archived posts
Saturday, May 26, 2012 by Guest Shutter Sister 
Sarah Swandon-Dexel shoots images like this with her Nikon or iPhone and spends her weekends seeking, seeing & savoring. Sarah can be found online at urban prairie forest and via Instagram as wilburandfern.
Share with us what you'll be savoring on this extended holiday weekend? Take lots of pictures and share them with us for our weekending series.
Saturday, May 19, 2012 by Shutter Sisters 
Tamar Haytayan shoots images like this with her Nikon D80 and D5100 and spends her weekends with her family in beautiful rainy Vancouver, relaxing, cooking, clicking, and trying to find some time for herself in between.
Tamar can be found online on her blog Colour of Pomegranates and on Flickr.
Won't you share with us the kinds of things you discover while you're weekending?
To be featured on our weekending series, email us an image that tells your weekending story.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012 by Guest Shutter Sister 
I headed out for a photo walk around my neighborhood today, wandering the cherry tree lined streets. There is something about the act of walking even only a few blocks in search of photos that always shifts things for me.
When I go on these walks I feel like I put on my rose colored glasses and become a treasure hunter of beauty. Today I find it in cherry blossoms that have fallen from the tree and their soft delicate petals.
No matter what else is going, when I make this space to wander, take pictures and look for beauty, it re-energizes me like nothing else does. It invites me to slow down, to engage with the light and the natural world around me. This practice of seeking beauty with my camera has been a lifeline from darkness to light.
When I first began exploring photography I was going through some drastic life changes. I knew the way I had been living wasn’t working for me anymore. I was living for everyone else and not for myself.
So I reverted into a cocoon for a while, craving even more time alone than my usual introvert self needed. I wanted to be alone and figure out who I was separate from all the outside perceptions.
I went in search. I didn’t know how to find what I needed or even that photography would lead me there. It was just something I could do in which there was peaceful yet creative time alone. I knew that was the first clue to finding my way back to myself and to happiness, simply because of the way it made me feel.
I went in search of beauty and when you go in search of beauty, you find it.
At times it seems like we aren’t supposed to tell our stories with rose colored glasses, muting out the rough in favor of the radiant, the flowery, the beautiful. Yet looking for the positive, for little bits of beauty, isn’t denying that life has rough patches: that there are broken branches or muddy puddles around those gorgeous pink blossoms. Rather, it is a way to focus on what is positive even if times are rough (especially when they are). That doesn’t mean denying the rough patches, but rather using photography as a tool to engage with the world around us in a way that lifts us up.
Even these years later, I’m doing the same thing I did when this creative journey began, seeking bits of beauty.
You could say that seeing the world through rose-colored glasses is what saved and transformed my life. Seeing the beauty around me helped me find my way back to happiness again and to discover the beauty within me by documenting the beauty around me.
Will you join me today in documenting some of the beauty around you? Let’s put on our rose-colored glasses and go treasure hunting for beauty. Be it a flower petal, a person you love, or the beauty you see in yourself today?
Image and words by guest blogger Vivienne McMaster.
Saturday, May 12, 2012 by Guest Shutter Sister 
Linda Owens shoots images like this with her Canon 60D and iPhone and spends her
weekends sitting out back with a cool drink, dreaming of beaches and bokeh.
You can find her at her personal blog, her collaborative blog Focusing on Life, on Flickr and Instagram as @lgotx.
Wednesday, May 9, 2012 by Guest Shutter Sister 
Ferris Bueller said: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
Perhaps this is why I write, why my camera is my constant companion. Life is full of little wonders and there is nothing so mundane that it doesn’t hold a glimmer of awesome. I want to be in awe of the small moments, amazed by the light, the spoon on the counter, the crumpled sheets, the sun coming in through the blinds, the hot cup of tea -- the little things that make up a day. When I am out with my camera I am, in fact, practicing the art of seeing things as if for the first time -- with wonder. This is the gift of photography.
Do you stop and look around once in a while? Go ahead. Stop. Take a moment. We'll do it together. Breathe deep. Before you know it, this little moment will be gone. It really does go by that fast.
Images and words courtesy of Jeanine Caron who blogs her beautiful words and images here.
