I’m looking forward to seeing some clear blue skies – literally and figuratively. Welcome to Xine’s Photo-Art Challenge where this week’s theme is clear blue skies.

I’ve been trying to tag my photos on my hard drive as I go through them when I’m looking for some photo I know I have but have no idea where it is on my various hard drives. As I was tagging photos I started to notice the weather in the photos and started to tag them appropriately. It was in doing this that I came up with the idea for the weather-related theme for May. Last week’s #XPAC1 was rain, and if you haven’t had a chance to join the challenge, there is never a time limit. Just tag your posts with the the tag XPAC and the number of the challenge.

I discovered some photos I hadn’t seen in years. The first photos are taken in Waveny Park in New Canaan, CT – my old hometown where I lived and raised my children for over 24 years. I walked in Waveny Park all the time and loved watching the seasons change and photographing the changes over the years. Waveny Park is a big open space and allowed me to capture ‘big sky shots’, something which can be tricky in the heavily wooded and developed suburbs of Fairfield County, Connecticut. Finding these clear blue sky shots was like walking down memory lane – reminding me of my wonderful times walking in a place I love.

While looking for clear blue skies in my hard drives, I rediscovered one beautiful day I had while I was on a trip to Rome, Italy in 2006. At the time I was using my Canon EOS Digital Rebel, I loved that camera since I found it so easy to use and it wasn’t heavy.

Clear, blue sky day make landscapes really pop in my opinion since there is nothing to distract from the scene. Clouds can become part of the imagery and do a lot to set tone sometimes; whereas, the tone in a clear blue sky image is set more in the landscape I think.

Next week’s XPAC theme – Fog, so start looking through your photos and artwork for your foggy days, make a post of your own and leave me a link in the comments so I can check it out. To find a full description of the challenge check out Xine’s Photo Art Challenge page by clicking the link.