Tag Archives: photography

Weekly Photo Challenge: Motion

Weekly Photo Challenge: Found

Just this morning one of my students found me just as I was heading out for recess duty… “Do you want to see a really big spider?” How could I resist that invitation? As she led me around the corner from our classroom, this is what we found!

I’m not a big spider fan, but I do appreciate the wonderful striped legs…and couldn’t resist getting close enough for a picture!

I also had my camera (phone) out yesterday at school documenting our student readers at work. There is something just so precious and powerful about finding a first grade reader engaged and hard at work.

I make lots of finds on the beach. This week I’ve been fortunate that low tide (and beautiful, warm weather) has corresponded with the time I have left work, offering me a wonderful opportunity for some beach walks before heading home. Yesterday I heard this urgent high pitched sound and then found these birds, seemingly engaged in quite a conversation (or perhaps a bird argument)!

As I was heading up the stairs toward the parking lot, I found this hat and sunglasses perched on the railing. It was fun to play with some editing tools to create an interesting effect…and a burst of light where the sun played with the water.

Over the weekend, as my husband and I walked we engaged in two favorite beach walking activities…searching for beach glass (not easy to find) and being litterati: finding trash, photographing it, and disposing of it (unfortunately, way too easy!). We did find this beauty of a piece of light green glass…

and this mylar balloon bouncing along the shore. We collected the glass and disposed of the balloon, both making the beach a little bit cleaner and the sea animals a little bit safer.

And sometimes my best photos come from things I find around the house. One of my student’s parents brought these pomegranates for us from their tree. I had tucked them into my refrigerator for my hubby to use in one of his recipes…until I was thinking about fall and realized they would make a great still life photo. I love the way the light comes into my dining room in the afternoon, washing the table in warm light. Here’s my little bit of fall find.

So what will you find that catches your eye…and your lens…this week? Will you stumble over it, be led to it by a student or child, pull it from the refrigerator, or find it on an outing?

I share my photography and writing on social media. You can find me on Instagram and Twitter using @kd0602. If you share your photos and writing on social media too, please let me know so I can follow and see what you are doing. To help our Weekly Photo community find each other, use the hashtag #found for this week and include @nwpianthology in your post.

What have you found lately? I can’t wait to see what you find through your lens!

A Day for the Unexpected

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I started my morning with an unexpected email from a former student…checking in, updating us on the new school year, and letting us know that she misses us. And she reminded me that she had a couple of blog posts pending and would I please publish them. (Her blog is still connected to my class since we haven’t started blogging yet this year in our class and her class hasn’t started blogging yet either.)

Last month she started celebrating a “person of the month”…her aunt was her person of the month for August. Imagine my surprise when I found this afternoon that I was featured on Mallory’s blog as her September Person of the Month. Here is a glimpse of the post:

Mrs. Douillard was very supportive of my writing career, yes I am very interested in being an author, she encouraged creative thinking and when someone said they were “done” she said you could always make things better! She taught me many different writing styles, and introduced me to blogging.

It is amazing to be celebrated publicly by a student for inspiring and encouraging her as a writer. This unexpected honor touches my heart and reminds me that the work of teachers is often not realized in the moment, it unfolds over time, often in unexpected ways.

The end of the post celebrates teachers and urges teachers to “take a day off and relax at the beach…” By coincidence, I did stop by the beach after work today. It’s been oppressively hot here in normally moderate San Diego, and with no air conditioning in my classroom, sweat has become part of my fashion statement! So to cool off, I headed to the beach to dip my toes in the waves. When I pulled up I noticed the large waves caused by the hurricane off the coast of Mexico and the towering white clouds in the sky…not just over the mountains, but more to the west and north than usual. Of course I had to capture some pictures of the waves…although they don’t begin to capture the size and power I watched.

As I cooled my feet along the edge of the water with my sandals in my hand, still dressed in my work clothes (a skirt and top), a rogue wave surged and drenched me nearly to the waist! (Definitely cooled me off!) I chuckled to myself as I walked back to my car and searched for a grocery bag to sit on as I drove home!

Thanks Mallory, for the honor of being named Person of the Month for September…and for encouraging teachers to “take a day off and relax at the beach.” You definitely made my day today!

Food Truck Adventure

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I’m not much of a foodie…and that certainly won’t surprise anyone who knows me. But tonight we decided to have an adventure of sorts…and chase down a food truck. My husband has been following the Pierogi Truck on Twitter, desperately wanting to relive a childhood taste memory of eating pierogis–a Polish dish that his mom made when he was a kid. These dumpling-like creations are not easy to find…and honestly, I haven’t expressed much interest in eating them.

So tonight, with the Pierogi Truck not too far from our neighborhood, we decided to take this taste adventure. Parked in a business park near a brewery, the purple truck was waiting. We walked up and were greeted by the two women who worked the truck and Geoff immediately engaged in a conversation about the Polish foods of his childhood.

