“Highlighting photographic charities and honoring photographers who give their time, talent, and heart.”

The Idea

The idea behind Shutter Mission came to me about a year ago… I was telling someone about the wonderful portrait charity Operation: Love ReUnited, and they had never heard of the organization.  I immediately thought of at least a handful of families that would benefit from OpLove’s service, and then I started to think about people who’ve adopted who didn’t know the Celebrating Adoption portrait charity existed, and so on. Then, I thought: “wouldn’t it be handy if there was a central web site where all of these great photography charities could be listed?”

But directories are boring…  so the idea grew…. and I decided the site would need a blog to showcase recent sessions from photographers who volunteer with these organizations.  And then I thought about how a blog could impact and inspire other photographers to give back as well.  So, this is how the idea began…

The Plan

In the short term, Shutter Mission will be a:

• Central hub for the general public to learn about the various photography charities that are active today.
• Photo Blog that will display the latest work by the photographers who volunteer with these organizations.
• Directory of charities that photographers can peruse and find one to serve in an area that interests them.

The Goal

I want to help spread the word about these wonderful photo charities, and I want to showcase the work being done for them. I want to celebrate these photographers who give so generously of their time and talent and heart. I want to lift them up, encourage them to keep giving back… and inspire others to do the same.

Photographers — Call for Images

Are you involved in a portrait charity (OpLove, Celebrating Adoption, Think Pink, Heart Gallery, etc)?  The new Shutter Mission site is launching soon, and in order to spread the word about portrait charities and inspire others to give back… we need your images for the new blog.

Contribute your work or suggest a photographer to be featured »

Wanna join me?

Follow @shuttermission on Twitter for updates, recent charity sessions, etc.  I’ll also send out an update when the new site is finished and finally live.   You can also join Shutter Mission on FaceBook to receive updates.

Thank You!

This is a personal project for me… a labor of love.  This site I’m building is my gift to the community and my own way of giving back. Thank you for your support and for helping me spread the love.

I love these mini accordion albums from J. Lee Albums. They are the perfect size for your purse, and clients love showing them off. So cute!

* If you are a photographer utilizing Adobe Lightroom, I’ve shared a template below along with instructions on how to import the LR preset files. Enjoy!

Download Now

For Photographers

There are two separate presets in the zip. One is called “mini accordion photos” and the other is “mini accordion window.” Pretty self-explanatory. The larger ones are square photos for inside the album, and the smaller one is for the front window image.

I prefer my inside photos to be 2.5″ since the pages are 3″ square, as this leaves a little room around the photo to act as a border. You can adjust this size to be whatever you like.

Importing the Presets into Lightroom

• Download the LR Accordion Templates zip file and extract the files to your desktop.
• In Lightroom, go to the Print Module.
• On the left hand side, under “Template Browser,” right click (or control-click) on “User Templates” and you should see a menu pop up. Choose “Import” and select the file to be imported. (Screenshot below).

If you found these presets useful, please let me hear from you in the comments below.  It might encourage me to share more LR presets in the future!  :-)
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I originally posted these templates in Oct 2008. I wanted to make sure they still work with the latest version of Lightroom (currently 2.6), so I’ve updated the templates and re-posted the zip file above. Please let me know if they do not work for you!

Here’s a pretty extensive list of the things we saw, places we visited, and spots where we dined. My father-in-law is coming out in February, and we’re hoping to hit a few of these spots again, and add some new ones to the list.

Holidays in San Francisco, 2009:

Alamo Square · Harry Street Stairs · The Front Porch · Chinatown · Union Square · Coit Tower · Filbert Street Steps · Fort Point · Marin Headlands · Muir Woods · Biking on the Embarcadero and all over town · South Beach Cafe · LoveJoy’s Tea Room · Higher Grounds Coffee · Henry’s Hunan · Mission Dolores Park · Toast Eatery on 24th · Glen Canyon Park · Mitchell’s Ice Cream · Panta Rei · Pier 39 · Scooter rides and Beetle rides around the city · Geocaching in Noe Valley, Diamond Heights, and Billy Goat Hill Park · The Little Chihuahua · 24th Street shops in Noe Valley

Alcatraz Island

View of downtown San Francisco from Alcatraz Island

Bay Bridge from Alcatraz tour boat

Dad at Bernal Heights hill

Golden Gate Bridge – photo by my husband, Eric

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I held off on publishing this because I wanted to add some of my lomographs from the holidays, but I have yet to get my film developed… and if I wait until it gets done, I’ll be posting this in 2012. Alas, I will use some crappy iPhone snaps until I can refresh this later on.

