Writing Your Life Story Part 8: Memoir and Photography (Option #1)

Seattle Latte

Coffee © 2009 Bo Mackison

Mention “writing your memoir” and most people think about recording memories, recalling events and names in the past, even researching distant history.

Yet, sometimes capturing the present is as important as recalling the past.

When you document the present, you can compare today’s stories with the past. This project combines photography and writing, and focuses on the present moment.

GETTING READY:

Any camera will work. A point and shoot camera or a cell phone camera is fine. You need only shoot a couple dozen shots so if you don’t own a camera, an inexpensive disposable camera from a dollar store works fine.

Keep in mind, for this project, much of the value is in printing some of your photographs. While the internet is a convenient place to store large numbers of photographs, it does not compare to getting prints of your photos to study and compare.

So grab a camera and give this project a try. You’ll enjoy both the process and the results.

OPTION #1: THROUGHOUT THE DAY

Pick a day when you have several items on your to-do list, but you are not over-extended. You want to be busy enough to document the variety in your day, but not so busy that pausing for photographs zings your stress meter.

If you like to follow a schedule, set your phone or watch alarm for every hour or two, and take a photograph of whatever you are doing or where ever you are when the alarm sounds. If you’d rather shoot when you feel inspired, give that a try.

Here are a few examples: at nine o’clock in the morning, you are working on a sewing project. You have material and patterns and sketches spread over your workspace. Take a photo.

At eleven o’clock, you are running errands. The munchies strike and you stop at Pop’s Vegan Drive-Thru for a garden burger and an apple fizzy. Take a shot of the Drive-Thru sign or the menu. Take another photo of your lunch.

Yellow Water Lilies

Yellow Water Lilies © 2010 Bo Mackison

In the afternoon, you pick up the kids up from baseball practice. Take a photo of the jumble of kids sprawled on the ground after that last inning. Or take a photo of your kid kicking his shoe in the dirt or doing somersaults in the grassy field while the ball game is in progress.

In the evening, take a photograph while on an after-dinner walk around the neighborhood or on a stroll through your favorite park. Capture details that you might not otherwise remember. An empty playground. Water lilies on the pond. A colorful ad in a storefront.

Add a snapshot of the headlines from the front page of the local newspaper or magazine you are reading to help pinpoint not only the date, but what is happening in the world or your community.

The next post offers another photography project. I’ll also give suggestions on how to organize these collections of daily photographs.

 

 

Red in the Rock Garden

Red in the Rock Garden

Red in the Rock Garden © 2011 Bo Mackison

A visit to one of my favorite urban gardens, Allen Centennial Garden in the heart of the University of Wisconsin campus, not only gives me the opportunity to photograph lovely spring flowers and blossoming trees, but also the gift of getting close to the earth and discovering small delights in an intricate series of rock gardens.

This is an example of hens and chicks in its red variety. One of my favorite (and most popular photographs at the art fairs I attend) is another photo I took of hens and chicks, the green variety.  I love both versions–they seem to play off each other. This red one has more composition, the red succulents playing off the light background of small pastel pebbles and large white rocks. The older photo has an overall pattern of the hens and chicks in varying sizes, and the rocky background has more blue tones. Together I think they make an attractive display.

I love the different stories associated with hens and chicks. I heard the first, a passed down family tale, from my great-grandmother, my Grandma Prudie. She was in her eighties when I was nearing ten and given the job of garden assistant by my grandfather. Prudie would often drag a yard chair out onto the lawn near the long strip of garden on the far side of the property and chat about a variety of topics as I hand pulled the weeds.

One day she told me the story of the hens and chicks plant, her version. The story made a big impression on me. I wrote the story in a black and white composition notebook–my diary–but that notebook long ago disappeared. This is the version that my memory remembers:

“Now these plants, the hens and chicks, these are a “sucky-lent” plant. The little plants “suck” all the life from the mother plants–those are the big center plants. The mothers send out roots and then the little chicks grow. The chicks grow and eventually take over the plant. Then eventually the mother plant dies and the chicks become the mothers. And the growing pattern gets repeated over and over, until the hens and chicks spread throughout the  rock garden.” ~Prudence Mackison Willliams

My great-grandmother wasn’t afraid to talk about any topic. I remember conversations about war, jealousy between siblings, religion, marriage and divorce, life and death. She wasn’t a judgmental woman. She thought people did the best they could with what life offered them, and often defended the under dogs of the world.

Grandma Prudie had a hard life, she did many things in her day that weren’t considered womanly things to do, but she was kind-hearted and she was giving; she was an optimist and she lived her life fully. She also loved flowers, and her favorite time of year was when it was flower blooming season.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. Bo is thankful to see the spring flowers blooming and the sun shining. She is also recalling the many garden talks she had with her grandparents when she was a child.