So I had my first taste of pierogis tonight, a potato and cheese dumpling served with a sour cream or yogurt sauce on the side. They were pretty tasty…with a beer from from Iron Fist brewery on the side.

Geoff went for the sampler plate with an assortment of Polish delicacies…pierogis and Polish sausage and more.

The food was good and the adventure was better. It was fun to go out and do something out of the ordinary, to wander into a warehouse and sip a cold beer, watch some arm wrestling, pet some dogs, and do a bit of people watching.

And even though pierogis will not likely ever be my favorite food, it was fun to taste them, and to watch my husband savor the flavors he’d been remembering and imagining for so long. It was quite an adventure to head out on a Friday evening in search of a food truck. We’re already talking about other food truck possibilities… Who knows where our next adventure will take us!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Silhouettes

Weekly Photo Challenge: Action

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School started this week for me…and now my world is full of action. Five, six, seven and eight year olds bring energy and action to everything…even sitting still! (If you can call it still.) And with just three school days under our belts, we are busy making, thinking, talking, reading, computing, planning, performing, and writing. Here’s a tiny glimpse of a student actively writing and drawing.

And while this picture is not at my school or one of my students, I am fascinated by watching children seriously engaged in learning and play. (And those terms are mostly synonymous when it comes to kids!) I love the earnestness of this child at play building.

Over the weekend I spent some time on the beach. It’s been hot here (for the coast, anyway), and there is lots of action on the beach as people try to stay cool. Here’s a shot of a sandpiper in flight. I was lucky enough to snap just as he took to the air.

I also came across this family at play…using a piece of kelp as a jump rope. It was fun to watch them take turns turning and jumping and encouraging each child to try jumping in. Kelp is pretty amazing stuff!

The end of summer is also the perfect time for grilling food outdoors, especially since we don’t have air conditioning. I’m lucky…my husband is both a great cook and great at grilling!

And I love that action doesn’t have to involve people or animals. There is lots of action in nature. I was excited when I noticed that I captured this wave in action as it crashed against the rocks.

So this is the week to look for the action in your life…whether you find it in shots of people, animals, machines, nature…or something else.

I share my photography and writing on social media. You can find me on Instagram and Twitter using @kd0602. If you share your photos and writing on social media too, please let me know so I can follow and see what you are doing. To help our Weekly Photo community find each other, use the hashtag #action for this week and include @nwpianthology in your post.

Where will you find action? I can’t wait to find out!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Play

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Unofficially summer is over for me tomorrow…I head back to work to prepare for the new school year. I’m not dreading going back–I’m lucky, I love my work. But I do want to be reminded to continue to include play in my life, even when I am working.

Sometimes play is as simple as taking a photo of my cat and then messing with it in a photo app…like this one of Phil. The intensity of his look in this photo just cracks me up…looks like he is saying, “How dare you…”

It’s also fun to play around with the framing of shots like this one using the prickly pear as a way to frame Lake Hodges in the background.

There’s other kinds of framing that is fun to play around with too. And sometimes it’s designers that create playful features like this one at the Huntington gardens where you can walk behind the waterfall…what a perfect opportunity to take a photo of the backside of water!

Other features like this decorative opening in a wall became a playful way of looking at the gardens beyond.

And then there is play beyond the camera too. Visiting my son and daughter-in-law meant the opportunity to spend some time playing with their little dog Elli. She’s a cute long-haired chihuahua and she loves to play! She likes to sneak some licks, bring her toys, race around the room… And of course, she is adorable!

And sometimes I like to play with my little magnetic lenses. Today I had the fisheye lens out…one I don’t use too often. I wanted to capture the flowering of the tree in my driveway. Here’s the fisheye version.

So this week’s challenge is to do some playing…with your photography or without photography…and then document it with a photo.

I share my photography and writing on social media. You can find me on Instagram and Twitter using @kd0602. If you share your photos and writing on social media too, please let me know so I can follow and see what you are doing. To help our Weekly Photo community find each other, use the hashtag #play for this week and include @nwpianthology in your post.

Be sure to squeeze some play time into these last few weeks of summer! Can’t wait to see what you are playing around with!

Citizen Scientists: Researchers in the Wild

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This morning someone shared an article about kids as citizen scientist researchers–observing and documenting ladybugs in their place, and learning about research and data in the process. I love engaging students in real work as part of the learning process…and teaching them that all of us, as part of our daily lives, can and should continue to learn every day.

On our rain hike in Yellowstone the other day I got to look closely at the environment around me, noticing details and appreciating the beauty. Our destination was this natural bridge, a work of nature that I’m sure informed the first people who saw it.

