Tag Archives: sdawpphotovoices

Lessons Repetition Taught

This week’s focus on repetition for #sdawpphotovoices took me in some unexpected directions. For four days this week I took a picture of a mushroom growing in my yard. I noticed it first on Tuesday when I got home from the first day of school. On Wednesday when I got home it seemed significantly larger and rounder, so I had to take another picture. On Thursday I was looking forward to seeing the change when I got home…and no disappointment…I was wondering if it would pop! But Friday morning it was evident that someone had kicked the mushroom. I found it across the yard, upside down–which presented yet another photo opportunity and learning opportunity! I could see that what looked like a round mushroom was actually more like a rounded umbrella covering the stem from view. Here’s a few views of my mushroom.

Mushroom three days in a row

Mushroom through a macro lens

The #scaly inside of a mushroom.

The repetition of taking a photo of the same thing day after day had me paying close attention and asking myself questions to expand what I already knew. I love that photos help me learn!

The focus on repetition also provoked me to drive to work using a variety of routes. (More about that here) I didn’t want to take pictures that I had already taken, so I varied my route and looked for interesting photo options. I rediscovered the value of exploring, even when it is as simple as taking an extra five minutes on the way to work to stop and take a photo or two.

So…among the lessons learned this week through my photography are both to look again and again and again–there is value in repetition–and to change things up, look for variety, and be sure to take a few minutes each day to do something you enjoy simply because you enjoy it.

What does photography teach you?

Noticing Texture: September’s Photo-a-Day Invitation

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September arrives on our doorstep tomorrow and announces the unofficial end of summer. There’s something about the way Sssss roll off the tongue that suggests a texture that you can feel if you pay enough attention. This month, for the September photo-a-day challenge, you are invited to notice texture in your world and capture it in photographs. There are no rules–you are in charge in determining whether your photo fits the category!

The #scaly inside of a mushroom.

Take a picture each day that captures the spirit and feeling of the texture and post it to Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or Flickr using the hashtag #sdawpphotovoices. (You can post anywhere—if you want others to be able to follow your photos, Instagram and Twitter are best!) For more information about posting click here. At the end of each week let’s add an additional challenge: curate your pictures from the week and select one to highlight. You might post it on your blog along with some musings about why you selected it. If you don’t have a blog of your own, you have a couple of choices—you can create a blog (be sure to share it with us by including your blog address in the comments here—or better yet, tweet it using the hashtag #sdawpphotovoices) or you can post to the SDAWP Voices blog.

September 1-8: smooth

September 8 or 9: reflect on your week and share your thinking and picture (or collage) on the link up

September 9-15: scratchy

September 15 or 16: reflect on your week and share your thinking and picture (or collage) on the link up

September 16-22: scaly

September 22 or 23: reflect on your week and share your thinking and picture (or collage) on the link up

September 23-30: silky

September 30: reflect on your week and share your thinking and picture (or collage) on the link up

As an extra invitation, at the end of the month, pick your five favorites to inspire a bit of writing or art or something else you want to make. Be sure to share your creativity and what you discover through the process.

What will you find to photograph as you explore the texture in your world? Join us…for a day, a week, or the entire month!

Learning from Patterns

Nature’s Friday Gift

Pattern Walk

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Being back in my classroom preparing for my students’ arrival next week has taken much of my time, attention, and energy this week. It’s already Thursday and I haven’t really given much effort to finding patterns for my photo-a-day challenge. (#sdawpphotovoices) So today I was intentional about looking for patterns and taking some photos.

I started the morning by finding that Margit had put up a beautifully patterned backdrop on the classroom wall in anticipation of some student work that will be created next week. I love the colors and textures of the paper…and this is just a snippet of the larger wall.

As I headed to the other school for a morning of inservice, this odd assortment of chairs was sitting outside in front of a pattern of wall tiles. I like the slightly shuffled look of the chairs. And it’s funny, because when I came out three hours later the chairs were neatly ordered…a pattern I didn’t capture with my camera.

Coming back to my school I noticed this bike rack in front of the office. I was intrigued by the shadows on the right hand side, adding another dimension to the pattern.

When I left school this afternoon I ended up with a short window of time to myself. I stopped by Starbucks for an afternoon coffee and took a wonderful learning walk around the area. I was surprised by all the patterns I found. These four were all around a local restaurant. Textures, shadows, colors, and peek-a-boos all caught my eye!

