Photo blogging challenge host PJ must have a bit of code he runs against a short list of possible themes each month. The “winning” theme is the one with the highest likelihood to stump and then inspire participants to push creative boundaries. Or maybe not…after all with this being the leap month of a leap year and this being the first leap year since the launch of the challenge, it’s not altogether surprising that the February 2016 theme is leap. Regardless of how he came up with the theme, I struggled to come up with a cohesive approach. Finally, thanks to some suggestions from Mr. GeoK, I pulled something together. I’m not entirely satisfied, mainly because using leap as the acrostitch for a photographic acrostic allows for only four images. To round out my set of five, I resorted to the punctuation mark so common in text messages and tweets these days.

1. Landscape – Not only is this photograph in landscape orientation, but it’s an actual landscape…at sunset…with a lot of sky…so I guess you could argue that it’s a skyscape, but that doesn’t start with “L” so I’m calling it a landscape. I try not to spew sunset / sunrise photos into my Twitter and IG feeds, but when I spotted these clouds directly south of Calgary one evening, I grabbed my camera, opened the window at my desk (the one that doesn’t have a screen, for moments like this) and managed to get off about three shots before the light disappeared.

2. Elk – We haven’t seen many elk in Canmore this winter, so when we spotted this foursome in the meadow while walking along the Three Sisters Pathway, I leapt (sic) at the chance to capture the moment. That’s part of Cascade Mountain in the background, one of the most-recognized photographs in in Banff National Park, mainly because it’s visible from the east park gates.

3. April in February – I don’t know about your part of the world, but in Calgary we are experiencing a very early spring; most of the month, our average day-time high temperatures have been more like a typical April. I’ve seen primroses popping up, am keeping a close watch on the early crocus spots near our house and have spotted lots of catkins forming up. They look like pussy willows at this stage.

4. Produce – The prices of fresh fruits and vegetables have leapt an average of 18% over the past year. Evening news programs have been reporting $12 heads of cauliflower and $5 tomatoes. Most of the increase is attributed to the weakened Canadian dollar. I’ve modified my shopping habits to buy more of what’s on sale, to use more frozen fruits and vegetables and to be more diligent than usual about making sure I use any fresh produce before it spoils.

5. An Actual Leap – I had a lot of fun putting together a set of photos of things that spell LEAP, but this photo challenge just wouldn’t be complete without an actual leap! Mr. GeoK was such a good sport about leaping more than once while I fine tuned my camera settings to get a relatively in-focus image. This was taken along the west  bank of the Bow River near Banff, when we walked the Bow Falls to Hoodoos trail. I’ve since learned that a slang word for exclamation mark is “slammer”, which is just what this was for Mr. GeoK. Slamming back down onto the ice tweaked his back and I’m thankful it was fine within a couple of days.

Those are my five for this month. Leap on over to A ‘lil Hoohaa to see what PJ and other participants came up with.

As I’ve written many times, I treat this photo blogging challenge like a once/month photo assignment. The one-month time frame makes it pretty low stress. New participants are welcome to join the photo blogging challenge any time. Please join us! The March theme will be posted at A ‘lil Hoohaa tomorrow. It just might have something to do with the number three, since March is the 3rd anniversary of this photo blogging challenge.