Tag Archives: photography

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Here’s the week 4 Weekly Photo Challenge prompt for the NWP iAnthology! (Here are weeks 1, 2, 3, and 4 if you want to look back.)

Every year Pantone, a company that describes itself as the authority on color, selects a color of the year. This year’s color is radiant orchid (it’s a pinkish purple), last year’s was emerald. The color they select shows up in fashion, interior design, and other places that color matters.

I notice that I am drawn to certain colors in my photography. In the warm fall, I couldn’t resist the oranges and yellows of the sunset over the ocean. I took many, many photos trying to capture the intensity of color as the sun sunk into the sea.

And I love trying to capture the colors in flower petals. Using my macro lens, I got a close look at this orchid…and the beauty of the purples and the contrasting oranges.

So this week’s photo challenge is to explore color. What colors are calling to you? Do you have a color of the year like the Pantone company? Share a photo that represents your exploration of color. Post either the photo alone or along with writing inspired by the photo. I also invite you to use others’ photos as inspiration for your own writing and photography. I often use another photographer’s image as “mentor text” for my own photography, trying to capture some element in my own way.

I like to share my images and writing on social media…and I invite you to share yours widely too. (You might consider Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Google+) Use the hashtag #intersection and include @nwpianthology to make it easy for us to find and enjoy. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram @kd0602. I’d love to follow you if you share your handle.

You can also share your photos and writing by linking to this blog post or sharing in the comment section below. I am excited to see how you express color through your lens!

Clouds and Rain: Objects of Fascination

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It seems that we always yearn for what we don’t have. Around Christmas time I was fascinated by snow…I longed to try my hand at capturing a macro photo of a single snowflake. But I live in a place where it never snows…I didn’t see snow fall from the sky until I was well into adulthood and I have never had a white Christmas.

This last week some of my fellow photographers at the iAnthology have been posting pictures of snow and ice in response to the prompt, Playing with Light. One particular photo of an icicle lingers in my mind and I find myself wishing for an opportunity to photograph ice…and the play of light…for myself. And then my teaching partner emailed me a link to some photos created by a man on snowshoes…intricate, gorgeous designs…made by his intentional walk on snow. Oh…I know a trip to somewhere cold is in my future!

But I live in Southern CA…in a place where we are having a drought and unseasonably warm winter temperatures. More people are wearing shorts and flip flops than sweatshirts and Uggs…and umbrellas have been stashed or lost or are coated in the dust and grime caused by lack of use.

The last couple of days have teased us with hopes of rain. The air is moist and fog has been rolling in along the coast in the mornings and evenings. And yesterday we had some hints of rain…that misty mess that muddies the windshield but doesn’t produce any measurable precipitation.

I awoke this morning wondering if it had rained overnight. The app on my phone said no…and gave no suggestion of rain for the day. But as I was dressing for no rain, planning to wear the kind of shoes you wouldn’t choose on a rainy day, my husband came upstairs to announce that it was, in fact, raining!

I rethought my wardrobe for the day, choosing my boots instead of my Toms, and headed out the door. For those of you who live where rain is common, you would probably laugh that we were considering this rain at all. But the first objects that caught my eye as I walked out the door were the poinsettias near the front door. They were glistening with drops of rain. I immediately pulled out my phone and began to photograph the droplets glistening on the bracts.

I love the way the black and white photo draws attention to the precious drops–something we see so rarely these days.

Honestly, this “rainy day” turned out to be not so rainy after all. I would be surprised if we even measure a quarter inch of rainfall in the county. But as I left work today, I found myself drawn to the clouds. In some directions the clouds were white and wispy, sitting in a backdrop of blue. In others, they gathered in tall white towers…and in others, gray and black framed the edges.

I was compelled to drive towards the clouds on my way home…and pulled off to the side of the road to attempt to capture the complexity of the clouds with my phone’s camera. The clouds became the object of my fascination and I took shot after shot, trying different angles to take advantage of the varieties of light available.

I don’t think I am done with clouds yet. And I hope the clouds are not done with us yet either. We desperately need some rain, although the forecast doesn’t look promising.

What is the object of fascination for you right now? Is it something within reach…or are you yearning for something you don’t have? I’d love to know more about your object!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Intersections

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Here’s the week 4 Weekly Photo Challenge prompt for the NWP iAnthology! (Here are weeks 1, 2, and 3 if you want to look back.)

I love the ways different aspects of my life intersect, crisscrossing and overlapping in unexpected ways. The word intersection can have a literal meaning, as I visualize the crossing of roads or the beams of a bridge.

Or it can have a more conceptual meaning as ideas “bump into” each other and create new opportunities for understanding and learning. They can be surprising meetings…like this image of the past intersecting with the present in my photo of the mammoth with the modern skyscraper in the background.

So this week’s photo challenge is to explore the idea of intersection. Share a photo that represents intersection in some way for you. Post either the photo alone or along with writing inspired by the photo. I also invite you to use others’ photos as inspiration for your own writing and photography. I often use another photographer’s image as “mentor text” for my own photography, trying to capture some element in my own way.

You can also share your photos and writing by linking to this blog post or sharing in the comment section below. I am excited to see how you interpret intersection in your photos!

I look forward to seeing all the intersections in your life!

Love to Play: February’s Photo-a-Day Challenge

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Since making play my word for the year, I find myself looking for opportunities to incorporate more play in the ordinariness of my everyday life. How can I be more playful on my commute to work? How can vacuuming and doing the dishes be more like play? How can grant writing and lesson planning play with ideas I’ve always wanted to try?