I haven’t really thought about the way that looking for photo opportunities and framing interesting shots both feeds and relaxes me. My short five-minute walk and photography session was a boost to my feeling of well-being and energy level. I need to remember to find these windows of time–even when I am busy. Hours later I still feel refreshed by my afternoon pattern walk!

A Week of #Angles

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My daily blog post is most often the result of a percolation of ideas throughout the day…written toward the end of the day. Today I knew I would be writing about my week of focusing on angles –this week’s #sdawpphotovoices topic. My morning began. as it often does on Sunday, with some time reading articles on Twitter. Today’s @brainpicker post was about a book called On Looking: Eleven Walks With Expert Eyes by Alexandra Horowitz.

As I read the review of the book I found myself thinking about how photo-a-day has impacted the way I look and what I see as I go about my daily life. And then I saw Janis’s post today on SDAWP Voices as she reflected on her week–and she was saying similar things about her experience (and she had also read the same post by @brainpicker this morning!). This book focuses on the ways a different lens opens up an entirely different experience of the place. When you walk with a toddler and pay attention to how that toddler pays attention, you see a different place than the familiar routine you are used to. What does your dog see? How about an entomologist?

Back to angles…this week’s photo-a-day focus. I took a lot of pictures this week, from a variety of angles, of a variety of angles…angles were everywhere! Some of my favorite pictures of the week I never did post on Instagram. But because I am writing every day to post to this blog, my pictures also become a stimulus for my writing and my thinking.

I love this picture of the lone fisherman with his pole angled in the surf. I don’t often take pictures of people–it feels awkward to photograph people I don’t know…and I didn’t want him to pose. Instead I took the picture from a distance, knowing I would lose the details of his face. The bonus is the reflection! I can see writing a story with this photo as the prompt…I think the story is already beginning to take shape for me.

This angry bird kite was roosting in the tree above the beach. Its angles had it caught pretty securely in the intertwining branches…in fact I saw it again several days later on a walk later in the week. I love the play on words and images of the bird kite in the tree.

Shell fragments are common on the beach, but coming across an entire shell–especially one still connected and angled like this is a rare occurrence. If you look closely you can see the strand of sea grass lying in the background. I wonder if a seagull got this tasty morsel!

Coming down the ramp from the parking lot, I got to see these wonderful flat and yet angled rooftops of the new concession stand and bathrooms. I love the way that architecture can take straight lines and create unexpected angles by the way they are placed in relation to each other.

Tomorrow I will shift my focus from angles to patterns. Added to my photography focus and blogging focus, I will also be thinking about all the other ways I might see the world through the lens of a child, or an architect, a scientist, or an artist. I’ll also try “seeing” the world through my other senses–how does what I hear impact what I see? What about smell, taste, and touch?

What have you failed to notice? How can you shift your attention to see more of your world?

Collecting Sandcastles

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I started a sandcastle collection. On my beach walks this summer, I have stopped to take photos of sandcastles abandoned by their builders, left for passers-by to admire and the surf to eventually reclaim. Here’s a few of my treasures.

Yesterday I also caught a few sand mounds that seem to be a variation on the castle theme. They weren’t fancy or decorated, but each included a canal from the top down to the bottom extending some distance away from the mound toward the water’s edge.

I’ve seen people of all ages building sandcastles. Kids build them in groups, teenagers build them with their friends, and adults build them–with or without their kids helping out. Some people use elaborate equipment: shovels and pails and molds. Some decorate their castles with shells and rocks and driftwood pieces. Some use the dribble effect, others are smooth leaving the imprint of the buckets packed with sand.

The picture I didn’t capture was the one of the three or four year old, outfitted in his tiny life vest and swim trunks, picking up handfuls of squishy sand and dribbling it onto a castle already substantially built. He was the image of #carefree…totally immersed in his world of sandcastle building.

This has been a summer of digital making for me–photographs and blogging and all the art and craft that goes into building, editing, and posting them. But I haven’t taken the time to build a sandcastle of my own. Maybe I will on my next trip to the beach…and I’ll take a few pictures to collect that one too!

