and they're off...

It's funny how some life experiences just scream to be validated with an image. Had I told you that we attended a pig race at our local pumpkin patch a few weeks ago, you might not have believed me. It's casual captures like this that visually document the quirks I love about life in the south – a place where we'll gladly leap at the chance to squeal with a few swift-moving swines.

Share an experience or a place that might surprise us today.

Making History

If you're a Shutter Sister who happens to live stateside, today is the day your photo tells the story of history in the making.  No matter if you vote to send a woman or an African-American to the White House--together as a nation we've expanded our shared sense of what's possible in America and that's no small feat.  Have you ever had a better reason for a photo op?

How will you capture your historic vote today?  What will you catch in the lens to help you (and your children) remember this ground-breaking election forever?

Please vote today and when you come back home, leave us a link to what making history looks like from wherever you are and however you're feeling.  It's an incredibly important day.

lightness

"I felt filled with a tremendous lightness, as if every breath I took was expanding inside me" - Nam Le, The Boat

What photos make you feel light today?

The Art of Documenting the Beautifully Mundane

Recently, I shared with another photographer my hesitation to identify myself as an "artist."  I don't have any formal training in photography or fine art or even mediocre art.  I'm not the type of person to spend serious time in art museums, and I am more than a little bit embarrassed at my lack of knowledge of famous photographers.  You see, when I take photos, I consider my camera a documentary tool.  My first thought is not about making art but about capturing the humdrum moments that comprise our lives.

So when I read Jen's beautiful post this week about the courage to let it click, I realized that I don't need better credentials to embrace my inner artist; I need courage.  And by courage, I love how our lovely sister Brené Brown points to the original definition of courage as being "to speak one's mind by telling all one's heart."  If you've never heard this definition of courage before, let it sink in for a while.  It's something all of us in these fear mongering days need to soak into the core of our beings.

Well, I think that one way for me to "tell all my heart" or my own story is through my photos of the mundane and yet fleeting and often beautiful moments of my life as a mom, wife, daughter, sister, and friend.  These are the stories I have a compulsion to document, and this is my inner artist that I have the courage to finally recognize. 

"Hi.  My name is Sarah-Ji, and I am an artist of documenting the beautifully mundane."  There.  I said it.  Now to go about life embracing it...

How about you?  What is the story of your inner artist?  Feel free to share links to images that tell your story--ordinary, mundane, profound, beautiful or all of the above.

Lead by the Lens

Do you find that your lens has a mind of its own sometimes?  that you are lead to capture certain moments beyond your control? that somehow you end up at just the right place, at just the right time and it has nothing to do with you?

I captured this image last summer shortly after I got my Nikon D80. It was about 1:00pm on a Sunday. And the congregation of eight assembled on the front porch of the church on my prompting.  After taking several shots of the two beautiful women on the left, the youngest (and most shy) member of the church popped into my view and threw his arm around Eula Kate. She was more than ninety years old at the time. Eula Kate had survived a heart attack and refused to be put in a nursing home. She loved living on her own and attended her small hometown church every Sunday. I think she enjoyed having her picture made that day despite the heat and blinding sun. Several months later, she left this world peacefully – seated in her chair at her church... on a Sunday.