2026 A Photo A Day in May for the American Cancer Society Challenge

To further encourage myself to take my photography skills to the next level as well as learn some new-to-me equipment, I signed up for a fundraising challenge for the American Cancer Society. The idea, for me, was simple: if I want to get better at this, I need to make it something of a habit, and what better way to do it than to make sure I took a photo every day? This ultimately led to me also learning how to use some photo editing software I had never used before.

There were some interesting complications, including when I THOUGHT I had taken a bunch of photos via a photoshoot… but had the camera on a setting that was taking all of those snapshots and putting them into a video that I could not easily pull from. Oops.

I did complete the challenge, although ultimately only raised $25. Many friends and family suggested this was because of how uncomfortable they were using Facebook as a donation processor.

I have a long way to go before I feel I am “good” at this, but it is nice to learn some new techniques and feel like I am getting a feel for the type of photos I would like to take and how to take them. I also am getting much better at learning the limitations of a flagship phone, a mirrorless camera, and what editing software can and cannot do.