What is it about flowers that fascinates us? The colors? The petals? The shapes? Or their association with romance and beauty - vase of roses, Valentine’s day bouquet, European still-life? Whatever the reasons, flowers are among our favorite photographic subjects, and here on Gallery they have been celebrated in many beautiful ways.

Transformations are always exciting to watch, whatever the theme may be. It could be about remodeling a house, or planting a garden, or cleaning up a city park, or losing those 20 pounds, or changing from your jeans to your bridal dress. What’s inspiring is the change.

Rachael S. is a nature enthusiast who loves travelling with her husband by motorcycle. She is also a member of our Shutterfly Gallery Guru team, dedicated to supporting your photo book and storytelling creativity.

In this interview, Rachael tells us how she was designated family historian, how road trips and family photos are her favorite subjects, and also imparts some great advice to us fellow storytellers - getting creative is easier with a little help from fellow artists (like us, on Shutterfly Gallery).

Shutterfly Gallery has taught me that weddings come in all shapes and sizes, and that every wedding has a special story to tell. Take mine for instance.

We planned our wedding in 6 weeks - scary, I know, but it actually worked. The secret? Don’t laugh, but the key to our success was in large part due to our wedding date - April 1, 2000. Since many couples were squeamish about choosing April Fool’s Day for a wedding ceremony, all the services associated with weddings for that particular day were available - some at a nice discount, too.

First of all, have you built your Shutterfly Share site yet? If not, get on it, because it’s easy to set up, incredibly useful, and looks sharp and professional with very little effort.

Plus it has all sorts of fun features like calendars, photo uploads, blogs, forums, polls, rosters, task lists, and more. So you can use it as your own site, a family site, a team site, school site, wedding site, anything really.

Second, once you’ve created your fabulous Share site, did you know you can use it to share your favorite photo books (yours included of course)? Here’s how.

Sam F. is Shutterfly’s Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives, and an avid photo book maker. In this article, Sam tells us about himself, and shares his secrets on how he came up with the perfect idea for his Father in Law’s birthday book.