share

If there's one thing we're good at here at Shutter Sisters it's sharing. Sharing thoughts, ideas, stories, encouragement, hopes, dreams, joys and most of all photography.

Today kicks off a brand new month of sharing our pictures in our One Word Project and we thought Share would be the perfect word to inspire us for May. As always, will be collecting your visual interpretations of the word Share in our OWP Flickr Pool (please tag your images with the words May and Share). How you choose to capture the theme is up to you.

We are delighted to welcome HP as our fantabulous sponsor this month and I'll tell you, they will be generously sharing some pretty great stuff with participants all month long so watch for special giveaway posts in May. And remember each day we will feature an image from the pool on our daily One Word Project page so keep you eyes on that.

Oh, but wait! That's not all!

To up the ante a bit, we're making our one word this month work double duty. In light of May being Mother's Day we are going to throw in a sharing challenge as well. We challenge you to MAKE your Mother's Day cards this year. Of course here at Shutter Sisters we most certainly hope to see your photographs gracing these handmade cards! Why? Because sharing our photographs is one of the most rewarding parts of doing what we do as photographers! And because Moms love pictures.

We're even staring a new Flickr pool called Shutter Share. This will be a very specific pool where you can Share with us how you share your pictures. In other words, you will be taking pictures of your pictures.  Your family wall portrait gallery, a set of note cards, frames on a shelf, your Mother's Day card, you name it. Take a photo of it. We want to see what beauty you create and how you share your gifts with the people you love. We'll be looking to feature some of those shots here too and if you're willing to Share some tips and tricks, let us know. Enlighten us! We love to be enlightened. And if your looking for something to spark your creativity, the HP Creative Studio is full great ideas! Check it out.

So, now you've got 2 new projects to shoot this month! We can't wait to see what you Share.

...............................

The winners of Light Crafts new Aurora photo editing software will be announced later today!

Hope Travels

The submissions to this month's One Word Project were truly amazing.  Take a dive into our Picture Hope Flickr Group and be inspired.  These are the images we'll carry with us around the world as Stephanie and I travel to uncover the kind of hopeful stories that can really take our hearts somewhere new.

Leave us the hope note you'd write if you felt sure the just right person would read it.  And of course, any last minute images you'd like to see travel all the way around the globe.

image by natala

a bounty of beautiful

This past month I have been awakened by the beauty seen through all of your lenses. You have brought a bounty of beauty to the One Word Project this month. Your commitment and contributions to the project are deeply appreciated and admired.

The final winner of the last Diana camera and a copy of Katherine Center's book Everyone is Beautiful is Jackie(aka SmoothPepple) with this surprising and delightful diptych. When someone can show you the true beauty of everyday life via a laundry basket and new blooms (together in a perfect pairing) you know anything is possible and beauty can be found anywhere, if you know how to look for it.

Today, in honor of the final day of beautiful, you may either share a photo of yours that fits the bill and bids adieu to March and/or you are free to link to a favorite from our pool. The choice is yours. Whatever you choose, make it beautiful.

A special thanks to Katherine Center and Ballantine Books for sponsoring such a wonderful month of imagery. We loved every minute of it.

beautiful

 Jen Lee and her Diana as seen and captured by our own Superhero Andrea

Recently, while enjoying my time away at the Mom 2.0 Summit, I had the pleasure of meeting the delightful Katherine Center. I knew even before we officially met that we would hit it off. Friend after friend told me so and I take match-making friends seriously (and always appreciate the connections). So, Katherine is not just a super-cool gal, she's the acclaimed author of The Bright Side of Disaster and her latest brilliant literary offering Everyone is Beautiful. The book is awesome; perfectly written, insightful, hilarious and cut-to-the-heart tender. I'm not even finished with the book yet (and truth be told I secretly never want it to end) but I am so smitten. When you get the chance to read it for yourself I'm pretty sure you'll see the fantastic synergy between the main character Lanie and so many of us.

All March long we are delighted to be partnering up with Ballantine Books to celebrate Katherine's new book and to help spread the word that indeed, everyone is beautiful. And what word could be more perfect to use for our One Word Challenge than Beautiful?

And to add a little extra click to this month's project, Ballantine Books is giving away 4 of Katherine's books and 4 Diana cameras to accompany the books. How totally fun is that? Again, when you read the book, you'll understand the connection. It's a must read. Need I say more? We'll be giving away the books and cameras randomly on the remaining Sundays of the month. Yay!

So today, as we kick off March's OWP we welcome you muse on beauty, grab your cameras and see what kind of beautiful you can find through your lens. 

Please note- We have decided to start a new flickr group to make it easier to navigate through the OWP participant's images without having to depend on tags. Click over to the new group and submit your photos to the pool to be considered for our OWP daily feature. Please tag your photos with the word of the month ((this month is beautiful) and the month itself (this month, March). Thanks and we look forward to seeing your beautiful images soon!

Word Up

As February comes to an end—where does the time go?—we wrap up the first month of our One Word Project. With the rich list of words that you all brought to the project, the images that have been gathering in our Flickr pool have been inspiring and inventive. What an experience it has been! Exceptional work sisters. We so appreciate the focus from all of you this month. It has made this project such fun!

Tomorrow we begin a new month of the project, where there will be one word (the same word) for all of us to interpret. We’ll be announcing the mystery word, new sponsor and fantabulously fun giveaways in tomorrow’s post but for now we want to acknowledge all of the awesome shots you shared this month. Thank you all.

A special thanks to Lensbaby for sponsoring February’s One Word Project and for encouraging us to mix things up and bend the rules sometimes.

We’ll end with the announcement of the winner of Lensbaby Composer—drum drum roll please—Leaca of Simply Blogged who’s tender image of amore carried us away. Congrats to you Leaca. We know you’ll be a great mama to your new Baby!

Today, as we wind down the month and poise ourselves for the next, please share a link to your favorite shot from the project (something you shot or something from someone else). Come on, inspire us.