Sadie Olive – The Blog

With the incredible success of the "I Saw Red" event, we have decided to continue playing this little photography challenge. The new event will be called "Shades of Inspiration" so that we can continue to change the color each week. I hope many of you will continue to play and find inspiration in each others photos.

In order to keep this event manageable, I will no longer be listing the group participants on this page, but you can share your photos and visit the other players through our flickr group. (Click on the large image above to be taken to the group page).

Flickr is a free service provided by Yahoo that allows you to upload your photos and share them online. It is also a great place to network and meet other bloggers who have similar interests. Much like a blog, you can comment on each others photos and leave encouragement for one another. If you do not have an account with flickr, you can sign up here: http://www.flickr.com/  The great part is this means you can play the game even if you don’t have a blog!

I threw together this little button, if you want to post about it, or just add it to your blog to let people know you are playing and to try to get others to join in. Feel free to use it, or not! You can link it to this page so that people can read the details and play along or you can link it directly to our flickr group page at this address: http://www.flickr.com/groups/shadesofinspiration/. (Right click to save the button to your computer and add it to your blog from there. You can link to this page to give people directions for joining.)

You are of course welcome to continue to use your blog for sharing your photos in addition to sharing them in the flickr group. (I know I will).

I hope to see many of you in the new group! Thank you for playing and for continuing to inspire me!

Sara

There is nothing like a vase of fresh flowers to inspire me to want to take photos. I picked some dark red roses from my garden today, and with only about an hour left of natural sunlight, I started snapping away. I usually take anywhere from one hundred to two hundred photos when I’m feeling particularly inspired, and from there I will narrow it down to a few favorites (maybe fifteen to twenty) and then I start editing. Most of the time, I will sharpen the focus, possibly lighten the image, and maybe add some embellishments if I feel up to spending extra time on them. And if it’s a photo of me, I will use that Photoshop blemish tool like crazy! …lol…   

Since I had fifteen or so favorites this time, I decided to share a few at a time with you in the next couple of posts. Most of the photos have the same vase of red-roses in every picture, but the accents I chose to add color and texture to each frame will vary. It will be a "red roses inspire me" sort of week. I’m hoping I won’t bore you all, and maybe even some of you will post "I saw red" pictures of your own, so I can come see them?  It’ll be a week of themed photography. If enough of you are into doing this with me, maybe we can pick a new color each week or so and inspire each other. :) I think I have seen this done on other photography blogs before.

Maybe I will give you all until Monday to let me know if you want to play along?  I will even make a little button for the event, if you want to try and recruit some others to join us. I think it might be fun, and it will challenge me to find time for photography (which I have really started to enjoy again).

I threw together this little button, if you want to post about it, or just add it to your blog to let people know you are playing and to try to get others to join in. Feel free to use it, or not! You can link it to the page I created (in my sidebar) that will spell out the details. Or you can create your own, if you want to!

So here’s what I’m thinking…. starting on Monday (June 2nd) post some photos on your blog that emphasize the color red. You can add more each day during the week through Sunday the 8th (you don’t have to post everyday). Be sure to leave me a comment to let me know you are playing and I will create a list of blogs participating so we can each check in and hopefully inspire each other! Then, if every one wants to keep playing, we can pick a new week and color. Who knows, if we get enough people playing, maybe we can even create a flickr group, for you readers out there who want to play but don’t have a blog of your own!

Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself, since I don’t even know if anyone will want to play yet… lol…please leave me a comment with your blog address if you do want to play, and I will add your blog to the list of participants. Thanks ladies! This will be fun!

*edited to add: Yeah, we have some players! You can click on the button in my sidebar to view the details and list of participants. Feel free to join in at anytime, by leaving me a comment (no deadline). And this is for anyone and everyone who wants to play…. you don’t need to be a photographer or have an amazing camera to play along!