Tag Archives: writing

How to: Inspiring Writing

“…smell the sea, and feel the sky

let your soul and spirit fly…”

Jim Morrison

With the end of the school year and the beginning of the SDAWP Invitational Summer Institute beginning next week, I find myself with a small window of unstructured time. Don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of “work” to do…but I am determined to play this week and the CLMOOC is helping me.

This week’s “make” is to make a how-to. You might notice that I tend not to follow directions in a literal way, but as I headed off to join the SDAWP Young Writers’ in Nature campers on a field trip to the Scripp’s Coastal Reserve today, I was thinking about how to write under the influence of nature…and science…and children.

As we headed off on our walking field trip, I already felt inspired. There is something about kids with notebooks and their innate curiosity that sparks my own learning. The kids had been learning about native plants–a favorite topic of mine (see this blog post) and Janis (their teacher) encouraged them to explain what they had learned to me as we walked. I loved listening to them describe coyote brush and its adaptations and watching their keen eyes on the lookout for lemonade berry.

I love the earnestness of young writers at work. This little guy caught my eye…and I love that he is framed with the gorgeous blue of the Pacific Ocean behind him.

And I decided to push out of my comfort zone and make a video of today’s experience. I suppose you can loosely define it as a how to write under the influence of nature (and science and children) video.

Here’s a few lines from my own writing under the influence today:

Sitting on the cliff looking out into the vast endless ocean I see clouds crouch on the horizon, retreating from the blaze of the mid-morning sun. Relentless breezes dance with my hair and with the natives on the cliffs. Children hunch over the words that pour from their pencil tips, inspired by the sights, sounds, smells, and touch of this visit to Mother Nature’s living room.

And here is my video capturing the experience of writing under the influence of nature and writing and kids.

Summer Manifesto

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There’s nothing like the CLMOOC to get the creative juices flowing…and the inspiration turned up high. Ideas are arriving–pouring in fact–in flash flood proportions. So I’m working hard to use the inspiration and not let the flood of ideas overwhelm and distract me.

This Summer Manifesto was posted this weekend…and I knew I would take it up and create one of my own–early in the summer, before my work pushes the good intentions from my priority list. I hope this manifesto will be something I can return to throughout the summer to help remind me of my intentions.

So here goes:

Summer Manifesto

Spend time outdoors every day: exploring with my camera, walking/hiking for exercise, enjoying the sun and sea breezes…

Explore with my camera: try new strategies and techniques, go places in my community I haven’t yet visited, and see familiar places in new ways

Celebrate moments: take the time to breathe and laugh in the moment, even when they are squeezed between obligations and obstacles

Play: find the playful moments in everything I do…I even want to make brushing my teeth more like play!

Make stuff: digitally and physically, and keep trying even if it isn’t beautiful…and even share those “makes” that don’t quite turn out

Try something new: even if it’s scary!

And most of all, enjoy my family, quiet time, and a bit of adventure!

Welcome summer!

(I originally composed this manifesto in Noteography in my attempt to tty something new and make it more beautiful. It offered Twitter as a way to publish it…and here’s my first try at embedding a Tweet on my blog post. If you know a better way to use Noteography or some other application for similar purposes…I’d love to learn from you!)

Summer Manifesto https://t.co/HyrbMgaYnX pic.twitter.com/VJoKpYEmkD

— Kim Douillard (@kd0602) June 17, 2014

Weekly Photo Challenge: In Flight

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Do you speak in images? Enjoy taking photos to document your experiences or just to express what you notice in the world? Love to share them with others? Welcome to the weekly photo challenge! I post a new challenge each week…check in regularly and join the fun!

As I think about possible photo prompts, I try to think about the variety of images that might be possible with the particular prompt. I like to think about “out of the box” interpretations as well as those that might be expected. So this week as I considered pictures I might include along with the prompt, I was thinking about the relationship between a photo of a hang glider, a bee, some geese, and a balloon rocket…and they all seemed to suggest something along the line of in flight.

The most literal is the hang glider I couldn’t resist following with my camera while walking on the beach on Sunday. We were down at La Jolla Shores, not far from the glider port, and could see gliders in the distance. One came over the bluffs and got quite close…and here is a shot.

