Category Archives: photography

A Learning Walk: Relics

Inspired by an upcoming trip to Montana and an opportunity to explore Yellowstone National Park, I have taken up hiking. It’s a pastime my husband has enjoyed–without me– for quite some time. And yet, inspired by play and my photography, we make an effort to include some kind of adventure–with an opportunity to explore through my lens–on our days off from work. So for the past three weeks we have hiked, exploring the local backcountry with our feet.

What I like best about hiking is being outdoors, enjoying the sun, the natural terrain, noticing the native flora and fauna, and finding views and interesting photo subjects that aren’t available without hiking in at some distance. It gets hot in the backcountry around here, so we headed out pretty early this morning to hike before the mid-day heat. After climbing some distance, I looked out to see this view of the mountains in the distance veiled by the clouds that were just beginning to yield to the sun.

And there are relics of days gone by in these wide open spaces. Evidence of the native peoples who lived here before the white settlers, knowing that the native plants served as a food source and pharmacy…that this arid place sustained life long before our modern conveniences.

Tucked up in the hills of the Daley Ranch, on an offshoot of the Sage Trail, we found this rusted old water tower.

After a much longer hike than we had anticipated (at about our 7 mile mark), we came across the old ranch buildings from the days when this land was a working ranch. It’s interesting to me to think about how much smaller buildings tended to be in days gone by. Compared to some of the surrounding homes, these buildings are barely the size of a single room of modern buildings.

But it was this relic that made me take a second look. More than a mile from the trail head, near these old buildings, sat a more modern relic, something that is seldom used these days…a pay phone!

We ended up hiking more than 8 miles today! Much longer than we planned, but also entirely enjoyable. The weather was warm, but not hot. The trails were varied and interesting, but not incredibly steep. It was a perfect learning walk and photographic adventure…with some exercise and fresh air thrown in as well. And who can resist a shadow selfie…this one is a hiking shadow selfie!

I wonder what relics future generations will find as they hike and look at evidence left from our lives. How will our remains help them understand a life they haven’t experienced? What will amuse and confuse them?

A Burr in Your Sock

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Today was a prickly kind of day in the SDAWP SI. There’s something about confronting formulaic writing that sticks in your socks like those little burrs you find on weeds that seem to plant themselves in the most unlikely places.

Over the weekend we read a collection of articles about formulaic writing, thinking about why this approach to writing instruction persists, and the implications for student writing. Even teachers who are proponents of using a formulaic approach to teaching writing still complain about the deadening experience of reading the resulting student writing. Who wants to read paper after paper of repetitive phrasing and uninspired thinking?

I contrast that with the playfulness of this week at the CLMOOC. This week’s make is to hack your writing. And already on day two interesting writing is filling my feeds. I woke up this morning to a poem by Kevin “stolen” from yesterday’s blog post:

I live in contrasts
in the space between here
and there
I find the nook to hide in
and observe the world
through many lenses
I seek but never find
the whys of the world
so that every movement is
equally beautiful, equally interesting
and entirely different from each other
but only if we take the time to pause
and notice.

And this creation by Sherri:

Both Kevin and Sherri played with language and writing, creating their own message and meaning from words I had written. They wrote for fun, for their own purpose, and gifted their words to me on my blog. I grant you that they are adults and they are not composing “academic” texts, but I know that the spirit of fun and play supports them as writers.

I worry about who in our schools gets the most formulaic writing. Why are our English learners, our students of color, our students who live below the poverty line most likely to get writing instruction that is pre-chewed, scaffolded to the point that no thinking is required? In the name of being helpful, we are robbing students of the opportunity to make sense of their thinking through writing.

And yet, letting go of the formulaic means inviting messiness, losing control, welcoming confusion in order to find clarity and coherence. What replaces the formula? That is a question that I am asked over and over again. The answers aren’t easy, they aren’t neat, and they mean teaching writers rather than writing.

Sometimes that search for answers feels like a burr in your sock. But if you look closely–maybe using your macro lens–you’ll see the details of the beautiful weed, a natural hacker, springing up where you least expect it.

Rubbing Elbows with Nature

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The Wabi Sabi photo-a-day challenge has me looking at my surroundings differently. I find myself looking for beauty that presents itself in unusual ways.

Today I had the opportunity to head out around the UCSD campus for a short learning walk in conjunction with a demo presented by a kindergarten teacher in our SDAWP Summer Institute. She explained how nature inspires her own writing and some of the ways she inspires writing with her students. As I headed out with the charge to spend some time in nature, tuning in the sights, sounds, smells, and feels, I also had my phone/camera in hand ready to capture evidence of my experience.

Down the metal stairs, past the row of ATM machines, across the cement walkways, sandwiched between the architectural wonder of the Geisel Library and the tall buildings that are Warren College, lies a secret garden. Garden often conjures lush foliage and brilliant blooms, but the space lives under a canopy of Eucalyptus trees. And to my surprise, growing from a fallen trunk were three new tall, thin trees.

Heading off to the Snake Path, an art installation leading to the library inspired by Milton’s Paradise Lost, I found the natural beauty and familiar smells of the native plants that thrive in our arid, coastal climate. With phone/camera in hand, I noticed the contrast of the angular, metal and glass library poking up behind the fragrant, wild-ranging brush.

As I continued my walk, I came around the front of the library and found myself drawn to to the barrier poles laying on their side…with flowers growing nearby.

As I headed back to our meeting room, I noticed another of our participants lounging on some large boulders and working on her writing. I admit, I snuck up on her–wanting to capture the image that tells a story in one frame. (She does know about the photo…and has approved of it!)

