Shutter Sisters

One Day More

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From what I’ve been gathering, I’m not the one who has got the soundtrack of Les Miserable running through my head. The lyrics arise within me when I wake, I hear the melodies when I drift to sleep, and I singing all through the day. Although I was expecting to enjoy the movie, I wasn’t expecting the kind of reaction I’ve had. There is a passion and fervor that has permeated my very soul.  

Fight. Dream. Hope. Love.

It’s not just me, is it? Can you feel it? Does it speak to you?

And it all feels so timely. I can think of no better way to end 2012 and begin 2013 but to hold onto these ideals, these words, this music…the celebration of the power, strength, and resilience and of human spirit.

“One more dawn
One more day
One day more!”

time for rest

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I felt it coming a few days before Christmas…scratchy throat, stuffy nose, a little achey. I popped some vitamin c, gobbled down a few oranges and carried on. It just wasn’t enough. I’m down for the count with a nasty post-holiday cold. 

What to do? Snuggle into bed with some hot tea, my laptop, a few favorite magazines and plenty of rest. I can’t believe how much I’ve been sleeping. Sometimes the body needs a break and the only way to make it happen is to knock us right off our feet.

Are you taking time to rest, relax, refuel…hopefully before your knocked off your feet? Share a little glimpse of cozy…comfort….recuperation with us today.

The Other Side of Perfect

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You know how it is.

All you want, for the love of God, is one family photo. One sweet family photo where everyone smiles and looks lovely towards the camera. Is this too much to ask, people? I mean for Christ’s sake, it’s Christmas.

Sometimes we succeed and no big damage is done. Other times we succeed and everyone feels like crap. Like the year I positively tortured my then husband and kindergartener into their Christmas best for The Nutcracker, the best holiday photo op ever.  Or the time I marched my then preschooler and toddler for the Santa shoot that played more like a horror show than a friendly visit.

Thank God we get older and a little wiser.  Thank God we each year have the chance to lay down our perfectionism and take the shot of the way things really are…chaotic and out-of-sync and irregular and real.  

This photo you see above? Someone called for a crazy/silly face and there you have it. Eighteen people fully alive in the frame. Eighteen people who have been struggling to be together for so many years now that we didn’t have the heart to even try to pull off a giant family holiday after the last time until now.  Eighteen people who decided that maybe they could manage a three hour dinner that turned into a photo shoot that turned into mayhem that turned into bliss.

Because isn’t this what the holidays are about after all?  The miracle that we can somehow keep loving each other even when nothing is perfect? The miracle that we somehow keep coming together even when we don’t know how to handle how different we are? Even if we can barely understand how fierce and irrational the glue that keeps our love together?

Today after you manhandle everyone into their Christmas best, after you get the shot you were waiting for, ask for everyone’s silly face. Then put that photo in a frame.  Slap it on your fridge, on the mantle, wherever you’ll see it most often.  

This is the other side of perfect, and it’s the reason why your family is so fantastically unlike any other family on the planet.  It’s the reason why you love these people. And why your love, year after year, remains so amazing and true.

Comments are all yours kitty kats. Show us your crazy family today.  Shots from all cameras, mobile or otherwise welcome.

A Legacy of Love

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My father was a professional photographer, illustrator, ad man, and filmmaker.  He photographed Charles Lindbergh and other famous people, but his favorite subjects were my blonde mother, sisters, and me.  My dad died when I was 3, so everything I know or made up about him came from a lifetime of studying his prints. 

My sisters were a lot older than I, so they didn’t need pictures to jog their memories.   I was so young when he died that I still believed in magical thinking.  You know, “step on a crack” kinds of thoughts.  My father achieved immortality for me through his photographs.  At 13, Brownie Starflash in hand, I photographed everyone I loved to insure their permanence, and I never stopped.

