Shutter Sisters!

Winter Welcome on Flickr

I feel a bit silly tooting my own horn, but feeling silly has rarely stopped me in the past, so what the heck!  As I looked through comments on my Flickr photos this morning, I discovered one that said, "congrats on shutter sisters today."

What?  I thought.  There must be some mistake.  I headed over to the Shutter Sisters blog just to make sure, and there it was: my photo "Winter Welcome" was selected as the Daily Click!

I have only recently started taking photographs with any kind of seriousness of purpose.  In fact, blogging and photography go hand in hand for me, and I have been doing both for less than a year.  In that year, I feel like the world has split wide open and I have begun to see almost everything in a new way.  I'm not expressing this well, am I?  Hmmm.  What I want to say is that by writing, taking photos, and especially by reading and viewing other people's blogs, I have begun to understand that life holds far more possibilities than I had ever imagined.  Does that make sense?  I am daily stunned, inspired, moved, and delighted by what I find in the blogs I explore, by the crafters and thinkers and makers of beautiful things.  I've been a writer by trade for many years, but I learn something new about writing nearly every day now--some new way of asking a question or seeing an ordinary occurrence with fresh eyes.

And photography?  Well, I am a complete novice.  I don't (yet) own a fancy camera of my very own, but I am saving my pennies.  Most importantly, I am studying voraciously the work and techniques of photographers I admire here in blogland and elsewhere.  The pictures of many of those photographers can be found on Shutter Sisters.  I am deeply thankful for the work those talented women do.  I never thought one of my photos would be selected as a Daily Click.  I am honored.

When I was a kid I wanted to be an artist or a writer.  I had written, sketched, and painted for my entire young life, but for some crazy reason, when I was preparing to go to college, I was under the impression that one had to be one or the other--an artist or a writer.  I chose writing, and I'm not sorry I did, but I am so, so, so eternally grateful that I stumbled into blogging last winter.  For the first time in my life, I create however I want to, whenever I want to, and I get to share that work with like-minded, like-hearted people.  That's magic to me.  It's alchemy.

One last thing.  We are leaving the island very soon--a week or so, I think.  I don't want to go, but life beckons, so I've promised not to kick and scream as they drag me onto the ferry that last time.  This has been a once-in-a-lifetime chance to live and write and photograph here for a few months.  The photo above was taken here on the road where we've been living.  I will always hold it dear because it feels like this island to me: a little weathered, but enchanting, too, and always, always welcoming.