Tag Archives: photography

Window Views

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…

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!

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.

And sometimes I just take the time to pause and appreciate the moment. Maybe that, too, is a beginning.

Taking Action in 2014: January’s Photo-a-Day Challenge

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Happy New Year! The New Year is typically a time for resolutions and goals—generally aimed at improving your health or your life. Unfortunately, they are also easily abandoned and left unrealized. So maybe instead of focusing on weight loss or exercise or one of those other hard to realize goals, we can take some inspiration from Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday we celebrate this month, and focus on action each day instead.

So for January we have a list of verbs…one for each letter of the alphabet and five more thrown in…to inspire action through photography. As always, you are welcome to interpret the prompts in whatever way inspires your creativity and pushes your photographic eye. Maybe the action is captured by the photograph. Or maybe the verb reflects the actions you use to prepare your photo—with filters and editing, camera lenses or photographic techniques. This might be the month to explore light and shadow, the rule of thirds, and a variety of angles. (Let us know if you’ve tried a specific technique so we can all learn from you!)

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 extra action, compose a blog post about a photo, a week’s worth of photos, write a photo essay, 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!

Here’s the list:

1. analyze

2. build

3. create

4. climb

5. dash

6. examine

7. focus

8. generate

9. help

10. innovate

11. jumble

12. kick

13. lick

14. mentor

15. make

16. nudge

17. organize

18. peek

19. program

20. question

21. resolve

22. renovate

23. submit

24. teach

25. understand

26. utilize

27. vouch

28. write

29. eXamine

30. yearn

31. zip

Let’s make an impact in 2014! Have fun, be creative, explore the limits of your photography…January is the perfect time to follow through with what you have been meaning to do for a while. 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!

And here’s a photo to inspire you to get started!

The Joy of the Unexpected

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As a photographer I am attracted to things I find beautiful…interesting shapes, saturated colors, cute furry animals, sweet children. But today was different.

Using my macro lens, I was taking photos of a paperwhite bulb that is beginning to emerge, capturing the brilliant green shoots emerging from the jar.

But I wasn’t done exploring with my lens. I noticed the orchid in the kitchen window still hanging onto the dried blossoms. I should probably pull off these dead remnants, but instead I aimed my macro lens and captured a beautiful image of the dried and withered petals.

I headed outside into the unusually warm December morning, still looking for opportunities to get close. I noticed this dried blossom on the hedge and leaned in.

Then I noticed the old wires on the part of the sprinkler system that has been disabled. There’s a certain elegant beauty to the turquoise plastic revealing the coppery wire within.

I headed around the corner toward the hibiscus plant. It has tiny shoots of green emerging along with dried remains of previous flowers.

And I have a love/hate relationship with spider webs. They can be elegantly beautiful like delicate lace, especially when they capture drops of dew or rain. And they can be a messy nuisance. But when you look closely, you can see past the mess and notice the intricacies of design and the way the sunlight plays with the thin strands.

I found myself looking for things I would otherwise think of as ugly as I photographed with my macro lens this morning…and I found unexpected beauty and experienced the joy of discovery in my re-seeing.

All of these unedited photos are yet another reminder that there is plenty of beauty to find in our world if we take the time to look past the obvious and consider perspectives beyond what is conventionally accepted.

Where do you find beauty? Do you find joy in the unexpected?

Exploring My Community

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When people think of the beach, first thoughts usually go to sunny days, warm sand, and frothy waves crashing on the shore.

And for those of us who live in the beach community and see the ocean in all its glory every day, it can be easy to take this natural beauty for granted.

As I work to grow my photographic eye, I have been paying attention to conditions that will produce photos that are different than those I have taken before.

Today was a rainy day with a dark sky filled with ominous clouds. Sun broke through periodically…and as I was driving through rush hour traffic to an appointment this afternoon, I decided to stop by the beach to see if I could capture the ocean against the dark sky.

Traffic was worse than usual–a typical side effect of rain in our community–and I missed many beautiful photo opportunities as I drove through the heavy traffic towards my destination (and convenient parking). When I did park, I wanted to capture darkness…with the light peeking through.

This is an unedited photo as the sun was sinking behind the thick clouds. You can see the gray rain clouds above…and the spot of clearing lighting up the sea.

As I was enjoying the dusky beach, I noticed what appeared to be a bride in the distance at the water’s edge. iPhone photography is not great for distance shots…but I shot anyway, hoping to capture a glimpse of the bride (and her groom) in the distance. I used Camera+ to crop the photo and the clarify filter to bring the bride into view.

It’s a bit pixilated…but I kind of like the effect. (Can you spot the bride in the distance?)

And after I stopped for a cup of coffee (a favorite evening habit), I noticed these palm trees against the darkening sky. I stopped in the parking lot, set my coffee down on the ground and snapped this view.

This is another unedited photo. I love the way the wet roads reflect the street lights and traffic lights and the palms stand tall, an iconic beach symbol.

Paying attention to the nuances of this beach community where I live helps me to appreciate its unique qualities in deeper and more thoughtful ways.

What nuances make your community home for you?

Frosty Beauty

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White crystalline structures, both fragile and surprisingly strong, appeared this morning on the lawns and cars in my neighborhood.

All too often frost is just another annoyance…evidence of cold weather and the need to either scrape the windshield or wait for the defroster to gain enough traction to melt it so I can see through the windshield to drive off to work.

But this morning, when I heard there was frost on the cars, I put the macro lens on my phone, grabbed my jacket and headed outside…before even taking time for breakfast or coffee.

And I was rewarded by the intricate lacy beauty of this micro winter wonderland.

When viewed through my macro lens, those ordinary blades of grass were transformed.

This stray leaf blossomed with delicate white crystals of ice. I was afraid to breathe too heavily for fear of melting these structures before I could capture them through my lens.

The frozen moisture seems to grow, creating intricate pathways of texture extending over the roof of the car. It seemed to stay colder there longer than along the sides. I’m sure the neighbors thought I was crazy as I crawled along the lawn photographing blades of grass and peered along the top of my car examining the patterns of frost in the crisp, cooler-than-usual morning air.

But for me, I rediscovered my sense of wonder and curiosity as I worked intently to find and capture this minute beauty.

My macro lens has reminded me once again to take the time to look closely and appreciate the beauty in those things that seem uninteresting or annoying on the surface.

I didn’t get to work quite as early as I usually do this morning, but I had the perfect start to my day…just by looking a bit more closely.