One Sweet Shot - March 2008

Hey sisters, it’s One Sweet Shot Sunday again! Welcome to our monthly inspirational link fest!

My pick this month is the gorgeous photo above captured by the lovely and talented Gayla Trial of You Grow Girl. I was fortunate enough to get to speak on a panel that she moderated at BlogHer last summer which was quite a pleasure. If you aren't yet familiar with her website,  I encourage you to pop over and dig around (the oldest pun in the gardener’s book I know) to discover her wonderfully earthy and soulful images.

And now, on to the other honorees of this edition of One Sweet Shot:

Vixen’s Den is honoring this shot from ProjectMommy.

Write Mama Write is honoring this shot from Steph.

Maggie is honoring this shot from christinator5 .

Rebecca is honoring this shot of her Winter Beauty.

Shelli is honoring this shot from Springtree Road.

Hay is honoring this shot from mommymac.

Lawyer Mama and Maile are both honoring this shot from happy girl lucky.

Redness is honoring this shot from Corey Amaro.

Val is honoring this shot from Jo.

Mrs. Eaves is honoring this shot from Vixen’s Den.

Krystyn is honoring this shot from Beebee Mod.

Andrea is honoring both this shot from romanlily and this one from she saw things.

And Mandi is honoring this shot from Amy Shaba.

To all of you that submitted your honorees, thank you. To all of you that were honored, let this be a little dose of feel good on this fine Sunday. And to the rest of you, sit back and enjoy the clicks!

the gift

 

Paddling through the Broken Islands we saw mussels as big as footballs and starfish with uncountable legs and bodies as wide as our kayaks. A second sun shone up from the ocean floor, illuminating underwater forests of giant kelp that swayed and entangled, a slick, glowing green.

After a day of chasing whales and surfing bottleneck currents we’d choose a beach on one island or another, pull our boats onshore. Then we’d tuck into cold beer and sit by a fire until rosy, cleansing woodsmoke permeated every pore. Watched by thousand year-old cedars and hemlocks that dwarfed their tiny outposts, with roots like fingertips wrapped around the edge of the sand.

It was in this sand that the skull of the sea otter shone bleached white, part-sculpture and part-ghost. Proud, unapologetic, not a whiff of self-pity. I felt like I’d been singled out to receive this gift.

He lives in the kitchen, a different spot every day for how much I pick him up to feel his prickly smoothness in my hands. He reminds me of that place I escape to in my head—the sound of my bow slicing through swell, of the heat in my arms taking me deeper into the peace of where there are no people.

Show us something precious to you—something unexpected, discovered and clung to as an artifact of some fabulous epic or episode. Let’s get through the February doldrums by sharing a few tall tales, eh?

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Addendum: I should clarify—as great as they are, tall tales are not limited to beach finds. Show us any inanimate object in your home that tells a story—a first edition of a favourite book someone gave you, your mother's handwritten recipe cards, a vase bought in your adventuring days from a street vendor in some exotic locale. Or maybe just the first macaroni-and-glue artwork given to you by a child. Tell! Show! Anything goes.

The Absence of Color

I’m a big fan of black and white photography. Perhaps it’s the poignancy that captivates me. Or maybe the nostalgia factor. Whatever the reason, there is something about the absence of color that draws me in.

My tendency towards the monochromatic runs deeper than just photography and is often visible in my wardrobe choices as well as my dinner plate. I have a habit of wearing tan and tan and this uncanny way of cooking up (literally) an entire meal of one solitary hue. Despite what my husband might say, it’s totally unplanned. But, there’s got to be something to it, right? I only ask because I often find myself shooting photographs in much of the same way. There’s something compelling about capturing a color image that is washed so completely in a single shade, that you might question whether it is a color shot at all.

Is it just me or you ever find yourself curiously looking at a monochromatic palette through your viewfinder?  Care to share?