And I was recently in Ohio where I saw many things that are different from the things I see in San Diego. One example is this family of geese walking across the parking lot. They are clearly not in flight…but seeing them creates images in my head of that magnificent “V” of geese in flight, most often seen by me in movies and picture books.

And school is still in session in my district. This week we were out in the garden, enjoying the abundance growing in our Scrumptious Schoolyard. There were birds, butterflies and bees diving in and out of the blossoms taking care of the business of pollination.

For the last few weeks our students have been busy with balloon rockets in the science lab. They developed hypotheses, created launch procedures and data tables, and then tested their theories as they flew their rockets across the room. It wasn’t easy catching these rockets in action. Here’s one in flight.

I couldn’t resist this final photo of one of my favorite photo subjects: dandelions. I love this version of a dandelion with most of its seeds blown away. For me it suggests that the fluffy, wisps of seed pods are in flight…heading toward a place where they will take root and proliferate, maybe even in a sidewalk crack. I love the tenacity and strength of the dandelion!

So this week’s challenge is to find subjects that are in flight. Those flights might be the literal leaving of the ground of an airplane or bird or the fanciful flights of imagination and whimsy. Maybe your photo is grounded…but suggests flight (like my geese). As always, you are the one who gets to decide what counts as in flight…so have fun, and take to the air!

You can post your photo alone or along with some words: commentary, a story, a poem…maybe even a song! I love to study the photographs that others’ take and think about how I can use a technique, an angle, or their inspiration to try something new in my own photography. (I love a great mentor text…or mentor photo, in this case!)

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 #inflight for this week and include @nwpianthology in your post.

So let your imagination and your camera lens take flight! I can’t wait to see what you find.

Garden Magic

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This is the time of the school year when schedules become unscheduled, students start to feel like summer has arrived (and act accordingly), and it’s also the time when the most amazing displays of learning happen.

We’re lucky to have a school garden…and even luckier to have a gardening teacher who takes our students out to the garden to plant, learn, and harvest each week. And yet unexpectedly this week our gardening teacher resigned. So we (my teaching partner and I) decided this would be an excellent time to have our students get their iPads and head out to the garden to take some photos.

It was just a week ago that I had taken the first and second graders out around the school grounds to take photos while the third graders were otherwise occupied. And as we walked the campus they framed shots of whatever caught their eyes…and many of the photos are stunning! (When they get them posted on their blogs, I’ll link you to a few!)

So with iPads in hand, our students were eager to explore the garden. They photographed strawberries and cucumbers, sunflowers and squash, bees and caterpillars. They delighted over each new find and worked to capture their discoveries in photographs. (And I couldn’t resist a few either!)

But taking pictures just wasn’t enough. So after recess (and putting the iPads safely away), we headed back to the garden with our writer’s notebooks. And that is when the true magic happened. Our students settled with their notebooks to capture their images of the garden in words…words of their choice, format of their choice, style of their choice. They sat on the ground, on the stumps, on the benches, and even on the edges of the garden beds. Some sat alone, others gathered in small clusters. And all wrote. A magical hush settled on the garden. We could hear the shush and whoosh of cars passing by and the songs of the birds that would swoop into the beds for a nibble here and there. Butterflies flitted from blossom to blossom and bees went about the business of pollinating too.

After some time writing, I got up to peek at the students writing and captured a few images of the writers in action.

After a time, we gathered back together to share a few lines from their writing and experienced the richness and variety of what it means to write under the influence of the garden. I can’t wait to see how they transform this writing into blog posts that also include their photos.

So, I’m reminded that the unscheduling of schedules can result in wonderful serendipity…and the most incredible writing! Gardens are amazing places…and our school garden is truly spectacular, filled with life and science and learning and offering students so many opportunities to interact with the natural world and get close to the foods they eat. There is really nothing like a bit of garden magic.

One Photo, Two Ways: June’s Photo a Day Challenge

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Not too long ago a friend of mine posted this article on my Facebook page…with the message, “Thought of you.” The article opens to unfold images of famous places…one the way you are used to seeing it, and then another from an entirely different perspective. Some are unexpected juxtapositions of the classics with modern life like the Pantheon through the windows of McDonalds while others expand your view like the picture of a tree-lined path in Central Park that pans out to allow you to see the park in the larger view of the city.

