Lilies by Name

I have two for-purchase sites.  The first is Redbubble.  This site has group functionality for showcasing images on the site.  I host 3 groups: All Glorious Lilies, All Glorious Gardens and Surfaces and Textures. As a host, I curate weekly features of member images, and run challenges on an on-going basis based on themes. When I took over the All Glorious Lilies Group, its scope was limited to Lilium lilies. However, most photographers and artists are not flower experts and all kinds of flowers were being submitted.  To the submitters they looked like lilies or people called them lilies.  These would include day lilies for example.  As the images were very beautiful, I looked for ways to define the scope so they could be included.  The Lily family is named Liliaceae.  I found that it used to be a large and diverse scope of plants - everything from lilium to allium (onions), irises, etc.  But that's all changed with genetic testing and it is now a very small family of plants.  So I decided to make the scope everything in the Liliaceae family and anything with lily in the common name. The list was started and grew and grew. Here's the current Handy List of Lilies.  There are over 16,000 views of this list. I looked up the Matthew verse on '"lilies of the field" to see how this related to the group. Wikipedia says scholars consider the autumn crocus, scarlet poppy and Turk’s cap lily (a lilium) to be candidates, also narcissus, gladiolus and iris. And then, wikipedia tells us the verse could also just mean flowers in general and that lily could be a word referring or any showy variety. So this is the working motto for the group. Elusive and inclusive in its reference to Lilies – a fitting verse for a group which has a clear, and yet meandering scope -  All Glorious Lilies.

Redbubble and Fine Art America are more than Sales Sites

Being a Host on an Art Site

I am a member of two art sites - Redbubble (rb) and Fine Art America (FAA) - because they sell my work.  Betterphoto is the host of marilyncornwell.com but it doesn't have any fulfillment capabilities so far.

I 'host' groups on these sites.  On Redbubble the two groups are related to gardens and flowers.  On Fine Art America the group is urban and nature macro abstracts.

The opportunity to host means I select images to feature in a display portfolio 0each week.  Over the few years, I've learned about what makes great images that have the 'wow' factor, and about putting images together into a portfolio with the 'wow' appeal.  I've discovered what makes an engaging topic for challenges where voting decides the top ten images.

Redbubble has a wonderful community of talent – here are the features this week in my garden and lilies groups: 

All Glorious Gardens

All Glorious Lilies

If you click the links above you can see the groups and look at my portfolios.  If you click this link -  All Glorious Gardens Challenge - you can see the latest images in the challenge, but you will want to sign in to vote.  

And come see the groups regularly and check out the features and gallery!