The Starflash became a Nikon 35mm, which became a DSLR, while my own darkroom got better safe lights, a real sink, and suddenly an iMac appeared on my desk.  I breathe photography.  Yes, I know that capturing image doesn’t keep people from leaving me.  But, it comes close.  When photographing people, an immediate intimacy happens that stays in my heart through the archived moment.  I love everything about photography.

I have immersed myself in photography projects like, They Come and They Go; a series documenting everyone from UPS drivers to first cousins who visit me, “keeping track” showcasing objects relating to memory, or Loving Aunt Ruth; a 3-year odyssey into the life of my aunt, the last of my mother’s family that turned into a book with a possible 2013 release.  I am interested in memory, time, impermanence, and love.

In 2007, my oldest sister moved to live near her daughters.  I photographed her packing and the truck taking her away, and her move prompted a feeling of urgency in me to get closer to my Aunt Ruth.  I asked Aunt Ruth if I could photograph her for a book without imaging a “real” book was possible.  At the time, I was probably thinking of a photo album.  She said, “Sure, I’ll have a party, and you can meet all of my friends.”

Loving Aunt Ruth is the culmination of everything for which I have cared:  family, story, respect, hardship, triumph, humor, and my work as a photographer.  Since the book began with a party, I chose to end it with one.  My Aunt’s 90th birthday was a beautiful place to close a journey that we began together.  Aunt Ruth had 165 people of all ages, ethnicities, and religions to her party.  I only “know” that many people on Facebook!

My father left me the legacy of an understanding of photography’s power which opened the door to my understanding of Aunt Ruth whose philosophy of living life guided by loving and caring for people has changed mine forever.   

In the last year, both of my sisters have died.  Aunt Ruth offered me comfort and wisdom.  I asked her how she stays determined in the face of so much loss.  She said, “I have my faith, and I have a will to live…that will comes from loving people.” 

 Image and words courtesy of Honey Lazar. Discover more about her and read more about her Aunt Ruth on her blog.  

Election Night

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On election night, we loaded up the car with lawn chairs and a picnic dinner and headed to a friend’s house to watch the results roll in. The news broadcast was projected onto the side of the house and several computers were set up in the yard to track the results. At one point there were more than one hundred friends, neighbors, and passers by squeezed into the small front yard. The conversations were primarily of the political nature, from the smallest local propositions and bond initiatives to the house/senate races to the presidential election. This election-watching party was a family event to be sure. There were so many young children that night running around without a care in the world…children of loving straight couples, children of loving gay couples, children of loving single parents, children of loving affluent parents, children of loving parents struggling to get by. You hear a lot about voting as a civic duty, and I love and appreciate that our children are learning that the act of voting is truly an individual’s chance to voice how they want their world to be. All the worry, all the hand wringing, all the emotional investment that bound us together that night represented the world we want for our children—a better, kinder world. A world that embraces the diversity around us and affirms that differences can deepen our understanding of one another instead of driving us apart.

Show us a better, kinder world today through your lens.

Images and words courtesy of Jote of Bless Her Heart.

trusting inspiration

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I picked up the camera so many times and looked through the viewfinder.  Maybe fired off a couple of frames half-heartedly.  Sometimes I deleted them in the camera, but there are hundreds more sitting on my hard drive, unedited, unviewed.  The light stopped speaking to me.  The camera body no longer fit my hands like a beloved tool.

If I can’t see images, how can I think of myself as a photographer?  Worse yet, what does it say about the way I’ve filled my life, if it doesn’t inspire so much as a snapshot?

It was a long way to fall.  I finished a 365 project last October, totally inspired, totally proud of myself, totally grateful.  It is a powerful exercise to keep your eye and heart attuned to the beautiful and the remarkable in the midst of your everyday life.  To have a photographic record of your progress over a year.  To begin to see yourself as an artist.

But with the year up, I stopped shooting every day.  I stopped being so mindful.  I bought myself a fancy new camera but immediately lost my courage.  It is a Serious Camera.  In my head this camera deserved to shoot Serious Things instead of my everyday life.  I shot less.  I felt it as a little death, this loss of a fledgling creative life.  It’s not the sort of thing you hold a wake for though.  No one brings you red wine and casseroles while you wonder why your eyes don’t work anymore.  There was grief but it was mine alone.