My dad and sister are on the way to SF right now (and flying over a nasty winter storm).

We get to play tourists for the week. Lots of dining out, sightseeing, and picture taking to be done :)

Some of my current RSS subscribers may not know this…  but…  capturinglight.com began as a personal journal and photoblog in 2001, and over time, evolved into my photography business site. I chose the name “capturinglight” as my shutterbug name, and it only made sense to me to extend that name into my photography business.  As time went on, my blogging all but came to a halt.  I needed a creative outlet, but felt boxed in by the confines of and expectations associated with an all photography website.  It didn’t feel like the appropriate place to post updates about my life, travels, web development geekery, personal photos, and so on.

So…  I moved my Capturinglight Photography portfolio site to a new domain… capturinglightphoto.com.  Problem solved.

Now, I can go back to being me here.  :)  

From here out you can expect more personal snaps, interesting stuff I find online, web development and design related posts, anything related to the world of the photography industry, and of course… all things San Francisco (since we just moved here!).

I have been working hard on a new project that involves photography-related charities… and will be looking for photographer participants in the near future!

I also look forward to being able to offer some web dev tips and advice aimed directly at photographers.  So, in the meantime, if there is anything you need help with… ask away.

Thanks for reading… and if you are a photographer or interactive professional… let’s connect!

Here it is not fully decorated.  It has a remote control, and you can set it to have all clear, all multi, or both sets of lights on.  I did not realize trees were so high-tech now.  :)

(iPhone snap from Eric)

In August, my husband and I packed up our home in Atlanta and moved to San Francisco.

Those who know us well, know that this was not a sudden decision.  Something had been stirring in our hearts, and we had been desiring a new adventure and a change in scenery for several years now.  I won’t bore you with the details except to say that we had been praying about it for a long time, and one day, God opened all the right doors, and well…  here we are!

Eric and I are so grateful to be here, and we are anxious to see how our gifts will be utilized in this new city of ours.

I’m not sure what the future holds for Capturinglight Photography.  I love portraiture and adore all my little clients… but I also have so many other goals I want to accomplish.

Speaking of which… I have already begun work on a new project that I am so excited about it… but I can’t divulge too much info just yet.  However, I can tell you that portrait photographers everywhere… especially those who enjoy giving back to the community… will want to be a part of this new project.  Stay tuned for more info! *

To my Atlanta clients:  Thank you for choosing me to be your family’s photographer.  I was, and am, honored.  And if you need a referral for a local photographer, please feel free to contact me.

Until next time!
Amanda :)

* You can follow me on Twitter for updates: @capturinglight.

“Have a classic holiday.”

This is the card Eric and I designed for sending out to our families this year.  It features our 1967 Volkswagen Beetle.  Why?  Well… we don’t have any children yet, and we’re pretty sure people are tired of seeing pictures of our cats.  Plus, as Eric likes to say…  the Beetle just makes people smile.  :-)

Merry Christmas, everyone!  I’ll see ya in January!

I guess Eric was doing his “prison pose” (not to be confused with my prison pose)… which is appropriate because they went to shoot an abandoned prison on our end of Atlanta that day.

I chose not to go because I’m a big baby… trespassing, hiking through kudzu and tall weeds, inhaling asbestos, having rats run across your path… um, not my idea of a relaxing Saturday afternoon. No thanks. I’ll just chill on my front porch and drink my sweet tea… or maybe I should plant some flowers in those poor empty baskets!

Eric is not a huge fan of sweets, but I made him some celebratory cupcakes anyway (like we needed more junk food after that lunch), and he took the majority of them into the office today.  Thank goodness for that because I would have single-handedly eaten them all.  :-)

To wrap up the day, we took advantage of the soft afternoon window light and made a few portraits.  Here are a couple.  Ah, I love his eyes… {{{swoooon}}}.

Happy birthday, baby!  I love you!