This week we have a homepage guest contributor, Leslie Dance. Leslie Dance is the VP of Worldwide Brand Marketing here at Kodak.  Leslie has a wonderful enthusiasm for our new marketing campaign, we hope you will as well.

Over the last year the economy has been bleak, we all know that. We're searching to find that bright spot everyday. Here at Kodak we believe we can help with our new marketing campaign "It's Time to Smile". This marketing campaign is dedicated to strengthening and deepening relationships. We want to remind everyone that "It's Time to Smile"

The Kodak brand has always been about human connections and capturing and sharing important moments. It is now up to us to leverage these attributes to help consumers improve their relationships.  Over the holiday season you will be seeing our campaign through many advertising channels focusing on the relationships and moments that define our lives.

Join in by sharing with us "What Makes You Smile?" in the comments section below.
For more information visit our page about the Kodak Smile Campaign

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Title: She Got Him to Smile
Photographer: Eric Yagoda

My father is a pretty stoic guy, but put him around his grandchildren, and he is all smiles :-)




Title: Real Life...Captured
Photographer: Megan Peck

I love the expressions, especially of the baby. I took this in my garage-on the floor with blankets and a black backdrop, so the lighting is all natural. It was taken in July 2007.




Title: Brunch
Photographer: Dave Mello

Picture taken: Carrboro, North Carolina. January 2009.




Title: Young and Beautiful
Photographer: Sulejman Omerbasic

I took this picture during the rehearsal for the opening ceremony of festival ¨Sarajevo Winter.¨ In sub-zero temperatures, it didn't bother these girls, standing for hours, they had fun. I just love the look in their eyes.




Title: Jude
Photographer: Mohammad Malak

I took this picture in the end of 2005 summer. It is so beautiful to show people the way you see beauty in your eyes...

www.malakimage.com/main

With this blog post I am starting a new series about German traditions and traditional festivals that bring together friends and family. These are very popular photo opportunities and the snapshots are happy memories for years to come.

When I checked my facebook account during the last few weeks, it was very obvious what was happening in Munich: Lots and lots of new photo albums - people evidently wanted to mark a special occasion and share it with the world.

People were tagged in photos as Bavarian lookalikes with big beer steins - the "Mass" - in their hands, wearing traditional Bavarian clothes, a "Dirndl" or a "Lederhosen". It was, of course, "Oktoberfest" time again, or "Wiesn" as the locals call it.


Photo by: Hendrik Nicolaus

The world's largest "Volksfest" attracts some six million people every year and is an event where friends and family from all over Germany as well as tourists from all over the world come together to celebrate one of the biggest parties in the world. For about 16 days, every hotel room, hostel bed and couch is booked in Munich. This festival even changes the look of the city itself. Everywhere you go there are people in traditional clothes - girls in Dirndl and guys in Lederhosen. It has even become fashionable for tourists to wear the traditional Bavarian clothes. Of course this look has to be documented by many many photos and shared with friends and family afterwards.


Photo by: Michael Lingelbach



Every year, new superlatives await: 5.7 million people came to Wiesn09, drinking 6.5 million litres of beer and taking millions of photos of course. Google Image search for Oktoberfest 2009 shows 2.670.000 photos, there are 15.838 Oktoberfest 2009 photos on Flickr and the Oktoberfest Facebook Fanpage has more than 23,000 fans. Some photos are really artistic, showing the rides and the enormous size of the "biggest beer festival in the world", but on most of them you can see people enjoying the party, smiling and having fun together - Oktoberfest time is definitely a time to smile. As part of the series "The big picture - News stories in Photographs" the Boston Globe showcases outstanding Oktoberfest photos.

However, Oktoberfest originally was not about pretzel and beer. The very first "Oktoberfest" occurred almost 200 years ago. For the commemoration of their marriage on October 12, 1810, Crown Prince Ludwig (later Kind Ludwig I) organized a big horse race on October 17th for Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen (namesake of the Theresienwiese festival grounds). Today, the Munich Oktoberfest starts on the third weekend in September and continues until the first Sunday in October - in these days always incorporating October 3rd, the German Unity Day. If you are interested in the full Oktoberfest history, you can find all details on the Oktoberfest - Wikipedia entry.

If you are a very keen Oktoberfest visitor you can already tick off the days until the 177th Munich Oktoberfest in 2010 - the Oktoberfest homepage shows the countdown.


Photo by: Hendrik Nicolaus

Kodak Germany created a Wiesn09 Photo group so if you have been at Oktoberfest 2009 don't hesitate to upload your best shots to the group. You have the chance to win a Kodak Z950 Digital Camera (Entry deadline is the end of October). Best of luck!

Every trip has its Kodak Moment - that instant in time that embodies the essence of the trip. Kodak Moments can exist as fond memories, but if you're lucky, you may capture some of your Kodak Moments in pictures. I had the good fortune to capture my Kodak Moment with my camera last spring.

It happened in a village whose name I can't pronounce in the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico. During that trip, my family and several members of our church youth group visited the indigenous Chinanteco people to distribute school supplies and clothing in their villages.

The high point of the trip was staying in one of those villages. Accessible only by steep, switchbacked dirt roads, Chinanteco villages don't get many foreign guests. Thus our group was a curiosity to the children from the moment we arrived.



The villagers were extremely hospitable and immediately began emptying one of their homes to make room for our group and cooking meals to share with us.



Even though we didn't know the Chinanteco language, and not all the villagers knew Spanish, we communicated with smiles and gestures. We ate with the villagers, played with the children, and worshipped in their church.



But my sweetest memory is a walk that we took around the village.

It started with this young boy. He began to follow me as I took pictures. When I photographed him then showed him his image on the camera's LCD, he was hooked.



Soon his friends joined him.



They all wanted to see their pictures on the back of the camera.



As we passed other children in their yards, they came to see what all the excitement was about.



I'd point to a spot where I wanted the group to stand, then back away and yell, "Uno! Dos! Tres!!" At the count of three, I'd take the picture, and the kids would race towards me, vying to see the image on the LCD.



I felt like the Pied Piper. More and more children joined our walk.



Apparently I mispronounced the numbers, so as we strolled through the village, the group belted out numbers in Spanish, teaching me the correct pronunciation. I repeated after them.

"UNO!!!" they shouted.

"Uno!" I said.

"DOS!!!"

"Dos!"

"TRES!!!!!!!!"

"Tres!" (which sounds like treys).



I had so much fun marching through the village with these children that I asked my daughter to take my picture with them.



This picture always triggers the warm glow of sweet memories, and I can't help but smile inside.

It was my Kodak Moment.