I find myself looking for the Wabi Sabi of nature rubbing shoulders with the not always so beautiful man-made. And some of that Wabi Sabi I noticed was not only visual…I heard the buzzes of insects and the chirps of birds joining with the melody of car engines, back-up beeps, and snippets of conversation in the songs that are uniquely UCSD.

Where do you find nature rubbing shoulders with man made structures? Have you noticed any Wabi Sabi?

Finding Beauty in the Ordinary: July’s Wabi Sabi Photo-a-Day Challenge

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Summer is about the ordinary, it’s often the time we rediscover our playful selfs as we encourage children (and maybe ourselves) to run through the lawn sprinklers, lick popsicles from the ice cream truck, and spit watermelon seeds as we sit on the front porch. We roll up our sleeves, walk barefoot, and sip glass after glass of iced tea in tall frosted glasses that drip, almost crying with the pleasing coolness on a hot, summer day.

I first heard of Wabi Sabi from my friend Susan a few years ago when she asked her students to focus on the ordinary in research projects they were doing in her middle school English class. I remember how excited she was that they were discovering the beauty in the “old school”—typewriters, rotary dial phones, handwriting…and so much more than I can’t even begin to remember now.

Wikipedia offers us this definition:

Wabi-sabi (侘寂?) represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete”.

My photography has heightened my awareness of the complexities of beauty in the ordinary as I have learned to tune my eye to seek out the familiar in new ways. So when Margit gifted me with the picture book, Wabi Sabi by Mark Weibstein, I found myself thinking about the Wabi Sabi around me. Weibstein pairs his story of a cat named Wabi Sabi with Haiku, following the Americanized three-line, 5-7-5 syllable pattern, that helps the definition-seeking cat understand its name…and adds this definition, for us slower to understand folks, as well:

Wabi Sabi: a way of seeing the world. It finds beauty and harmony in what is simple, imperfect, natural, modest, and mysterious. It can be a little dark, but it is also warm and comfortable. It may best be understood as a feeling rather than as an idea.

The more I have been thinking about this concept of Wabi Sabi, the more I want to explore it more intentionally through my lens.

Here’s a few of my ideas…along with a Haiku attempt with each. Each of these represents my interpretation of Wabi Sabi, an appreciation of the imperfect, often fleeting beauty I find through my lens. Letting 17 syllables speak for me is a challenge, but an interesting one, creating another layer of Wabi Sabi for me.

A flurry and munch!

Time for posing and sunning

Scaly modeling

Purple mountains stand

Off in the distance watching

Both desert and beach

It’s a hard knock life

Reflecting privilege’s promise

Strong enough to thrive

Kegs and art mingle

Chatting on a street corner

Exchanging cultural news

And to stretch my exploration (and yours too) I have come up with a list of potential prompts or categories to consider. (I notice that I tend toward nature for my photographic exploration of beauty–these prompts are meant to push my thinking and seeing in new ways.)

1. On the corner

2. Nature

3. People

4. Celebrate

5. Inside

6. Under

7. Home

8. Outside

9. Places

10. Animals

11. Food

12. Personal

13. Things

14. Mood

15. Looking up

16. Sitting down

17. Looking down

18. Early

19. Growing

20. Morning

21. Sound

22. Growing

23. Feeling

24. Places

25. Night

26. Light

27. Hot

28. Early

28. Travel

29. Between

30. Smell

31. Icy

So now it’s your turn. Explore what Wabi Sabi means to you as you examine the ordinary in your life this summer. After you shoot, post a photo each day with the hashtag #sdawpphotovoices to Twitter, Instagram, Flicker, Google+ and/or Facebook (the more the better!), so that we can all enjoy the posts. Try your hand at an accompanying Haiku and explore how it expands, defines, or changes the meaning of the image you share. You are invited to create a pingback by linking to this url or post your blog address in the comment section. It’s fun for me to see what others are doing with the same prompts I am using!

With summer in full swing, it’s the perfect time for some playfulness and experimentation…look for beauty and the unexpected in the ordinary–let it surprise and delight you! You can post every day, once a week, or even sporadically throughout the month…whatever works in your life. You can play this game by posting your pictures in the order of the prompts or post the one you find on the day you find it. You get to make your own rules! Be sure to share and tag your photos with #sdawpphotovoices so we can find them!

Beach Contrasts

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Beach walks are full of surprises…if you are looking for them. Summer Saturdays are jam-packed with people…families, birthday parties, couples, teenagers, and so many more. Parking is a challenge and a beach walk means dodging paddle ball games, frisbees, sand castle builders, surfers, toddling just-beyond-babies, footballs…

And today’s surprise was all the flowers strewn on the beach. My husband loves to pick up trash as we walk and we noticed the petals immediately. They weren’t trash, but they were quite a contrast to what we usually see on the beach. At first we wondered if there had been a memorial service–not so unusual in the surfing community. But the flowers and petals continued as we walked and walked.

Was it a wedding? There were many different kinds of flowers…purples and whites, yellows and oranges. White roses, red roses, yellow roses… Like a trail of bread crumbs leading to a story not yet told.

I imagined a flower truck overturning and dumping its load into the ocean…a flower festival on a boat offshore where flowers were thrown into the surf as part of a ceremony…a flower field for fish that washes onto the shore when the growing season ends…my imagination took over creating more and more scenarios.

By then my mind was tuned for contrasts and I began to notice others, like the pair of surfers with their boards on their heads…one in a full wetsuit, the other in a bikini.

And the patch of nasturtiums growing along the cliffs instead of the usually bare sandstone.

And then there was the colorful seawall…someone whose property extends all the way to the beach. This stretch always reminds me of that Kevin Costner movie, Waterworld, with the floating buildings made of seaworn wood, metal, and whatever could be salvaged…this seawall has that quality.