negative space can be so positive and other thoughts

-quote by Goethe, shot with the Lensbaby Super Wide

Yesterday I had the chance to participate on a live web chat panel hosted at The Motherhood.com with some very exceptional ladies! Between myself, Amie Adams, Aimee Giese, Angie Warren and Me Ra Koh we could have shared for hours on end without coming up for air. Alas, time flies and we barely scratched the surface! If nothing else we realized that more than anything sharing photo inspiration can be just as fun as shooting! I guess that's exactly why Shutter Sisters came to be.

Musing on all photo-centric thoughts and ideas I wanted to share today got me thinking about this time of year and how soon after Halloween we will be looking to creating holiday cards. Don't tell me you haven't thought about them already. I so know many of you have.

Last year we started really early (like Oct 7, yikes) and wrote up some posts on the subject and called it Great Greetings. I'm not going to reinvent the wheel here so allow me to lead you to the series, in case you either missed it or need a refresher.

And to add a 2009 post to the series today, let me offer one of my favorite ways to create a great card (holiday, birthday, invitation, or just cute notecards). Let me tell you, it's all about the negative space. The more you leave, the more room you have to drop in the perfect sentiment. See the featured photo above. Don't get me wrong, negative space for the sake of compelling composition alone is awesome. I do it all the time. But if you're mindful about it when you are shooting pix for your cards, you can make room for the words that go with it. And remember, this is not just a motherhood thing. This trick goes for any kind of shot, for any kind of card.

And on that note, what are you thinking about for your cards this year? Or are you thinking about it yet? Share your thoughts and if you're so inclined, you can share your card from last year. I'll break the ice. Mine was a small and simple collection of images. I love simple.

Now, it's your turn. Let's see it!

2010 Photo Calendar Templates

Last year I wrote a post about the many options for creating custom photo calendars. In that post I offered a free download of my own Photoshop designed templates. I got a lot of great feedback on the templates, so of course I updated them for 2010 and will be sharing them here for all my Shutter Sisters. Now you can get started creating your own personalized mini photo calendars for 2010!

Click here to download the zipped psd files.

The files include basic instructions for creating your custom calendar pages in Photoshop. Then just print them on some photo paper or cardstock and cut them out.

These templates are sized to fit in a cd jewel case, but they can also be fastened together with a binder clip and hung on the wall (see above photo). If you choose to use a cd jewel case, you'll just need to carefully take apart the case and put it back together so that it stands up like this:

These calendars make awesome holiday gifts and they are so fun and easy to create. And as an added bonus these are inexpensive to make!

Postcard Worthy

Have you ever gone on vacation, visited your standard tourist shop and found yourself dissatisfied with the array of postcards depicting images of the usual suspects?  Or maybe while on a trip to somewhere new and exciting, you captured a shot that perfectly encapsulates the one image you want to take away as a souvenir and wished you could put THAT on a postcard to send back home instead of the ones on sale 5 for a dollar.

I suppose if you were industrious enough, you could take the shot, get it printed at a local lab, and mail it out in Photojojo's mailable photo frames, but I think most of us will probably settle for posting it on our blogs or Flickr streams.  Which is totally okay and saves you a stamp to boot.

So where have you all traveled recently?  Show us your postcard worthy images, and we'll pretend we got it in the mail!  I know I'd personally buy a postcard of this lovely Dublin scene, or this New Jersey Carousel, and this awesome neon sign for Pensacol Beach.

art at its best

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. - Pablo Picasso

Sometimes stepping away from something brings a clarity you never knew you were missing.

This weekend I have had the pleasure of spending time with some of the most soulful artists I have ever known. We have gotten our feet sandy and our hands dirty. We've laughed and talked and danced and laughed some more. We came with cameras and canvases, paints, papers and glue. With words and wisdom, support and pure unconditional love. We have spent the last few days together creating things with our hearts and our hands that have not only celebrated who we are but have also healed us.

Yes, I have taken a million and one photos of our adventures but the perhaps the best gift came from stepping outside of my comfort zone and letting another artist take my hand and gently guide me along a totally different creative journey.

Today I encourage you to indulge in a new art form. Experiment, play, get out scissors and glue if you have to. Whatever it takes to carry your creative spirit to a whole new world.

photo love notes

I think it's great to be able to incorporate my photos into gifts for others. And the more personal the better. I created this box of notecards for my husband last year. The box includes 56 cards that have a photo of my hand on one side and are blank on the back. The idea was that I would write him one note a week for a year. Some were love notes, some thank you's, and sometimes I just drew a goofy picture. It turned out to be such a great personalized gift and I thought I would share how I created it. Now, there are tons of different ways you could create something like this, but I'll tell you how I did this one.

First, I found the box. The one I bought is about 3.5" x 5" from Borders (Paperchase brand).

After choosing the photo I wanted to use, I opened it in Photoshop and cropped it to 3.1875" x 4.6875" at 300 dpi. This one will go on the lid of the box. I chose to add some text to this one, but you wouldn't need to. I printed it out on matte photo paper, but you could also use cardstock. Then I attached it to the lid with double stick tape.

Then I went back to my original photo file and cropped to 2.75" x 4.125" at 300 dpi. This is the size I used for the 56 cards because they would fit in the box with enough room to still get them out.

Next, I opened a new document at 8.5" x 11" and dragged my photo into it. I duplicated the layer 3 times and arrange them on the page. Unfortunately, I was only able to fit 4 on a page (you may be able to squeeze 6, but it was too close for me). This means I had 14 pages to print!.

Now comes the tedious part, cutting out 56 cards with an x-acto knife or paper cutter.

Last step! I cut a 6" piece of ribbon and hot glued one end to the inside bottom of the box. Make sure you only glue about 1/2" of the ribbon. That way, when you put all your cards in the box, the recipient will be able to pull on the ribbon to get them out.

I know my husband loves this gift and sometimes I go back and look through them all. It's fun to read them and remember what was happening in our lives when I wrote them.

And because I'm feeling brave, here's a bonus shot of one of my notes.