I love the ways that photography helps me see the world…and present the world in ways that are beautiful, unexpected, unique, and interesting. And I like that I can take the same picture in many different ways. One of the most important lessons that I continue to learn as a photographer is that it’s up to me to create that image through my lens.

You don’t take a photograph, you make it. – Ansel Adams

As I considered this month’s challenge, I wanted the opportunity for us to play around with the idea of taking the same shot/image and doing something different with it. So…will this mean posting two photos each day? I think maybe it will. And to encourage this experimentation, let’s try a different category of creation each week.

June 1-8: Frame of Reference

Every day take two shots of your subject, each with a different frame a reference. In this example I took this shot of the lighthouse in the distance. It shows the rocky jetty…and people walking on it toward the lighthouse. The second shot is much closer and captures more of the movement in the water. You might use a collage app to post your pictures side by side, or you can post each separately.

June 9-15: Cropping

For this week, take a photo each day and use a cropping technique to create two different shots…the original and the cropped version. With cropping you can eliminate some of what we can see in the photo, change the place where we see the central image, or draw our eye in a new way to where you want us to place our focus. My original photo here was of the hot air balloon rising. My iPhone camera struggles a bit with distance shots…and there is a lot of background in the picture. Using Camera+ I was able to crop the photo, eliminating the ground, the trees, and the other balloon, focusing your eye on the balloon in the sky.

June 16-22: Filters

This week use a filter (or two or three) to create a new version of your photo. There are many apps that offer filters…from Instagram and Camera+ to Vintique, Picfx, Snapseed and more. Be playful…try something you hadn’t considered before. With this photo, I loved the original and the way the tall palms play with the low-lying clouds. And then I was playing with Picfx and found this brown filter that makes the clouds even more prominent.

June 23-30: Use a combination of techniques

For the last week of June, try combining techniques to create a photo two (or three) ways. You might crop and filter, shoot from different angles and crop…explore the ways that layering techniques change the composition and effect of your photo. Here’s one I tried a few different ways. The original was a long shot of the Cleveland skyline. In the second version I cropped to eliminate the extraneous foreground and used a “scene” in Camera+ to brighten the photo. And then in the third I imported the cropped and brightened version into another app to apply a filter.

So now it’s your turn. Experiment with creating your own versions of one photo, two ways. After you shoot, post a photo (or both) each day with the hashtag #sdawpphotovoices to Twiiter, 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, try a learning walk, or write some poetry or even a song! 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!

With summer beginning, it’s the perfect time for some playfulness and experimentation…try something with your photos that you have never tried before! 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!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Get Close

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Just yesterday I noticed some unusual mushrooms growing in the garden box outside my classroom door. I snapped a quick picture (you can see it on my instagram feed) and went into the classroom to prepare for the day. Later in the day when I looked into the box, the mushrooms were no longer there. Did someone pluck them out? This morning I looked in the box and noticed just a couple of these same mushrooms growing. I decided to take the time to attach my macro lens and get close to these mushrooms. And I’m glad I did…once again, they seemed to vanish as the day began to warm.

And sometimes I like to get close even without the aid of the macro lens. The pines I met while I was in Ohio were different from the varieties I am used to. I got close to this one as I looked through at the green beyond…and green like this is very unusual where I live!

Sometimes there is an unexpected invitation to get close. I couldn’t resist this sign asking museum visitors to lean in and pick up the items in the box…to really examine them closely. It’s such a different message than the “look only with your eyes” message that is so common.

I’m not sure about this fence. I got close to the fence…but is the message of the fence to stay back, don’t get too close?

And sometimes I use cropping as a way of getting even closer than I’m able to with my ordinary camera lens. In this case I took a photo of my oatmeal and coffee in the carry tray…and then cropped to make it fill the frame. The other photos above all are unedited…but this one has been cropped (but no filters applied).

So this week’s challenge is to get close. You might pull our your macro lens and try your hand at magnifying something small…or you might lean in and see how close you can get. You might even think about getting close more metaphorically…how else might a photo “read’ close? You can also consider using an editing tool to create the feeling of getting close from a photo that wasn’t all that close.

