When I was 23 years old, I moved from Massachusetts to LA. In doing so, I left behind pretty much life as I knew it: friends, family, and everything familiar. And while quite a few years have passed since then, and I’ve found new friends, family, and discovered a whole world, I still hold my past close to my heart.

One of the hardest parts about being 3000 miles away from those that I grew up with, my family in particular, is the day to day. I don’t think I realized how much you share with the people you live with and love by just, simply, living with them. And while phone calls and emails are great and help us all stay in touch, there’s nothing like the visits that are all too few. And in the meantime, one of the ways I’ve found to bridge that gap, surprise, surprise, is through pictures.

Yeah, I'm a nerd. But my Mom liked it.

When I got my first apartment out here, one of the first things I did was take pictures and send them to my family. When I bought my car, I took pictures and sent them to my family. Since I always tended to have a camera on me, it wasn’t much of an issue. But then I had been living in LA for a bit and things started seeming, well, normal. And the camera came out less and less. Let’s be honest, that was probably a good thing.

I still like to share. Its a rare occasion when I don’t compile all my pictures in a SmugMug album and send out links to my family. There isn’t a holiday or a vacation that goes by where I don’t try to capture a little bit of my world to send back home to my Mom and Dad.

It’s the little things like this that make the distance seem not too far and to keep, even just a bit, of us involved with the others’ lives. There is something vivid in the visual, it can transport you, it fills in all the blurry areas from a phone call, the parts that are just indescribable in an email. It lets me share my experiences as I experienced them; you can see what I saw and how I saw it. And I think we can all attest to the fact: there is nothing like seeing the face of a friend, a loved one, to know.

Not sure what it means that my last post was almost one year ago, but I can say that I’m not surprised. It was a crazy, unpredictable and in some ways, completely off the wall sort of year. If 2010 taught me one thing it was that almost anything can happen in a year, and often when you least expect it: the good and the bad, the exciting and the mundane, and everything in between.

This New Year – 2011 – offers up a clean state, a fresh start. And while that is obviously a trite and arbitrary observation, well… go with what works. And I refer back to my first post for this:

I remember after the first month or two I had my camera, I started to notice a different way I was viewing the world. Everything was a picture, everything was framed, cropped and rotated in my head. I’d scan the landscapes and see the art in them everywhere. And it was then that I realized that I was finally beginning to ’see’

But its how we see it, what we do with it, that makes the difference, what matters. Things happen, things change, that we can’t control or predict. But what we can do is alter how we act and react, the world is what we make it. The elements are all there, its how we frame, crop and rotate, its how we see the world that matters.

Since I started shooting, I’ve always been intrigued with the thought of all the photo-a-day blogs, groups, etc. out there. Its a great way to discipline yourself and improve your skills, plus it forces you to stop and take a look at things differently just to take THAT picture. However, I know myself and while I want to do it, I just don’t think I can.

But what Shuttercal offers is a sort of motivation to actually do it! Instead of just posting to a blog, group, or just leaving on your computer, Shuttercal lets you create your very own page a day calendar with your photo-a-days. Your diligence from the past year will certainly pay off when you’re able to flip through, day-by-day, those very same pictures. Except for one thing…

Most of the pictures I took were boring. The BF and I quickly learned that when we decided to take up the challenge with the Shuttercal Calendar as a reward. And while I really want to try, I just don’t have the energy or inspiration after a long day at the office, everyday. I’m sure that’s part of the reason WHY you should do this, but I’m not sure if its realistic for everyone.

So we bent the rules a bit. We feel up each day with photos from the month. Because nothings worse than suffering through being bored every day of next year.

Painted Desert, Arizona

Pictures are what make me remember. Nothing transports me back to a time or place like seeing it frozen in front of me. To artfully and realistically capture something: a place, a moment, a time in ones life, is a valuable time capsule whose worth is often incomparable.

Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines the word souvenir as “something that serves as a reminder”. We see traditional souvenirs in touristy locations, scattered at rest stops, airports and almost anywhere else that draws a crowd: tee shirts, mugs, magnets, shot glasses, etc. all proudly sporting their origin. When the BF and I drove from MA to CA, we picked up a magnet from every state we stopped in. We bought a Route 66 mug and a box of rocks from the Meramec Caverns. We picked up little souvenirs of the trip at just about every stop we made. And do you know where these are today? Neither do I.

But what I do have is a photo album. I have the pictures. These are what we saved, these are what we still look at. These are what make the memories flood back, that make us relive the trip. Not the magnets whose backing fell off within six months, not the mug that most likely broke and was thrown away, not the matches I picked up in the restaurants we ate at.

Photography has the special ability to capture a moment in time. It gives us a sense of place that generic objects can’t begin to come close to. Its a personal recollection and creation. Its the act of creating it that makes it special. Anyone can pick up a mass produced kangaroo pin, but to have taken the picture of the kangaroo is to have lived it.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not against souvenirs (we brought back plenty from our Australian trip) but I’m just saying, they quickly lose whatever sentimentality we attributed to them. When I want to remember, when I want to revisit the trip, I don’t go for the boomerang, I go to the images I created. And while the aren’t perfect pieces of art, they are all uniquely mine.

Congratulations. It’s your lucky day! You just found one damn fine photo newsletter.

You probably own a digital camera and you’ve probably taken a bajillion photos with it. You may have printed a few.

Well, it turns out there’s a whole world of things you can do with your photos and with your camera that nobody ever told you about. We find the most kick-ass photo tips, DIY projects, and gear and bring them to you.

Turn a photo into a mural at home in 5 minutes, print your friends’ faces onto cupcakes, or get a bottlecap that turns any soda bottle into a tripod… subscribe and we’ll show you how.

It’s all free, we never spam, and we make it easy to unsubscribe if you change your mind. What have you got to lose?

I had nothing to lose. I already got so many newsletter that I didn’t have time to read, I figured one more couldn’t hurt. So signed up.

The first newsletter I received sold me, partly because we had just seen Coraline in 3-D the weekend before. The following newsletters continued to amuse me with all sorts of fun things I could do with my pictures: jar photo frames, photo cuffs, ring frames (a great complement to the round photo-cutter they also sell), tearing the fabric of space-time, and my two personal favorites: a DIY magnetic photo board and Perpetual Photo Wall Calendar.

In full disclosure, I should admit that I have not yet tried any of these, but that’s just because I’m lazy. I like that these newsletters are mini-bits of inspiration everytime they land in my inbox. It gets me excited about the possibilities and the endless amount of photographic and creative opportunities out there. It makes me want to go get that perfect picture so that one day, I’ll finally be able to show it off to the world.

My boyfriend gave me a camera for my birthday last September and since then I’ve started down the addictive road of photography, frustratingly learning as I went along. He patiently explained to me (and explained again and explained again) all the technical details, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, etc and gave me some tips on composition. I, however, tended to forget all of that once I got outside, excited to have the camera in my hands.

Over the past few months I’ve developed a keener eye and sensitivity to my camera. Picture by picture, I’m starting to understand the artistic and technical dichotomy that makes photography truly magical. The only thing this has really accomplished though is allowing me to realize how far I still have to go.

The BF said to me one day, “That’s just looks nice, you just took a picture of it. You didn’t anything special to it.” After the requisite huffing and puffing I relunctantly agreed. Sure, it was beautiful, but that was the easy part. There was no sort of unique way of seeing that I brought to the image. I remember after the first month or two I had my camera, I started to notice a different way I was viewing the world. Everything was a picture, everything was framed, cropped and rotated in my head. I’d scan the landscapes and see the art in them everywhere. And it was then that I realized that I was finally begining to ‘see’.