And as we walked away from the bridge back toward the car, I noticed bubbles in the puddles as we passed. I was sure I was noticing something in the bubbles…and stopped to watch. It seemed that with the rain drops, a bubble would form with a white insect in it–magnifying the image of the bug–and then pop after it floated a ways.

I had to look closer…what were these creatures? And why do they form these bubbles? Do they only come out in the rain? Are they native to this forested area in Yellowstone?

I haven’t yet found out what these insects (I think they are insects) are…but I am curious to know more about them. I’m hoping that someone will know something more and lead me to some research to answer my questions. Here is a close up view…

There are so many interesting things to learn about when you take the time to notice. As I start to prepare for the beginning of school, I’m thinking about ways to support and encourage my students to pay attention the world around them and then to document and further research the questions that interest them. I’ll also be on the lookout for citizen scientist projects in my area (and would love any information you might have)…what a great way to engage students as researchers!

And if you happen to know anything about these bugs in the bubbles…I’d love some leads!

Weekly Photo Challenge: People

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I recently read an article in Wired magazine about Instagram photographer Daniel Arnold. He is an iphoneographer like I am, only he focuses exclusively on photos of people–mostly in urban spaces. I usually take pictures of things, with special attention to natural beauty. But this week I have been focusing on photographs of people–most of whom I don’t know. I experimented with taking photos that feature people on Monday with my post, Beach People.

Here’s one of a group of Junior Lifeguards that I also saw on Monday at the beach. I was attracted to their yellow rash guards…and that they were sitting in rows facing the surf.

It was hard taking photos of people at first…and most of my photos were too far away to capture what was fascinating about the people in the photo. I don’t want to be intrusive or make people feel uncomfortable…but I am starting to come closer. And there are so many interesting people in the world!

I’ve been in Montana this week, doing work at the Intersection of science and literacy. At the SpectrUM Discovery Area in Missoula we had the opportunity to explore, write, and get reacquainted with colleagues from across the nation–and try out some cool science too! And who can resist taking a picture of a big guy in a super small chair?

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, the Clark Fork River flows right in the middle of Missoula. And people with inner tubes, that the locals call floaters, seem to be everywhere. They make their way upriver, get into the water on their tubes and float down the river. Once down, they get out of the water, pick up the tubes and head through town back toward their cars.

There’s also lots of bike riders and dog walkers, even during the heat of the day. Outdoors are clearly important here! (And I can see why!)

Last night we hiked our way up the giant M on the side of the mountain overlooking the university. It’s not a long climb, but it is quite steep and there is steady stream of hikers making their way up the switchbacks to this local sight. Once there the M is huge…too big to fit in the photo frame, and a bit slick to climb on.

But you can sit along the edge, catch your breath, check out the map of the university, and take in the gorgeous sunset from this spectacular vantage place.

So this week’s challenge is to take pictures of people. They can be people you know, or you can try your hand at capturing photos of people who pique your interest as you go about your daily life.

I share my photography and writing on social media. You can find me on Instagram and Twitter using @kd0602. If you share your photos and writing on social media too, please let me know so I can follow and see what you are doing. To help our Weekly Photo community find each other, use the hashtag #people for this week and include @nwpianthology in your post.

There are so many interesting people in the world when we pause to watch and notice. Who will you take the time to photograph this week?

Water on the Brain

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Water: beautiful, powerful, moving, treacherous, life-giving, flowing through our veins, through earth’s veins, taken for granted, precious, tenuous, unpredictable, limited, overflowing…

I feel like I have water on the brain. I woke this morning to images of water flowing–a water main break in Los Angeles had me gasping at the waste of a precious resource. Our drought in Southern California–in CA as a whole (and other western states)–is so severe that I feel the constant of thirst, in my throat, in my heart, for our plants and animals, for our people. Reservoirs and lakes have shrunken to show thick exposed shorelines, creeks are but a distant memory of a trickle. And the flooding in Colorado has me wishing we could share in this bounty rather than experience the extremes of water.

Floods, like their cousins wildfires, remind us that there is much we do not and cannot control.

I spent time today on the banks of the Clark Fork River in Missoula, MT learning and thinking about the indigenous stories of this place. The beauty of the river masks its troubled history and ancient lineage. Indigenous and scientific knowledge swim in these waters that tourists may see as a playground, a place for floating on inner tubes and cooling off in the 90 degree temperatures.

Inspired by the water, I wrote with others as part of a mini writing marathon at our Intersections meeting today. The writing was rich and layered with stories of experiences with water…or no water. And changing the lens…through the indigenous stories and science…prompted our memories and connections, letting the stories pour like the water itself.

Like water, there is power in writing. Power to connect, to heal, to think and reflect. We sometimes forget that writing in unexpected places, creates new urgency and agency for our writing. So go outside, find a place by a river, on the curb, under a tree, or even sit on the car bumper and see what writing comes when you change your lens.