Photo courtesy of Sara Rosso

Pattern. Patterns are everywhere. Patterns are sometimes intentional and sometimes accidental. They can be decorative or merely a result of repetition, and often patterns can be in the eye of the beholder to discover them. I find myself especially mesmerized by patterns in tiles when they’re colorful and beautiful. Thailand had plenty, and this photo has both a decorative pattern as well as the repeating elements surrounding the wat. 

In a new post specifically created for this challenge, share a picture which means PATTERN to you!

The Ghosts in Your Dashboard

Your WordPress.com dashboard is the nerve center of your blog: it’s where your ideas come to life, and your creativity gives them shape. As writers, artists, and thinkers, we know inspiration can be sporadic and those moments of genius are fleeting — they come and go, which means that sometimes your literary flame burns out, and those bursts of creation are short-lived.

The result? An abandoned idea. The dreaded draft, sitting in limbo, staring back at you. And so, we’re curious: what’s lurking in the drafts section of your dashboard?

Weekly Photo Challenge: From Above

Image courtesy of Sara Rosso

From Above. Change your perspective on something. Share a photo of a subject which you shot from directly above. This plate of cheese from the Langhe region in Italy was interesting when I tried to take a picture of it, but when I took it from above, it became even more clear how the honey laid in a neat pile in the center of this circle of cheese and how each wedge had its own identity. For those interested, you started going clockwise with the cheese at 12, and they were all delicious.

Find a subject and instead of taking a picture from in front of, at an angle, to the side, or from behind, take it directly from above! 

In a new post specifically created for this challenge, share a picture which means FROM ABOVE to you!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Culture

Pouring water on Buddha statues at Shwedagon in Yangon, Myanmar. Photo courtesy of Aaron Joel Santos.

This week’s photo challenge is guest hosted by Aaron Joel Santos.

Culture. Culture is a bit of a loaded word. In a photograph, it can embody everything and nothing. So where do we draw the line? Shopping culture, hippy culture, Asian culture, Thai culture, ancient culture, and on and on. These phrases have different meanings. For me, as a working travel photographer, being able to show culture, in all of its various guises, is crucial to the success of an image.