Spend time with your kids, see life through their lenses and support the Boys & Girls Clubs of America!

School is out and summer’s here. That means it’s time to take fun family trips and encourage your kids to take photos along the way while you’re on vacation, on weekend adventures, or simply visiting a local park or attraction. What’s more, you can help extend those summer memories by submitting your child’s favorite snapshots to the “Kids Cool Trip Pix Photo Contest,” sponsored by Shutterfly and in support of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America program Day for Kids!

For every entrant to the “Kids Cool Trip Pix Photo Contest,” TravelMuse will donate $1 to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, to a maximum of $500.

Open to All Kids!

This contest is open to kids 16 years or younger across three age categories:

•    Youngin's: under 9 years
•    Tweenagers: 9 to 12 years
•    Teen Scene: 13 to 16 years old

Win Prizes From Shutterfly!
Grand Prize: The overall winner will receive one $100 gift voucher to spend on Shutterfly, so you can save memories from this summer through photo books, prints or other photo merchandise, and their photograph will also be featured on the homepage of TravelMuse.com for a week from Sept. 12, 2009.

Category Prizes: The winner in each of the three age categories will receive one $50 gift voucher for Shutterfly, and their photograph will appear in the winner’s gallery on TravelMuse.com, from Sept. 12, 2009.

We will also recognize second and third place entries and feature their photos in the winner’s gallery on Sept. 12, 2009.

How to Enter
1. Between June 16, 2009 and Aug. 16, 2009, help your child select their best photos, taken by them on recent trips, be it a vacation (U.S. or overseas), a weekend away or simply a trip to a local attraction or park.

2. Show us! E-mail your photos to photo at travelmuse dot com and in the title put “Kids Cool Trip Pix.” Don’t forget to include the name of your child, their age, where the photo was taken and the nature of the trip(s), e.g. vacation to Yellowstone, visit to our local park, etc.

You can submit a maximum of three (3) entries.

Winners will be announced on Day for Kids, Sept. 12, 2009, in support of Boys & Girls Clubs of America. Winner’s photographs will be shared on TravelMuse.com.

Tell Your Friends
Don’t keep all the good fortune for yourself—let your friends and family know! Click “share this” on the bottom of this post to e-mail your friends and wish them luck!

About Shutterfly
Shutterfly makes it fun and easy to be thoughtful and creative with your travel memories. From start to finish, Shutterfly makes it simple to enhance, share and store your digital photos—for free, no purchase requirements! From award-winning photo books and prints to a wide variety of photo gifts and cards, and stationery, Shutterfly has something for everyone when it comes to memory-keeping and gift-giving of your favorite travel photos.

Shutterfly also offers Share Sites, free customizable Web sites that combine the best of photo and video sharing, blogging and social networking, to help travelers share and chronicle their adventures on the road and abroad. Share Site owners have full control of privacy and security settings so they can choose to let members view, comment and contribute photos, making it possible to gather multiple images from separate cameras in one secure location.

About Day for Kids
Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGC) celebrates the importance of establishing stronger relationships between adults and youth by leading the BGC Day for Kids effort. Held this year on Saturday, Sept. 12, BGC Day for Kids was established to encourage adults and children to spend meaningful time together. For more details and to make your pledge visit http://www.dayforkids.org/index.html.

Rules
The TravelMuse “Kids Cool Trip Pix Photo Contest” opens on June 16, 2009 and ends on Aug. 16, 2009, at 11:59 p.m., Pacific Daylight Time (PDT). By submitting an entry, each contestant agrees to the rules of the contest as stated below.

• Entrants must be U.S. residents who are 16 years of age or younger as of the date the Photo Contest begins and who have entered with the consent of a parent or legal guardian. Employees, vendors and partners of TravelMuse and their immediate families are not eligible to win.

• Submit a maximum of three (3) entries of photographs taken on a trip, whether it is from a vacation in the United States or abroad, a weekend away or simply a visit to a local attraction or park.

• Photographs must have been taken within the last year (1) year (since June 16, 2008).

• All entries must be at least 300 dpi at 5x7 inches, so 1500x2100 (3 megapixels).