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 #close for this week and include @nwpianthology in your post.

So snuggle up and get close! I can’t wait to see what you find when you get close with your lens.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Up

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Have you ever found yourself with your head in the clouds, looking up, noticing what is above you rather than what is beneath your feet? It’s been that kind of week for me, maybe residue from last week’s fires and the sky watching that goes with it. As our weather cooled and returned to May-like temperatures, puffy white clouds began to appear. I found myself taking pictures of the sky, trying to capture the lightness and depth and roundness. I noticed on Instagram that others were also noticing the sky and the clouds.

I stopped on my way to school yesterday because i was mesmerized by the blueness of the sky and the way the clouds were sitting low and near the ocean. There’s this spot with a row of tall palm trees that begs me to stop and take a picture or two. Yesterday’s was of these tall trees with the clouds sitting low, beneath them. If you look closely, you can see the sliver of the moon up above.

But I know that I’m not always looking at the clouds with I am looking up. I couldn’t resist the “up” shot of this tall church in downtown Nashville. I love the way it seems you can look up forever as the building narrows the closer it gets to the sky.

I’ve discovered amazing ceilings by looking up. I noticed some interesting ceiling tiles in a restaurant last weekend…and shot this picture of the gray on white structure looking up inside the atrium of the San Diego Natural History Museum.

And sometimes up means catching a glimpse at the sun reflecting off a bubble. This one happened to be a big bubble that a guy was making at the beach…not by blowing but by using a big rope-like wand to throw out giant bubbles. He stood up high and the bubbles floated just above the heads of children who couldn’t wait to poke a finger at them.

So this week’s challenge is to figure out how to capture “up” with your photos. You might be up high looking down or be on the ground noticing something up above. Maybe it’s an image that makes you feel up…or like me, you might just have your head in the clouds. You can post your photo alone or along with some words: commentary, a story, a poem…maybe even a song! I love to study the photographs that others’ take and think about how I can use a technique, an angle, or their inspiration to try something new in my own photography. (I love a great mentor text…or mentor photo, in this case!)

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 #up for this week and include @nwpianthology in your post.

Have fun with up this week. I can’t wait to see what’s “up” through your lens!

En Plein Air: Beach Photography

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As a writer, I’m trying to pay attention to the stuff the people aren’t paying attention to.
JONATHAN FRANZEN

When this quote came across my Twitter feed today, I found myself thinking about how it applies to photography too. And establishing a habit of taking photos every day…with the express purpose of posting at least one…pushes me to consider new ways of paying attention to the potential images around me. It’s not that I don’t see what others see…I do, and I often see that others around me take photos and post photos that are similar to mine. So that means I need to pay attention to the details of composition, lighting, angles…

I realize that I use photography for a variety of purposes. Sometimes I am documenting events in my life, sometimes I am teaching myself some new techniques, sometimes I am relaxing and enjoying the outdoors…and sometimes I am working to create art.

Some photos turn out just the way I want them to, with the colors and focus and frame all in perfect harmony. And some pictures benefit from some editing…cropping, light adjustments, filters and such.

When I saw the Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge today was “work of art,” I knew I would focus on photos taken at the beach. I headed to the beach today as a break from worrying about the wildfires in our community. School was canceled, the weather was still hot, and the sand, waves, and briny sea air called to me. As I got closer to the shore I noticed the juxtaposition of the bright blue sky to the west and south and dark smoke rising from the north. The fires on Camp Pendleton had flared this morning, and firefighters were hard at work knocking it back down. As I walked in the cool salt water I aimed for the shot that would capture the brightness of the blue sky and also capture the dark, ominous smoke in the distance.

The carefree playfulness of the children on the beach was contagious! Even though the water is still cool…in the mid 60’s, it seemed that everyone was enjoying the water. I saw this group of kids heading into the surf and wanted to get a sense of the activity. It’s interesting to me that the photo looks like the beach is empty, just by the framing of the shot, when in reality there were lots of people on the beach today. I also played with a filter in Snapseed, creating a bit of a vignette effect, highlighting the children at play.