One Sweet Shot - February 2008

Hooray, it's our very first One Sweet Shot post! I've been so looking forward to this. To kick it off, I am featuring my nomination as the main photo today. I find this shot by Amy McMullen (dear friend and sister of the shutter) to be irresistible. Hi Amy!  I won't go on and on because there are a lot of other incredible shots that you all nominated so I will leave you to your clicking. Enjoy!

Sarah Ji nominated this shot by quixoticpixels

Krystyn nominated this shot by thrivestyle

Irene nominated this shot by tae**co

Kate nominated this shot by sweet juniper *

Paige nominated this shot by cherieyost

Andrea nominated this shot by Officially a Mom

Nicky Thomas nominated this series by Schneiderlotte

Give it a Try nominated this shot at Lisas Chaos

Danielle nominated this shot at all things DB

Michelle nominated this shot by Carissa

Princess Granola nominated this shot by Emily S .

Meg nominated this shot by PutYourFlareOn

She Saw Things nominated this shot by pumpkinlittle

gemkathleen nominated this shot at centricphotography (fourth from the top)

socalmom nominated this shot by drumsnwhistles

saramoon nominated this shot by sheyerosemeyer

sheri reed nominated this shot by camerashymomma

camerashymomma nominated this shot by costalgirlimage

beebee mod nominated this shot by ashleymcnamaraphotography

jennifer hunter nominated this shot by raquita

leslie nominated this shot by soul sparkle spirit  

lemony webbles nominated this pair by liza-bean  &

maile nominated this shot at Put Your Flare On.

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*congrats to Jim - a.k.a. Dutch of Sweet Juniper - for being the very first male to be

featured here on the Sisters site. Kate has dubbed you our first

official 'Shudder Brudder' (that's toddlerese). We hope you're cool with that Dutch.

THANK YOU ALL FOR PARTICIPATING!

Mastering the art of the rinky-tink-tink: part two

I can’t claim any state of zen with my point-and-shoot camera. Most days, it takes near-herculean restraint to not chuck it off the end of the nearest wharf.

Taught my three-year-old several new curse words this weekend trying to capture him indoors — the NERVE! — where my press-down-halfway-and-hope-for-the-best pipsqueak stubbornly refuses to focus.

But a less-than-SLR camera need not be a creative crutch. Right? Right.

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I'd like to think that creativity is more than 'have’ or ‘have-not’. To accept the "you've got it, and you don't" myth would be utterly demoralizing on those days when I'm feeling photographically tapped — those days, I'd rather take a deep breath and say to myself It's not just me being inherently dull, or hopelessly all-thumbs with a camera. I'm just forgetting something, getting lazy.

Here's what helps me get my groove back — before pressing the shutter, an ABC of creative checkpoints:

ANGLE. Take risks. Lie on your belly. Crouch. Get up on a chair. Try a few without looking through the viewfinder, if an inventive angle requires it. Before turning away from a scene or subject, take at least two or three more unconventional angles or stances. When I start to get bored, chances are good it's because I've spent too much time with the camera at eye-level.

BACKGROUND. Do a visual inventory of everything around your subject — passerby, traffic, signage, household clutter — and change your stance to minimize visual distractions. Do whatever it takes for a clean frame, because there's some law of photography physics that assures the expression of a lifetime will occur in the one frame of a hundred that includes the potbellied guy standing stage left with the MASTER BAIT & TACKLE t-shirt.

COMPOSITION. At the last moment, look through the lens abstractly to consider the shapes, lines and balance formed by your subject and surroundings. Reduce what you see to blocks of colour and pattern, and respond to that stripped-down vision from the gut. This always leads me towards what often feels counter-intuitive, or quirkier than rule-of-thirds. While it may not always work, it's always worth a try to tilt, shift and crop for more mindful composition — as opposed to everything is inside the frame and no one’s got a finger up the nose: check.

If you’re an enthusiastic enough photographer to be here, you know all this already. But it’s forgetting these basics that gets me stuck in snapshotty ruts — and blaming those ruts on my wharf-bound pipsqueak.

Which, in the absence of something better, doesn’t do any favours for me or the Kodak.