@Nadzee A

@Ravi Gregory Etherton I love that. It's so perfect. I love to laugh and yes the camera is on. Thank you! A lot of times when I shoot I get into that state of flow where I feel plugged in to the divine creative energy. I was recently introduced to the synthesizer community and in my introductory post, someone in that community said he'd worked for Disneyland for 20+ years in entertainment and he thought my teaching people to take better photos was so needed. I figured since I did almost all of my learning using Disneyland as my practice playground, I should try and build a connection by sharing that in a response along with a photo that would be an exceptionally rare capture. If he really does have that length of service with Disneyland he'd instantly know that's it's taken from a spot guests don't normally have access to and that only during a very small window of time was the view in the background able to be captured as it was in my photo. I just heard back that he thinks the photo is outstanding and he'd love to chat more. Perhaps he may have access to a potential audience for my work. We'll see how it goes. I have a good feeling about it. What's rare about this photo is it's taken at the Main Steet Station up next to the front of the steam engine. When the trains are operational this area is too hot to allow guests anywhere near it. When they built the new Star Wars land they had to tear up part of the railroad track and reroute the train. So for a few months the trains were going to be out of commission. To keep their staff occupied during the shut down, they would run a couple trains out to New Orleans Square station and the Main Street station and park them at the stations for the day and turned it into a rare opportunity to get close to the engines. Across the way from the trains in the distance was the Tower of Terror attraction which they closed and rethemed and gave a completely different looking exterior during the train shutdown. So there was only a very narrow window time when a photo like this was even possible in that location. Now that the trains are back in operation there's no chance for a guest to get close to the bell of any of the trains in operation and the view is different now.

Wonderful to get to know you as well. So excited for what the future will bring for all of us.

@Dinka Salvador

@Angelika Vetter haha, love that one.

@Angelika Vetter

Here's the change I can't make. I get super close to success but I feel held back from taking my rightfully earned spot in the spotlight.

@Anita Kozlowski I know this stems from an incident in first grade. The brief backstory on it, I was living in a small rural community in Canada and my elementary school was so small there were on 2 classes for each grade level. My first grade teacher was amazing, I think the world of her. One day, the two classes switched rooms to work with the other teacher for an hour or two. The assignment with the other teacher was just coloring. She roamed the aisles between the desks and then stopped at mine. She towered over me and frowned. She snatched the paper I was coloring and took it to the front of the class. She stopped everyone to proceed to shame me for what I had done on my paper. What was my crime in this teacher's eyes? I had the audacity to color a horse using a purple crayon. She was so offended by my purple horse. Mind you this was a couple years before My Little Pony stores were released and soon you could buy purple plastic ponies in the stores. I repressed this memory for decades, but I'd seen it playout in the way that I would get very good at some creative things but I wouldn't share it out in the world until I knew it was safely considered better than average. Once I finally decided to pursue a career in photography the memories of this incidence were no longer surpressed, I could remember it. I've done work on it, but I'm not quite 100% free from it yet. I can mentally acknowledge that this teacher taught me what a terrible teacher looks like which made sure I fully appreciated all the good ones in my life. It taught me how awful it feels to be to be shamed for being creative, so when I teach people, I offer constructive criticism with compassion. And I know I can bring this into a positive by creating a purple horse award within my community that I can award to folks for taking creative leaps. Mentally I know its all possible to step past this, but I find myself looking to make YouTube videos to establish my credibility as a photographer and attract people to my community but tensing up and not doing it because there's that lingering thought that if I stick my neck out there, I might not be safe as I wasn't that day when that evil teacher crushed my spirits over something so incredibly dumb to be upset about.

@Stacy Oros I love that all the winners feel like friends I know. That's the best feeling.

@Angelika Vetter My pleasure and love getting to know you here! I'm and so grateful for your friendship.