I ended up back at the beach later this evening when my husband came home from work. It was still quite warm out and I had enjoyed the beach so much earlier in the day that I wanted him to have the opportunity to feel the relaxation and the cool of the ocean. As I walked down the ramp toward the shore I noticed this gull on the roof of the beach building. With this post in mind, I decided to play around with the image a bit, cropping to bring the bird closer and then using a black and white filter. I’ve noticed that black and white is great for some photos…and terrible on others. I like it on this one.

It wasn’t yet sunset as our walk came to an end, but the sun was low in the sky and created a shiny reflection on the water below it. As we sat on some benches on the hill above the beach at the end of our walk, I was drawn to the silhouette of the palm tree in the distance. I’ve photographed this tree before, but not quite at this same angle or at this same time of day. It’s funny that this filter is called redscale, it seems to give the photo a yellowish, sunset kind of glow.

As a photographer, even an amateur, there is a lot to pay attention to. And the more I practice my craft, the more I find that I am able to pay attention to the stuff other people aren’t paying attention to, resulting in some interesting works of art…or alternatively, some interesting prompts for writing. The beach is a rich resource to draw from, a source of inspiration, renewal, relaxation and fun. And for me, today, it was also a welcome distraction.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Going Places

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Enjoy taking photos? Love to share them with others? Welcome to this week’s photo challenge! (I post a new challenge every week…check in each week and join the fun!)

As I think about a photo challenge for this week, my mind is also on the horrendous fires burning in my community. (If you are interested you can read more about it in yesterday’s blog post.) Schools were closed today and most, including mine, are also closed tomorrow. The firefighters are amazing and the flames are fierce. At one point yesterday we had at least 9 separate fires burning in San Diego county. And while there is still danger and fear around…it’s time to think about a photo challenge for the week. I had one all ready to go…and then changed my mind and decided to go in a different direction–literally and figuratively.

Seeing the sky fill with smoke creates an urge to move…to check on your home and neighborhood, to see what is going on, to make sure children and animals are safe. This photo was my “going” photo yesterday…as fires moved into my area.

But earlier in the week, I had done some other versions of “going places” as I headed up to the Bay Area to attend a conference and visit my son…and took advantage of the opportunity to ride the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit).

Sometimes going places is as simple as taking the dog out for a walk around the neighborhood. (You can see I fell a bit behind as I stopped along the way to take photos of other interesting things in the neighborhood!)

And then there’s this little guy who is genetically programmed (I think) to determine his travels based on eating his way through all available milkweed. I love how the butterflies who lay the eggs seem to be always going places and somehow know how to find milkweed…this particular box of milkweed is outside my classroom.

So this week’s photo challenge is to capture an image or images that show someone or something going places. As always, you are welcome to interpret “going places” in ways that suit you best! 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 #goingplaces 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. How will you show going places through your lens? I can’t wait to find out!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Chasing Shadows

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Enjoy taking photos? Love to share them with others? Welcome to this week’s photo challenge! (I post a new challenge every week…check in each week and join the fun!)

Inspired by the Daily Create (and a little nudge from Kevin), I’ve been chasing shadows today. Actually, when I first saw the daily create prompt for today, shadow guessing, my thoughts immediately went to a photo I took over the weekend.

I’m sure you know by now that I love to walk on the beach. Something you might not know is that my husband (who often accompanies me on my walks) loves to walk with a trash bag in hand to pick up trash from the beach. About a year or so ago I discovered the #litterati movement–people taking and posting photos of trash they come across, especially in nature, and then throw away. By posting these photos on social media using the #litterati hashtag, they hope to bring more attention to the importance of taking care of our world. This shadow is my husband as #litterati.

And then I remembered this photo of a sign in Ocean Beach that projected a wonderful shadow of itself…perfectly positioned for a picture!

But I wanted to find photos to take today…hence, the shadow chasing rather than shadow guessing prompt. Luckily we had some sun this afternoon, and as I headed to my car after work I came across some interesting shadows.

And I love that the light stays out longer these days. The sun was still present even when I got home this evening. I captured this interesting shadow playing with the railing on the stairs in my house.

So this week’s photo challenge is to chase some shadows…or create some shadows. You can play shadow guessing or chase some interesting shadows that you just can’t resist snapping up with your lens. 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 #shadow 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. Go out and chase some shadows…who knows what interesting images the shadows will help you create!