Shutter Sisters

Let is Snow

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Snow. So many of you today are out there playing in it, thoroughly enjoying it. Or maybe you’re  cursing it. Two years ago, we traveled to Illinois to spend the holidays with my parents and it snowed on Christmas Eve. It was magic, I tell you. magic. I grew up with snow but for most of my adult life, have only lived in cities where snow is a rare occurrence. I’d forgotten how magic it is. How quiet it is. How it so silently covers every little thing in sight. How it seems to make color and light sing.

Today, show us magic. Snow magic, that is. Dig up the old favorites. Or, if you have snow, get out there in it and make some new ones. Whatever the case (or whatever the weater), share a few shots of your outdoor surroundings with us here with us today as we recoup from the haze of the holiday.

b is for blur

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Because it’s how I remember things. It’s how memories unfold in my mind. when I close my eyes and try to remember, this is what I see: lovely, blurry scenes. I’ve been shooting this way for a while, for three or four years now. Not exclusively, of course, but more and more. I intentionally throw the focus until it feels rights. Until it looks like what I see in my mind. So often, these are the images I revisit, the ones I come back to again and again. These are the photographs that tell the real story. They spin like records on a turntable– soft, scratchy, inexplicably magic. 

If you’ve not yet tried it, go ahead. Today, I invite you to intentionally throw your focus. Fiddle with the lens til you find magic. And please, share the blur. Share it with us here today.  

today

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“There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear.” -John Cage

What did you see today? I mean really, really see? What made you stop? What had you reaching for your camera? Won’t you please share it with us here today?

gold

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Magic hour. That magic first and last hour of sunlight of the day, that moment the light turns gold, bathes everything and everyone in sweet, liquid gold. The best kind of gold, the only kind I’m really interested in these days. Dangle a gold chain in front of me and I might yawn but mention the words ‘golden hour’ and I’ll sing you a song.
 

So, go ahead. Show us your gold today. Show us your magic golden hours, your golden light. Or your plain old gold anything. Tag it #sscolormonth, share it here in the comments and in over in our OWP flickr pool.

*the above image was taken with a polaroid sx-70 camera and expired polaroid instant film. 

The Doing

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“But the biggest mistake I made is one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.”

-Anna Quindlen

I often find myself pushing onto the next thing. Dinner, bath, book, bed. Or now that my kids are a little older– homework, dinner, shower, bed. Seems like it’s my job to keep things running at an even pace, to make sure things get done. There’s a rhythm to this sort of living and all too often, we lock into it and POOF. Another day, week, month, gone. The truth is that mindful living takes some practice. Photography helps. But only if our minds are in the right place. It’s easy to fire off a hundred shots and think: Done. Moment sufficiently captured. The key is to shoot thoughtfully, mindfully. To know when to pick the camera up and when to put it down. To drink in the whole scene while you’re shooting, not just the visuals.

I’m not going to lie, friends. I’m guilty of mindless shooting. But I’m working on it, I am always working in it. When I shoot mindfully, the images I come away with feel like so much more than just images. I look at this photograph of my son Ezra and I remember everything about that day, that night. I remember how we laid on the trampoline, looked up at the sky and talked about the moon. I remember the way the evergreen trees looked, how the air smelled sweet like pine needles. I remember how our hair stood up on end from the trampoline’s static electricity, I remember the way he laughed. I remember how the light changed from gold to blue, how he grabbed my hand as we walked back inside. I remember the mexican we had for dinner that night, the smudge of salsa on his cheek. I look at this photograph and I remember everything.

Which photograph of yours captures a moment just the way it was? And when you look at it, how much do you remember? Please, do share an image and a few words with us today. 

Heaven

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Image shot with a Lensbaby.

 

On the first day of spring, we braved the cold Portland rain, threw our suitcases in the back of the car and headed for the airport. I couldn’t help but feel giddy. Giddy to be leaving it all behind for a couple of days. And when our little plane finally landed in Palm Springs four hours later and we stepped out onto the tarmac, out into blinding bright sunshine and wide open blue skies, I wanted to cry. Giddy is maybe not even the word. This trip to Palm Springs had been in the works for months. The fine folks at the Ace Hotel & Swim Club had invited me down all the way back in August but due to circumstances beyond my control, I wasn’t actually able to take them up on the offer for a good six months. I know now that the timing was perfect, that the whole thing had come to fruition at exactly the right moment and as our cab pulled into the driveway of the Ace, I felt my shoulders relax. I looked at my sweet friend Nataly (who I’d invited along for the ride) and I think maybe I squealed, I don’t know. 