One Shot, Two Ways…Revision, Photo Style

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One of the benefits of blogging is that other people like and follow my blog…and when they do that I often take a glimpse at what they are blogging about–it’s a lot like my experience with the CLMOOC. Yesterday shotwithmyphone.com liked my blog post and I spent some time perusing the photos he posts…all shot with his iPhone (like me!). One of his posts was titled One Shot, Two Ways and is part of a challenge posted here. The challenge invites photographers to take two photos of the same shot–one with a vertical orientation and one with a horizontal orientation and to post them side by side.

Inspired by those ideas (and looking at a few photos) I decided to try a variation on that theme and show two views of the same photo–one original and one with some editing and filters applied. In some ways the editing process I apply to my photos feels a lot like revision in the writing process. It’s the part of the process where I zoom in (or out), crop out distracting details, brighten up the setting, or change the mood. In many cases, revision in writing and editing in photography transforms the end product and helps the reader/viewer see it differently.

Here’s are a couple from my beach walk on Sunday:

And here’s a couple from yesterday’s excursion to the Living Coast Discovery Center:

There are times when I post my photos without editing, but I like experimenting with how to take a photo and work with it to convey the message I have in mind–or one that emerges as I play with it.

What do you think? How does the editing change the way you see the photo? How does it change the message of the image? How does this relate to writing and writing instruction? I’d love to know your thoughts!

A #Macro View of San Diego Natives

Beach Curves: A Photo Essay

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Summers are always busy for me…but this summer has been busy in extreme! Between Geoff’s schedule and mine, we haven’t found time for a traditional, go someplace, kind of vacation. Instead, we have had to grab vacation time wherever we could find it. Today was one of those kinds of days…and we squeezed in a fun and relaxing one-hour vacation at the beach.

It was sunny and warm today…and the ocean water was on the warm side too…perfect conditions for a summer beach walk. The marine layer stayed off the coast and we got there early enough that parking was easy! We had just had a lovely breakfast at one of our favorite local haunts and were ready to walk and talk (or not)…and as always is true of me these days, take a few photos along the way. This week’s #sdawpphotovoices theme has been curves, so I was on the lookout for curves on the beach.

When we parked, the very first thing I noticed was this giant pipe on the street and immediately headed over to take a picture. I got Geoff to stand at the other end so its size would be noticeable–and I love the way the curve also becomes a frame for the portrait.

As we headed down to the shoreline, the tide was approaching high. This can be a limiting factor for how far we can go, so today we headed north. The waves were small, but the surfers and boogie boarders seemed to be having great success catching the curves and enjoying their rides.

Curves seemed to be everywhere. Erosion is a major issue along our local shoreline. The northern walk takes us below expensive homes that seem precariously perched above the beach. One section was still barricaded with yellow caution tape…and the crack we had seen a month ago seemed more pronounced today as it curves along the layers of sediment that make up the sea cliffs.

Giant kelp, which my students know by it’s scientific name Macrocystis Pyrifera, is a constant on our local beaches. Piles are evident as it washes up along the shore. Holdfasts, the rootlike structure that hold onto rocks in the water, are home to many fascinating sea creatures and we often see locals rummaging in these wet piles and finding brittle stars and tiny sea urchins hiding within and enjoying a close look before returning them to their wet and salty homes. The long stipes frequently form tangled webs although this one reached out in a gentle curve away from the rest of the pile on the sand.

Sand castle makers have been hard at work this summer. I passed this creation and just had to stop and get close for a photo.

I love this turtle version of a sand castle with its curved head, shell and limbs…and the extra touch of bucket-molded sand on the top. Ocean washed rocks became eyes and the proximity of the kelp seems like a perfect touch!

I was surprised to find this coconut laying in the surf. It had clearly spent some time being washed and worn by the sea, not quite round but definitely curved. Had me thinking of Tom Hanks in Cast Away.

There were quite a few holes dug with curved banks that began to hold pools of seawater as the tide continued to rise. I took a few pictures of the water in the holes and then stopped to wait to see if I could capture the waves coming over the bank to fill the hole. I love the sense of movement this still photo captured.

And then before finishing my walk, I came across another yet another sand castle. This one in more classic style with a moat, some bridges and curved turrets, and stones and shells for decoration.

I love the way #sdawpphotovoices themes focuses my attention and helps me see familiar places in new ways. My one-hour vacation was relaxing and exotic! The photos represent only a fraction of the curves I saw at the beach…and yet give a glimpse at the variety of curves along the shore. Tomorrow begins angles…I can only imagine what I will find as I look at the world through that lens.