• Photos cannot be manipulated or altered. Pieces of other photographs may not be added to your image and major elements may not be removed. Acceptable alterations are adjustments to the contrast, brightness, dust spotting, cropping and slight adjustments to color. If our judges see that a photographer has obviously altered his or her photo, they reserve the right to disqualify it from winning and remove it from the pool.

• Photos that have won any other contests or have been published in magazines and newspapers are not eligible. Photos that violate or infringe upon another person’s copyright are not eligible.

• If people, especially children, in your photo are recognizable, you may need to provide a model release upon request by e-mail (marketing at travelmuse dot com). If the photo was taken in another country, or there are strangers in the photo that you cannot get a model release from, please e-mail the photo to us along with a description of the circumstances of the photo, and we will review your entry.

• Entrants retain the right to any personal photographs submitted to TravelMuse. By entering the contest, winners (1st, 2nd and 3rd place) grant TravelMuse the permission to publish your image in print or online, to use it for promoting and advertising on the site, and for commercial purposes. TravelMuse will not be required to pay any additional consideration or seek any additional approval in connection with such uses. Where appropriate, TravelMuse will credit photographers and provide a link back to their flickr page for any images used on TravelMuse (or any successor or affiliated Web site).

• The winners will be selected by a judging panel comprised of guest photographers, TravelMuse photo editors and other employees. Judges will evaluate all eligible entries based on 1) Creativity (50 percent) and 2) Photographic quality (50 percent).

•    The winners of the contest will be announced on “Day for Kids,” Sept. 12, 2009. Decisions of the judges will be final.

•    The contest is void where prohibited or restricted by law. TravelMuse reserves the right to cancel the contest or modify these rules at its discretion. Decisions of TravelMuse will be final.

•    Prizes include:

Grand Prize: The overall winner will receive one $100 gift card from Shutterfly, plus their photograph will be displayed on the homepage of TravelMuse for a week.

Category Winners: Each of the three age category winners (ages under 9, 9 to 12 and 13 to 16 years) will win one $50 gift card from Shutterfly and their photograph will be displayed in a winners gallery post on TravelMuse.com.

Winners will be asked to provide an e-mail address for their Shutterfly account, so the gift amounts can be uploaded. Winners can utilize the gift card for photo books, prints and other photo merchandise on Shutterfly.

• No substitutions, including for cash, are permitted, except that TravelMuse reserves the right to substitute a prize of equal or greater monetary value for any prize.

• The winner will be responsible for paying any taxes that they owe on the prize.

• Winners must claim their prize within seven (7) business days after the notification of the win, or the prize will be considered forfeited and an alternate winner will be awarded.

If you have any questions please contact: marketing at travelmuse dot com.

I first stumbled upon ‘Elizabeth Taylor’s’ Flickr page when I was looking for images of Austin, Texas. She had a beautiful image of a huge cupcake (on top of an airstream trailer turned restaurant) against a beautiful clouded sky. The image was simple, but really caught my attention. After browsing a few pages of her other work and finding her blog I was hooked.

Elizabeth Taylor, also known as Stephanie Cornell, has a rare talent for capturing moving images of ordinary things. Coupled with her funny and insightful ponderings on every subject from international relations to shoe purchases, her work gives you a peek into the life of a traveler soaking up all she can. I think this testimonial on her profile page says it best.

“Steph’s a poet. What, she didn‘t tell you? Well, that‘s because she‘s under the mistaken impression that she‘s a designer. Or a musician. Or a filmmaker. Or all of the above. But really she‘s a poet, in the sense that she distills her life into fragments of concentrated impression and emotion, and when you look at the words and images she shares you are reminded of your own experiences in ways that startle and amaze. Steph can‘t help it; it‘s just the way she works.”

Check out Stephanie's Flickr page and her newly revamped and relaunched blog.

Apartment, Seoul

TravelMuse: Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.

Stephanie Cornell: I grew up on the coast, north of Boston. It’s a bit of a ridiculously idyllic New England town. The kind you think is so painfully, excruciatingly boring as kid and later can’t believe you were so lucky to grow up in. It’s also an artist’s community, so I was surrounded by painters, writers, musicians. My mom was a schoolteacher and my dad builds pipe organs, which just made it worse. I really had no chance at a normal, non-creative life. I studied filmmaking at Emerson College in Boston, and then worked in that industry for about 10 years before coming to my senses. Now I am a full-time writer in Seoul, South Korea.