When it comes to traveling, I am notorious for over-planning. I get excited about new cities, new places and want to learn everything I possibly can so that I can plan extraordinary experiences. I try to leave room for things to just happen but more often than not, we are rushing from one thing to the next. With Palm Springs, I let all that go. My only plan for our 48 hours was to just let things unfold. To raise my camera when it felt right. To wholly surrender to the experience. And for 48 hours, that’s exactly what we did. We wandered the grounds and lounged in hammocks. We laid in bed and listened to records. We drank mexican coke in white flannel robes by the patio fireplace and ordered room service. We hopped in and out of the photobooth (and then in and out again) and borrowed bikes from the Ace to ride into town. We floated on our backs in the swimming pool and looked up at the stars. We sat in the quiet of the diner and talked. Sometimes I picked my camera up, sometimes I didn’t. 

It was exquisite. 

I didn’t want to leave. Ever. I wanted to send for my husband and children and maybe a few of our things. I wanted to start a new life in room 237. But when the time finally came to leave, I felt rested and ready to go, ready to take on the real world and a hundred other little things. And as our cab pulled away, my mind jumped ahead to October. I couldn’t help but feel excited about Shutter Sisters Oasis. And I couldn’t imagine a more perfect place for it. 

Today, share with us a time when you just let it all go, relaxed into life, and allowed it to unfold.

***Just a reminder: Registration for Oasis opens today, at 9am Pacific Standard Time. We do hope you can join us!***

tomorrow

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“Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow.” -Imogen Cunningham

And it’s true, it’s so totally and completely true. It’s what I love most about photography. There are always images for the taking, stories for the telling. No way of knowing what tomorrow holds, what photographs lay waiting. For this reason, I am never without a camera, never ever. Sometimes people think this is funny, sometimes they ask why. Because you never know, I tell them. You just never know. 

Are you this person too? Do you carry a camera with you everywhere you go? Do you wonder what images tomorrow holds? Are you as excited about the potential as I am? Tell us, what photographs do you look forward to taking? What images snuck up on you and took you by surprise?

the decisive moment

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“Photography is not like painting. There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative. Oop! The moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever.”  -Henri Cartier Bresson

I was standing on the fourth floor of the High Museum of Art when this moment unfolded. I had one eye on my son in a neighboring room, one eye on my daughter a few steps away. I was fiddling with my scarf, with my braids, fiddling with the contents of my purse, fiddling with my camera. My mind was in a dozen different places but when I looked up, I saw it. The painting, the woman on the bench, the light in between. It was, by very definition, a decisive moment. If I’d hesitated at all, I would have missed it.

Instead, I reached for my SX-70, looked through the viewfinder, adjusted the focus. Steadied my hands and hit that little red button. Two seconds later, the woman walked away. The space filled with people, the light shifted. The whole scene evaporated. The only proof of its existence, this photograph. It doesn’t happen like that for me very often but when it does, it’s a thrill. Which is why I am always sharpening my brain, training my eyes to see this way, to seek out these moments, these fractions of seconds, whether I have my camera with me or not.
What decisive moments have you captured lately? Please do share a few with us today.

(The image above was shot with a polaroid sx-70 using Impossible Project PX 600 Silver Shade UV+ film)

 

light hunting

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Portland winter rolls around and it’s not the cold and rain that do me in. It’s the lack of light. Most days, I look out my window around 4:30 in the afternoon and it’s already dark. Nothing to do but sigh. Sigh heavily. But I’ve spent too much time lamenting the lack of buttery natural light here. I’ve decided to turn things around this year. To look for light in darkness, to crank up my ISO and keep my mind open. True, twinkly lights are everywhere right now but the real challenge will come in the long winter months that follow December. But I’m ready. I’m armed and I’m ready. How about you?

Light in darkness, Have you found any lately? Please share an image with us here today.

 

Vantage Point

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“If the photographer could not move his subject, he could move his camera. To see the subject clearly–often to see it at all–he had to abandon normal vantage point, and shoot his picture from above, or below, or from too close, or too far away, or from the back side, inverting the order of things’ importance, or with the nominal subject of his picture half hidden. from his photographs, he learned that the appearance of the world was richer and less simple than his mind would have guessed. He discovered that his pictures could reveal not only the clarity but the obscurity of things, and that these mysterious and evasive images could also, in their own terms, seem ordered and meaningful.” 

— from ‘The Photographer’s Eye’ by John Szarkowski

If photography has taught me anything at all, it’s that unexpected angles often tell the most spectacular stories. Tell me, when was the last time you were forced to switch up your vantage point? Please do share an image or a story with us today.