We Have A Winner!

I love to take photographs

For my blog and for my column

Photography is an art form and in some ways a more precise art form

than painting, drawing or watercoloring.

For you often have just one split second to capture that image

And then it may be gone forever.

While with paint or charcoal or watercolor,

you can add and subtract, fiddle until you think it is just right.

But you can't with photography.

An instant later the sun is not as intense,

the butterfly has flown away

It is not the same!

I take photos for my blog

One picture on my blog is probably 4 to 6 shots with the camera

I also take photos for my columns

in The Nevada Daily Mail and The Fort Scott Tribune

And again, the photos submitted with my column represent 4 to 6 shots

and I chose 2 to 3 of them.

You can do some editing on iPhoto, which can enhance the photo

But it doesn't alter it all that much.

It is what it is!

Our town has an art show in March

And for the last four or five years Husband Jim and I have entered

some of our photos.

I did get second place one year with a photo I took at St. Peter's in Rome

a woman praying at one of the altars.

Prayers perhaps for the Pope because he had just resigned.

It was a good picture but I think that perhaps the topic was more relevant than the picture.

And I did get honorable mention in another photo contest that I entered here in my

little town.

And I did sell one of my photos!

And I entered two this year

And again didn't place

But our photos are judged against professional photographers

Who have their photos often displayed on huge canvases.

It's a hobby with me and I don't want to spend $200 or $300 for an enlargement

for a contest!

Our Presbyterian Village has an

"Art is Ageless" Contest

And I entered that for the first time this year.

I found out this week that not only did I win

for "Best Photograph" at that location,

but that all first place winners are judged in the region

And I won

FIRST PLACE

in the region!

The picture

(which didn't place in the Bourbon County Arts Council Show)

And my ribbon!

My first ever blue ribbon

for

anything!

It's my sheets on a line.

I think I took it for the blog

And liked it!

And entered it

In both contests!

I truly could see that framed picture on the wall of a laundry room.

I guess, since I have not only won prizes for my photography but actually have sold some,

and have my photographs in the paper every week, I could be considered a

professional

photographer?