TM: What got you interested in photography, and why do you continue to enjoy it?

SC: My dad was an amateur photographer when I was young, so I spent a lot of time in front of his camera, messing with cameras and hanging out with him in the darkroom on weekends. So I’ve always been shooting, but it never really grabbed much of my attention until I joined Flickr and started having a reason to shoot.

Golden Raspberries, Nanaimo, Vancouver Island, BC

TM: How long have you been sharing your photos online, and what do you like/dislike about it?

SC: I joined Flickr at the end of 2004 at the request of my friend Marshall. I prefer to call it harassment. At first, it was just a way that I could stay in touch with my friends, because we were spread all over the globe. Photos were a much easier way to stay in touch and much more immediate, too. When I moved to Korea, that all changed. I found a voice, I found a community and I found a direction.

Haebangchon, Seoul

TM: How does photography tie into and influence other parts of your life (for example, your writing on your blog)?

SC: Photography helps tell the story. I studied filmmaking, so telling stories has always been about a combination of words and image for me. The two are so entwined, I would have a hard time doing one without the other. Some people—and some photos—are so good at telling the whole story with the image alone. I am not that kind of photographer, I am not that kind of writer, and I don‘t think I‘m that kind of audience either.

Hey Cupcake! South Congress Avenus, Austin, Texas

TM: How does being a photographer change how you see the world? Do you look at things differently when you have your camera with you?

SC: I look at things differently when I don‘t have my camera with me. I think being a photographer makes me a very annoying dinner guest, a slow travel companion and a distracted conversationalist. It makes me miss my bus stop because I am too involved with how the light is glittering on the buildings. It makes me late a lot. It gets me in trouble sometimes and yelled at other times. But it also can start a conversation or open a door.

TM: What advice do you have for aspiring photographers?

SC: I‘m extremely lazy when it comes to all things technical. Everything is on a need-to-know basis. Don’t be lazy like me. Learn your gear and learn it well. Then just shoot.

Vancouver-Nanaimo Ferry, British Columbia

Thanks for all the fantastic entries to the TravelMuse Urban Endeavors Photo Contest, sponsored by Eye-Fi that ran from March to the middle of April! We received submissions that covered destinations from Australia to India to England to San Francisco, with subjects ranging from skylines to graffiti to crowded marketplaces.

During the contest we posted a few shots that stood out, but now that we have fully reviewed all the submissions, the TravelMuse Team came to a fairly unanimous decision.

First Place: Motorbike Repairman

Photographer: Timothy Forbes

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Entry text: “Urban environments are exemplified by the coming together of people and the steel and stone they’ve fashioned to create and live in those environments. Here the contrast between skin and steel in an urban setting is shown in the form of a repairman and the motorbike he is working on just feet from a busy street in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.”

Second Place: Sharing a Limb

Photographer: Liz Tunnell

Tel Aviv, Israel

Entry text: “A graffiti on the streets of Tel Aviv in the old city of Jaffa shows two characters carefully sharing a piece of wood, as if it came from the tree above. Each of the characters is missing one limb and is holding the wood with their arm wrapped around the other to the piece of wood. Their hearts have been removed and carefully sewn on their sleeve.”

Third Place: Reflejos en Benidorm (“Reflections in Benidorm”)

Photographer: Emilio Jose Mariel

Benidorm, Spain

Have you seen the amazingly huge and detailed picture of President Barack Obama’s inauguration that was making the rounds recently? If not, check it out.

At first it looks like a regular panoramic image, until you start zooming in. The resolution of the image is so high that you can make out the expression on the faces of each of the thousands of people in the photo. It’s actually made up of 220 images, stitched together seamlessly, to make a panoramic that is a whopping 1,474 megapixels, or 1.57 gigapixels, in size!

