Category Archives: photography

While We Wait

We do a lot of waiting. In line at the coffee shop, in the lobby at the doctor’s office, to get through the TSA screening at the airport, for meetings to start, movies to start, for our kids to get home…

Sometimes I welcome the opportunity to wait. It gives me a chance to catch my breath, check in on my email and social media, read a few pages of my book, text my sons, daydream, or just take the time to reflect on my day. These trees remind me of that good waiting…patiently waiting in line, enjoying the sunshine and the view…

The worst kind of waiting is when you have to stay alert and attentive. When you’re waiting in traffic, about to board your flight, trying to be on time to that afternoon meeting and behind the person with 50 coupons in the grocery store… At those times you can’t turn your attention to something else and take advantage of waiting as down time.

My students do a lot of waiting too. They wait in line after recess for us to pick them up and walk back to class, they wait for directions, they wait for their classmates to take their turns ahead of them…

So I find myself thinking about good waiting and frustrating waiting…and wanting to make sure my students have time for reflection and to catch their breath. But not spend precious time spinning their wheels when they could be doing something more productive.

Today my students were amazing. They were about to embark on a sewing project (I’ll expand on that in another post) and needed to wait for supplies and wait for help with needle threading, knot tying… And yet, they were not frustrated. Instead I saw them watching carefully as they waited, making plans as they waited, and studying every move of someone nearby who started before them.

Attitude is everything. They were ready to wait today. They knew waiting was inevitable given the complexity and newness of the task ahead of us…and they waited with joy and anticipation. This is going to be a great project…my students demonstrated that today!

Wishing on the Moon

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We are having an unusually warm winter here in southern California. It was 75, sunny and dry on the coast today and the forecast is suggesting 81 for tomorrow! My students have gone back to their shorts and tank tops…and many are not even wearing sweatshirts when they arrive at school in the morning.

Our school garden is growing like crazy and trees and other plants think that spring has already arrived. Even though we see pictures of snow in other places, it’s hard to imagine that it is still winter.

It’s still getting dark early and the moon was making its presence known as the sun was setting around 5. Even knowing that my moon pictures never turn out very good, I headed out across the street to try a photo or two of the moon near the palm tree in my neighbor’s yard. With a bit of editing, I was able to produce this interesting moon photo.

And although warm weather is beautiful, I’m ready for some rain. We’re well below our already pitiful yearly ten inch rainfall total…and no water now will mean a real threat of devastating wildfires in the summer and fall, the scariest of our weather conditions!

So while I looked up at the moon tonight, I was wishing for rain. Is it true if you make a wish on the rising moon it will come true? Or is it just wishful thinking?

Window Views

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I’ve heard that saying that eyes are the windows to the soul…a way to look beyond the surface of a person into their thoughts and emotions, which got me thinking about windows.

From the outside, you can look through a window to see what is inside. But sometimes, when the light is right, what you see when you look through the window from the outside is a reflection of the sky and trees…like this.

It’s almost more of a mirror than a window. You don’t see through it, you see the world reflected back at you.

And other times when you look through a window you can see through one window and then back out another window…and catch a glimpse of what is on the other side.

It’s almost like looking beyond the present…into the future or maybe into the past.

But what about the shape of windows? How does that impact our view? These windows are long and thin, reducing the amount of light that enters and restricting the view. Was that an intentional goal of the windows in this applied physics and math building? Or is there some physics and math at work that impacts just how these windows work?

Looking through my photos also makes me realize just how much of my life is seen through the frame of a car window. How does this window affect my view? (This one is from the passenger seat…not the driver’s!) I was fascinated by the VW bus, the rusty roof, the retro license plate…

And we also look out through windows. Sometimes the view is pretty open, allowing a wide angle of view.

And other times there are barriers, restricting our vision and limiting what can be seen.

So are our eyes really like windows? Do they sometimes reflect, sometimes allow the viewer to see beyond, sometimes carefully frame or give a view influenced by your seat? What affects the way we see out? When are the curtains drawn wide open and when are the blinds restricting the view?

How do your windows influence your view of the world?

Silent Sunday: 1/12/14

Documenting Growth

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The garden metaphor is pretty common in education–you know, planting seeds and watching them germinate, grow, and eventually bloom. And as a teacher who keeps her students for three years, I really do get to plant some of those seeds, watch them germinate, grow…and bloom–sometimes a year or two after they are planted.

One of the families in our class gave each of us a mason jar planted with a narcissus paperwhite bulb for Christmas with a note on the lid telling us to be sure to take the top off and water. And since taking that top off three weeks ago, I’ve been watching that bulb. It began by stretching roots down, filling the jar with stringy white texture. And then green shoots began to emerge, quickly growing tall above the rim of the jar.

Earlier this week those tall shoots got taller than they had the strength to hold onto and bent over, startling me as I looked up and found the shoots looking down at me. My handy husband found some old chopsticks and propped the shoots back upright.

Close examination over the last week revealed buds, and I checked daily to see if they were ready to open. And today when I got home from my morning San Diego Area Writing Project Leadership Group meeting, I found that the blossom had opened. And of course I had to get my camera out and take some photos to document the growth and capture the beauty.

I’m loving this still life, an unedited photo taken with my iPhone. If you look closely you can see the blossom at the top and the one to the left that is getting ready to bloom. (You can even see the chopstick props if you really look closely!)

Of course I also wanted to lean in and capture the detail with my macro lens. The detail of the blossom is revealed by the magnification of the lens. This is another unedited photo.