So, playing around with the theme of love in honor of Valentine’s Day, (right smack in the middle of February), let’s put some love into playing with some photography techniques! (Thanks, Janis, for the suggestion!)

So for February’s #sdawpphotovoices photo-a-day challenge, we’ll focus on a different aspect of photography each week.

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. If you are game for some more playfulness, compose a blog post about a photo, a week’s worth of photos, write a photo essay, make a video or slideshow or try a learning walk! (More about learning walks here and here) 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!

Week 1: Playing with Composition

1. Simplify the scene—move in closer to remove distracting details

2. Rule of thirds (or simply avoid the middle)–what happens when you frame your subject off center?

3. Use leading lines—frame your shot by letting the natural lines (fences, roads, walls…) direct the viewer’s eye

4. Use diagonals—shift the angle, tilt your camera…

5. Check your background—what’s behind your subject? Experiment with finding a background that works with your subject

6. Fill the frame—zoom in or step closer to fill the frame with your subject

7. Break the rules—experiment with your own compositional style

Leading lines

Week 2: Playing with Light

8. Shoot into the light to create a silhouette

9. Capture a shadow

10. Find the light in a dark setting

11. Make light the centerpiece of the photo

12. Experiment with light and dark in one photo

13. Include a reflection (water is useful here!)

14. Try something new with light (either natural light or some other light source)

Reflection

Week 3: Playing with Perspective

15. Get low

16. Shoot from above

17. Create an optical illusion

18. Play with negative space

19. Get close

20. Try a wide angle effect

21. What other perspective have you tried?

Looking Up

Week 4: Playing with Genre

22. Architecture

23. Black and White

24. Children

25. Landscape

26. Macro

27. Nature

28. Street photography

Architecture

Our goal is to play, share with each other, and learn from each other as we shoot our own photos and study the photos others shoot. Each week includes seven suggestions for exploring the technique. You are welcome to follow them in order, mix them up, or exchange them for a technique you want to try on. You can post every day, once a week, or even sporadically throughout the month…whatever works in your life. Be sure to share and tag your photos with #sdawpphotovoices so we can find them!

Exploring: A Family Trait

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Yesterday’s holiday offered me the opportunity to do some exploring…with my son. Now that my children are grown, married, and living in cities away from me, I treasure the time we get to spend together in any configurations of our family.

So yesterday morning, with a day off from work, I got into my car and headed up the freeway to Los Angeles to spend the day exploring with my son. In many ways, he is my inspiration for taking photographs. He has fancy cameras and takes amazing photos. I use my phone and continue to learn. And he is quite the cheerleader for my growing skills and like me, enjoys looking for interesting photo opportunities.

Los Angeles has its downside: most notably, traffic! But it is rich in interesting history, eclectic neighborhoods, memorable landmarks, and famous people along with a beautiful natural environment. So after an amazingly quick commute in light traffic from my home to his, we set off for a day of exploring and picture taking.

We spent the morning at the La Brea Tar Pits (can you believe neither of us had even been…even though we both grew up in Southern CA?), the Page Museum, and the sculpture gardens at LACMA. Then after lunch, we decided to drive the surface streets of the greater Hollywood area as we ventured off to find the Ennis House, one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural gems. (More about that later this week!)

And in the process of driving up the narrow, winding streets of the hillside above the greater LA area, we found so much more than Frank Lloyd Wright’s treasure.

We found a place to park on the steep streets of an obviously exclusive neighborhood and set off on foot with lenses in hand. As we walked, I found myself searching for a space where I could see the view beyond us. I did sneak this view through the opening in a fence.

But I wanted more. A side road beckoned with what looked like ruins of some sort. A closer look revealed stairs leading to a door…to something that is no longer there.

But when I turned around…the view I was looking for revealed itself! I’ve written before at how hard it is to capture distant landscapes with my iPhone (but it never keeps me from trying!). With a little help from post production, I did manage to create a photo that gives a glimpse of what I was able to see!

I love that I could see the Los Angeles skyline in the distance. And you can see what a beautiful sunny day we were experiencing (it was easily 80 degrees at its peak).

And best of all, Nick and I had a wonderful day together exploring his city through our lenses. The fun thing is that we don’t have to do something “special,” just spending time exploring and talking and being together was enough. I can’t wait to see all the photos he took…and you’ll get to see some of the other photos I took later this week.

What traits do you share in your family? How do you enjoy spending time together?

Weekly Photo Challenge: Frames

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Here’s the week 2 Weekly Photo Challenge prompt for the NWP iAnthology. You can look back at week one here.

I take and post a picture every day, and have for over a year and half now. Sometimes I find myself taking the same photo over and over again. Somehow I stand in the same place and use the same angle…and the photos begin to look the same.

So to keep myself from falling into this familiarity rut, I try different photography techniques. One I have done some experimenting with is using the natural frames I find in the environment when I am shooting pictures.

Here’s a couple of my examples. One of my favorites is this view of the ocean through the pier. I took several other shots, but I love the way this one is like a door opening, framing the sea.

Here is a playful one I took during my morning playground duty using the playground equipment as the frame.

And here’s one of a window–that includes the window frame as a frame itself.

Share a photo of a frame you have found…post 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 a frame based on the inspiration of someone else’s photo.

If you also share on other social media (Twitter, Facebook, google+, Instagram), use the hashtag #frames 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 the frames you have explored through your lens!

While We Wait

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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?

Thinking Through My Lens