Superhero Photo Challenge: Up with silly!

This was one of my favorite photos from the Shutter Sisters walk during Blogher. (This photo is by Damaris) We had walked for over an hour through Chinatown, meticulously shooting paper lanterns, colorful umbrellas all in a row, a bride and groom rushing down Stockton Street...But in the end, this is the shot I love best.

We're at the end of our walk. We finally found the chickens hanging in the window that one of the food bloggers wanted to capture, and we all decided to devour some potstickers. This photo is of course a full documentation of said potstickers.

In my constant search for beauty, in my quest to be artistic, I often forget to capture the silly, the messy, the moment.This week's challenge is to do just that. Up with siily! Up with the snapshot! Let go of technique and show us something that just makes you grin.

Enchanted

It is true that the magic of childhood is for the most part intangible however, as a professional photographer and a mother I know that the perfect moment in time captured in a picture can tell a pretty grand tale of the enchantment.

What is it exactly that makes us swoon at the sight of a sleeping baby or melt when we feel the motion of uninhibited play and total freedom of being?

Do the eyes have it? It is a gesture? Or something about the context of the shot that makes it irresistible?

Even after all these years, and many clients later, I’m not sure I can put my finger on it exactly. I guess I just know it when I see it, just as I’m sure you do.

Share with us in a photo what kind of kid stuff stops your grown-up heart in reverie.

Superhero Photo Challenge: just bodies

 Sometimes you don't need to see their faces to take an evocative portrait. This photo is from a wedding I shot recently. The grooms are there, standing strong on the top of a bluff.... I love seeing the wind flap their jackets around and how they seem to match each other crease for crease. Somehow you can see the love passing between them in the simple embrace of their hands.

This is the superhero photo challenge this week. Let's see what portraits can communicate without faces. Here are a few shots for inspiration.

don't go

Sigh. This is the part of the summer where I panic because it'll be over before I know it. I start wondering what summer activities I can cram into the remaining days. I know it will still be warm for a few months, but when the kids go back to school it just isn't summer anymore. And I don't even have kids! But I do have a husband who's a teacher, and in a couple of weeks he'll be welcoming his students back to school. And my nieces and nephews won't be as available to hang out as they have been. So I'm going to keep my camera clicking away while the grass is green, the corn is high and the evening light is golden.
Do you guys have any "end of summer" photos to share?

Abundance

When is enough, enough?

When is too much, too much?

When is a little all you need to take your heart all the way home?

I asked a woman on the roadside in Kigali if I could take a picture of all this bounty.  She agreed, but only if I was willing to pay a small price.  I would have given it I suppose, but my friend Goreth intervened convincing the woman that she wouldn't lose a thing by letting me get the shot.  Some things in life it seems are meant to be free.

Where is abundance revealing herself to you these days?  Where is the too much, too little, never enough showing up in your camera lens?   Show us the shots that reveal what's full and what's empty in the viewfinder of your world.