And sometimes it’s nice to get a different view. In this shot I used the regular iPhone lens and then brought the image into Camera+ to crop and enhance. I like the effect and how it emphasizes how the shoot changes as it gets close to the blossom.

I’ve enjoyed documenting the growth of this bulb through my photography. It also has me thinking about how we document our students’ growth…and how they keep track of their own growth. We keep samples of students’ work and have them reflect on their own learning, encouraging them to notice, stretch, and build on what they have learned.

My photographs document my growth as a photographer. I can see how my composition has improved and as I examine my photos I make plans to try new techniques. I seek out mentors on other blogs and on other internet sites.

We plan to start our students blogging next week. We began blogging last year…figuring out how this might work with young students as we worked through each step of the way. We’ve let the blogs idle as we established our classroom community and let our first graders develop some fluency and confidence with writing.

As we get ready to restart our blogging, I want to think about student blogs as documentation of learning…as portfolios of growth over time. And I want to capture snapshots of their growth like I have with the paperwhites, documenting their progress and their process over time. Maybe the blogs will be like my camera lens…

Yellow, then and now

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If you asked me what my favorite color was when I was a kid, I would never answer with one color…my favorite color was orange, yellow, and green: the brilliant nearly neon tones of the 70’s. My bedroom sported lime green walls and the most amazing orange, yellow, and green polka-dotted vinyl wallpaper. My bedspread and curtains continued the theme with orange, yellow, and green stripes. And the final highlight were the nearly glow-in-the-dark posters that every adolescent of the time dreamed of.

But somewhere along the line I decided that orange and yellow were colors that didn’t suit me. I veered far from them when choosing clothes and wouldn’t consider them as decorating accents as an adult.

But when I saw that the Word a Week Photography Challenge was yellow this week, I realized that yellow (and orange) have reappeared in my life in new and different ways.

I’m particularly fond of this shot of the lagoon that features the yellow salty susan looking out to sea from the mouth of lagoon.

I enjoyed the reminiscing that this prompt allowed this week…and I wish I could put my hands on a photo that features that orange, yellow, and green polka-dot vinyl wallpaper of my 70’s childhood bedroom. And I’m enjoying my new relationship with yellow…a color that brightens the day and focuses energy.

What is your relationship with yellow? Do you have a color relationship that has changed over time?

Weekly Photo Challenge: My Place

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Some colleagues over at the National Writing Project iAnthology asked me if I would be willing to post weekly photo challenge prompts for their site. Personally, I enjoy weekly photo challenges and find that they also tend to prompt writing for me as well. I often participate in the weekly photo challenge at the Daily Post…I love that I have an entire week to figure out how to respond to the prompt, visually and/or in writing…and I love seeing the different ways that each prompt is interpreted.

So along with posting this challenge over at the iAnthology, I thought I would also post it here on my blog so others could participate. Here’s my first weekly photo challenge prompt:

Photography gives me the opportunity to explore the places I see everyday and come to know them in new ways. Sometimes I zoom in and discover the beauty of something I had walked by hundreds of times before or just pause and appreciate something I had otherwise taken for granted. Once in while, a change in the weather or other conditions paints my place and when I take the time to look through the lens, I see what on the surface seems to be an annoyance as an opportunity to reflect, learn, and appreciate another layer of my place.

Here’s a photo I recently took on a stormy day (a relatively rare occurrence) in my place. Rain makes the roads crazy (even just a light drizzle) and people grumpy, but taking photographs has encouraged me to seek out the beauty and wonder that stormy days have to offer.

Share a photo of your place…either the photo alone or do some writing inspired by the photo. And feel free to be inspired by the photos of others…and either write based on another’s photo or shoot another photograph of your place based on the inspiration of someone else’s photo.

If you also share on other social media (Twitter, Facebook, google+, Instagram), use the hashtag #myplace and include @nwpianthology to make it easy for us to find and enjoy! You can find me @kd0602. Be sure to share your media handles too!

And if you are reading this on my blog, feel free to share your photo/response by either linking your photo or your blog to the comment section below. I am excited to see “your place” through your lens!

Silent Sunday 1/5/14

Exploring, Lagoon Style

Beginnings

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New Year’s Day just passed and everyone is talking about beginnings and goals and thinking about the accomplishments of the year gone by. But somehow, January 1st seems like an arbitrary beginning to me. It’s just not the time when I am ready to take stock of the year and make plans for the new.

As an educator, January feels like the middle. In some ways we have just really gotten started on our learning this year. Everyone has settled in, we’ve figured out how to operate as a learning community, and with the holidays behind us we are ready to surge forward!

And then the Weekly Photo Challenge presented this week’s prompt–beginnings–and I started to think about how sometimes beginnings and endings are hard to distinguish. Kinda like the chicken and egg dilemma. Which comes first? Which is the beginning and which is the end?

In my pursuit of interesting photos today I found myself at the lagoon–that space where the ocean mingles with fresh water creating a complex environment teeming with life. It was nearly sunset when I arrived and the briny air was chilled by the gentle sea breezes as the impending fog bank rested off shore.

The tide was out, exposing the mud flats, presenting a banquet for the marsh loving birds.

Is this marsh the beginning of the ocean or the end of the river? Is sunset the end of the day or the beginning of the evening?

I’m not so sure it really matters that we have “hard” starts and stops, but it definitely matters that we take time to reflect, consider the experiences we have, and move forward with intention. I may not do this on January 1st (or December 31st), but I do take the time at regular intervals to consider my work and my life and make adjustments to its course.