The image was created using the Gigapan Epic, from Gigapan Systems. The Gigapan Epic is actually a small robot that takes photos for you with the perfect amount of overlap for stitching them together later. You tell the Epic what you want included in your image by setting the corners, and it figures out how many pictures to take to fill in the rest. Just set it up and let it go, the robotic arm will take tens, hundreds or thousands of images for you. Put those images into the Gigapan Stitcher software, and before you know it you’ll have a huge image with amazing detail. For a sample of what’s possible with the Gigapan Epic check out the thousands of gigapixel images at gigapan.org.

The image of the presidential inauguration was taken by photographer David Bergman, and it was his first time using Gigapan. This breakthrough technology puts the elusive panorama in the hands of anyone with a point-and-shoot camera, and the best part is that it retails for just $379. Keep an eye out for unbelievable panoramic images as this technology catches on!

As we started the March photo contest a little late this month, we’ve decided to extend the deadline to Friday, April 17, 2009.

So keep snapping and send your photos to photos@travelmuse.com!

For rules and instructions on how to enter, check out the TravelMuse Photo Blog.

Here are some of the stunning shots we’ve received so far:

Millennium Park Sculpture, by Jill Hood

5 Abbey Road, by Holly L. Perry

Bollywood and Bangalore, by Liz Tunnell 

February has come and gone, and so has Essence of Place, our February travel photo contest with Eye-Fi. Thanks for participating and providing so many great entries—it will be hard to pick winners! Stay tuned to check out the winning shots on March 13.

Next up: TravelMuse and Eye-Fi’s March photo contest! This time the theme is Urban Endeavors, and we’re giving away our second Eye-Fi Explore card (valued at $130) to the winner. We will also recognize 2nd and 3rd place entries. So whether you want to show off shots from your recent vacation or from your hometown, we’d love for you to share your photos with the TravelMuse community! What’s more, we’re always on the lookout for great shots to feature on TravelMuse.com.

How to Enter

1. Between March 3, 2009 and March 31, 2009 select your best digital photo that describes the theme “Urban Endeavors.” It could be an amazing shot of the Trevi fountain in Rome or the skyline of your favorite big city.

2. Show us! E-mail your photos to photo@travelmuse.com and in the title put “Urban Endeavors March 2009” and your name. Entries must include a brief paragraph telling us where your photo was taken and why you feel it qualifies as an example of “Urban Endeavors.”

You can submit a maximum of three (3) entries per person. Winners will be announced on the second Friday of April, with full details shared here on the TravelMuse Photo Blog.

Note: We apologize for the change in submission process related to Yahoo! Terms of Service and the Flickr Community Guidelines, and respect that commercial activity is not allowed on Flickr.

Tell Your Friends

Don’t keep all the good fortune for yourself—let your friends and family know! Click “share this” on the bottom of this post to e-mail your friends and wish them luck!

About Eye-Fi

Eye-Fi wireless memory cards make it super-simple to upload and share your photos. Photos shouldn’t be trapped in your camera. Set them free effortlessly and wirelessly. The Eye-Fi Card is a wireless SD memory card for your digital camera. It stores pictures like a standard SD memory card, but also uses your Wi-Fi networks to automatically upload images from inside your camera to your PC or Mac and to your favorite photo or social networking Web site for sharing or printing. No cables, no cradles, no fuss.

Key features include: unlimited geotagging, Wi-Fi hotspot access for one (1) year, unlimited WebShare service, wireless uploads to computer and 2GB of storage.

Eye-Fi Explore is for those who tag or organize; for those who blog or share in real-time; for those who need to upload here, there or somewhere else; and all the rest who are simply passionate about managing, sharing and saving their memories.

For more details on Eye-Fi>>

Rules

The TravelMuse March Photo Contest opens on March 3, 2009 and ends on March 31, 2009, at 11:59 p.m., Pacific Standard Time (PST). By submitting an entry, each contestant agrees to the rules of the contest and states that they are 18 years old and older.

• Professional photographers who earn more than half of their annual income from photography are not eligible. Entrants must be U.S. residents. Employees, vendors and partners of TravelMuse and their immediate families are not eligible to win.

• Submit a maximum of three (3) entries around the theme “Urban Endeavors” — locations or activities in the United States and abroad that convey a city theme.

• Photographs must have been taken within the last three (3) years (since March 1, 2006).

