For the Love of Collaboration

by Terri

If friends were flowers, I'd pick you.

Can you believe that almost two months of 2014 are already behind us? I swear, every year seems to speed by faster than the last. Since my January post was the delightful interview of Deanna Swauger, this is my first chance to congratulate all of my fellow collaborators on our two-year anniversary here at FOL. 

According to the dictionary, to collaborate is to work with another person or group to produce or create something. When we first started this collaboration, to quote Tracey Clark, someone who I credit for bringing most of us together, “we didn’t know what it was going to be but we knew it was going to be great!” And great it has been, for so many reasons.

As Holly Clark (soupatraveler) said in a recent post about collaborations on Mortal Muses, “Coming together as a collective group often results in not only great beauty, but also great friendships.” Each of the amazing collaborators here at FOL brings their own special and unique qualities, their own talents and viewpoints, to the group. As you probably know and have undoubtedly read here on several occasions, prior to the beginning of this collaboration, none of us knew each other except for online.  We were from all over the country and at many different stages in our lives. It was our love for photography that brought us together but it is the love for each other that keeps us together.

The first of my now “life sisters” that I had the pleasure of meeting was Susan. I had “met” her in a few online classes and admired her work and we struck up a friendship. We discovered that we were both going to Camp Shutter Sisters in October of 2011 in Monterey, CA and that her flight was bringing her through Phoenix. We met at the airport and by the time we landed in Monterey, we were lifelong friends. During the flight, I told her about the idea of starting a collaborative blog and wondered if she would be interested in joining us and she agreed. 

In January of 2012 Focusing on Life was born. In March, I got an email from Deanna that she would be in town visiting friends and would like to get together and go down to Tucson to meet up with a mutual online friend for a photo day together. When I picked Deanna up, the friends she was staying with came out to be sure I wasn’t an ax murderer before they let Deanna go with me!  But she and I already “knew” each other.  After our two hour drive to Tucson and back, you guessed it . . . lifelong friends.  

In April, I was heading to Dallas to visit my son and contacted Leigh and Stephanie to see if they would like to meet up at the Dallas Arboretum for the annual Dallas Blooms exhibit. They agreed to pick me up and the second they stepped out of the car, we wrapped each other in a big bear hug like long-lost friends. It was like we’d known each other for years.

Then several of us decided to attend Shutter Sisters’ Oasis in Palm Springs in October of 2012. Dotti and Deanna flew into Phoenix and drove with me. Again it was like we’d known each other for a long time, although this was the first time I had met Dotti and Linda. Being with five of my “life sisters” was such a treat!

In August of last year we decided to have our own get together in Chicago where Deanna could be our tour guide.  Unfortunately only six of us were able to be there, but I got the chance to meet three more of my “life sisters”, Carol, Kelly and Kim.

We all posted about this experience, both here and on own blogs, and if you read any of them you know what a wonderful experience this was. We were kindred spirits, bonded over our love of photography and this little blog that we contribute to. 

So we knew we had to plan another FOL get together for 2014, this time hoping to have everyone there. The rest of us have yet to meet our life sister Judy but we know it will be the same when we do meet, like we've known each other for a long time. I think all of us who were in Chicago talking about how wonderful it was persuaded those who weren’t able to be there that they didn’t want to miss another meet-up!  We’ve even added an extra day because we found out in Chicago that three days just wasn’t long enough. So in October of this year, we will be getting together in Galveston, Texas where Kim will be our tour guide.  We have rented a big house on the beach that will accommodate all of us and we’re dreaming of morning sunrises and coffee on the deck, daytime adventures in town and evening sunsets and walks on the beach, lugging our camera gear and tripods (Kim says they’re a necessity!) If you follow Kim’s blog Picking Poppies, you know that her sunrise shots on the beach are legendary!

All images above from Google Images.

But more important than all the photographs we will take is that we will be enjoying each other’s company and creating a lifelong bond of mutual love and respect for each other.

If this sounds like a “love letter” to the rest of the wonderful ladies in this group, well I guess it kind of is. And what better occasion than our two-year anniversary to tell them how much I love, admire and appreciate each of them and how grateful I am that they are here sharing themselves and their talent.  Collaborative efforts can be created out of friendships or often create them and this collaboration at FOL has created friendships beyond our wildest imagining.

I hope we have conveyed our wish to also connect with you, our readers. We love nothing more than having you comment on our posts and on our Facebook page, letting us know your thoughts and sharing your photos in the FOL Flickr groups.  We are here because we care about each other but also because we care about you. On the occasion of our second anniversary, we wanted to let you know that. It is our hope that we will all be here for many more years to come.