But recently I’ve started to notice shadows again.  There is the color of autumn leaves.  There are long eyelashes and kids in mismatched prints and wet dog noses.  My eyes are hungry.  My hands are a little itchy for the heavy camera body, even though it still feels awkward in my grip sometimes.  I’ve started carrying it with me again, so I’m ready when it calls to me.

I’m starting to understand that it wasn’t a death after all.  It was just the change of seasons.  I’m starting to believe that just as I know that autumn always follows summer, I can trust inspiration and vision to return.

Have you ever had a dry spell?  How did you work your way out of it?  What inspired you to start again?

Image and words courtesy of the wonderful Corinna Robbins of Bird Wanna Whistle.

A Dream In Tangible Form

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The greatest achievements were at first and for a time dreams. -James Allen

Sometimes there is something that happens, some big thing (light a lightning bolt of awareness) or some small thing (a sight or smell or sound) that reminds you of the tiny seed of a dream you once had. You’re taken back to the time when that seed just began to take shape and you can trace back the markers along the way; the little successes, the setbacks, and the many milestones. You are reminded of the journey and how nothing was ever wasted and that what you knew and felt, intangibly, deep in your heart would eventually be made tangible in some way.

Shutter Sisters began as a seed of a dream. And now, here I am sharing my thoughts in a hotel room at our second Shutter Sisters gathering, Oasis. Today, tonight, this week, I am reminded that this dream of mine has come true, in large part, because of all of you; those of you sharing this special time at Oasis with us, and those of you who are sharing this sacred space online with us every day. You are all my dream weavers. You have shown me my dream in tangible form. I am deeply grateful.

What do you dream of today? Share the seed and let’s watch it grow together.

gathering leaves

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 Spades take up leaves

No better than spoons,

And bags full of leaves

Are light as balloons.

 

I make a great noise

Of rustling all day

Like rabbit and deer

Running away. 

 

But the mountains I raise

Elude my embrace,

Flowing over my arms

And into my face.

 

I may load and unload

Again and again

Till I fill the whole shed,

And what have I then?

 

Next to nothing for weight,

And since they grew duller

From contact with earth,

Next to nothing for color.

 

Next to nothing for use.

But a crop is a crop,

And who’s to say where

The harvest shall stop?” 

-Robert Frost

Tis the season when everything changes. When leaves change from green to gold and trees move slowly from full to barren. When the air grows cool and crisp and days get shorter. It’s the season where routine begins to take hold and harvest begins.

Share today the bounty of the season by way of leaves. Each holds it’s own unique beauty. In shape, in color, in size, in stage of life; just as it is with each one of us. Let’s celebrate the glorious leaf today, with all of it’s inspiring intricacies.

We are excited to begin yet another month of photo prompts. Won’t you play along with us? All you need to do is shoot and share and tag your shots #shuttersisters for all to enjoy! We are excited to begin yet another month of photo prompts. Won’t you play along with us? All you need to do is shoot and share and tag your shots #shuttersisters for all to enjoy! Happy Autumn!

shoes

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These shoes were made for walking. Or running, dancing, kicking up…you get the picture. Check out all the fabulous shoes we are seeing today in our Instagram feed. Share yours and see it here today by tagging your shoe shots with our tag #shuttersisters.

Walk on…

From the Street by Kriti Bajaj

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This collection of images from Kriti Bajaj is the perfect depiction of perspectives seen and captured from the street. Kriti writes of her travels this past summer, “I visited 8 towns/cities in 6 countries. Here are some of my favorite photos from Bruges, Belgium: a town that felt like it was straight out of a Jane Austen novel, but far more colorful!”

Today as you shoot and share, let our prompt be your inspiration as you capture your own perspective “from the street”.

Photo essay courtesy of Kriti Bajaj. You can find her at Framed and Focused or on Facebook.