• All entries must be at least 300 dpi at 5x7 inches, so 1500x2100 (3 megapixel).

• Photos cannot be manipulated or altered. Pieces of other photographs may not be added to your image, and major elements may not be removed. Acceptable alterations are adjustments to the contrast, brightness, dust spotting, cropping and slight adjustments to color. If our judges see that a photographer has obviously altered his or her photo, they reserve the right to disqualify it from winning and remove it from the pool.

• Photos that have won any other contests or have been published in magazines and newspapers are not eligible. Photos that violate or infringe upon another person’s copyright are not eligible.

• If people, especially children, in your photo are recognizable, you may need to provide a model release upon request by e-mail (marketing at travelmuse dot com). If the photo was taken in another country, or there are strangers in the photo that you cannot get a model release from, please e-mail the photo to us along with a description of the circumstances of the photo, and we will review your entry.

• Entrants retain the right to any personal photographs submitted to TravelMuse. By entering the contest, winners (1st, 2nd and 3rd place) grant TravelMuse the permission to publish your image in print or online, to use it for promoting and advertising on the site, and for commercial purposes. TravelMuse will not be required to pay any additional consideration or seek any additional approval in connection with such uses. TravelMuse will credit photographers and provide a link back to their flickr page for any images used on TravelMuse (or any successor or affiliated Web site).

• The winner will be selected by a judging panel comprised of guest photographers, TravelMuse photo editors and other employees. The winner of the March contest will be published on April 10, 2009. Decisions of the judges will be final.

• The contest is void where prohibited or restricted by law. TravelMuse reserves the right to cancel the contest or modify these rules at its discretion. Decisions of TravelMuse will be final.

• The winner will receive one Eye-Fi Explore card (value $130).

• No substitutions, including for cash, are permitted, except that TravelMuse reserves the right to substitute a prize of equal or greater monetary value for any prize.

• The winner will be responsible for paying any taxes that they owe on the prize.

• Winners must claim their prize within seven (7) business days after the notification of the win, or the prize will be considered forfeited and an alternate winner will be awarded.

If you have any questions please contact: marketing at travelmuse dot com.

As the most popular photo-sharing site on the web, Flickr has such a vast wealth of imagery that it’s impossible to look at everything. Luckily the people at Flickr make it possible for anyone with the interest and skill to create their own ways of displaying and discovering images. Some of the sites that people have come up with are truly stunning, and frankly make it a lot more fun to browse through images than it has ever been on the Flickr site itself. Below are a few of my personal favorites.

Multicolr

Idée Labs has come up with a strangely addicting way of browsing Flickr images based on nothing but color. Choose up to 10 colors and Multicolr will show you images that contain them, with fascinating results. Add and remove colors and see how your results change, but don’t get too carried away, which is easy to do!!

!http://www.travelmuse.com/community/servlet/JiveServlet/downloadImage/38-1312-1295/Multicolr.jpg!

Related Tag Browser

Airtight Interactive’s beautiful and intuitive Flickr Related Tag Browser site lets you find Flickr images based on the tags, or keywords, their creators gave them. Start by entering any term you want, and see a batch of images with that tag. Related tags will appear in a circle around your first batch of images, and clicking on them will give you a new group of images to look at, and a new selection of tags to consider. Spend a few minutes on the site and discover some great Flickr photographers and their beautiful images.

Memry

Play the classic memory matching game with Flickr photos on a theme of your choice. Start with any keyword and Memry will create a custom memory board for you with photos from Flickr, some of which will seem to have nothing at all to do with what you entered!

Flicker Time

Great design meets interesting and dynamic content on Flicker Time The Momment. The site tells you the time with dozens of Flickr thumbnail images arranged to create the numbers on a digital clock. Every minute old images fall away and new ones jump in to create the updated time. Mouse over any of the images to see a larger size, and click to see the photographer’s page and more of their work. You can even customize the look of your clock with a couple of keywords. Time flies when you’re watching this clock!

Endless Interestingness

Endless Interestingness provides what is probably the simplest way to discover new images on Flickr. The page is a never-ending grid of popular and interesting images of all kinds, and is a good way to while away the hours or get inspired to go out and do some shooting yourself!.