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