Photography – Page 40

Writing Your Life Story Part 9: Memoir and Photography (Option #2)

January 24, 2014 by Bo Mackison 2 Comments

This memoir project combines photography and writing, and focusing on the present.

The first option focused on taking photographs of your activities during one day. The second option encourages you to take a photo whenever you come across a “favorite” in your day — no schedule, just serendipity. Take photos over the course of a week, or a month, or on a continual basis.

Imagine having a collection of photos documenting what you love. What would a set of those photos tell you about yourself?

OPTION #2: FAVORITES

Take a photo of the your current collection of favorite books.

Take a photo of the books you own written by a favorite author. What makes this author special? Why are you attracted to his or her books? Is it the topic, the location, the genre, the authors way with words?

Take a photo of the clothes in your closet.

Take a photo of your favorite comfort outfit. And while you are rummaging in your closet, pull out your favorite dressy dress, your grungiest sweats, your reddest blouse, and the robe you still wear that you bought to wear your freshman year in college. Your favorite clothes are you. Take photos. Write a few notes, too. For example, why do you love your old robe so much? How do you feel when you wear your dressiest dress?

Take a photo of the most beloved piece of art you own.

Stop for a few minutes and write down why it is a favorite. How long have you owned it? Who is the artist? Was it an impulse buy from a local artist or a splurge for which you carefully budgeted?

Take a photo of a favorite meal.

What made it special? Was it the special ingredients? The cook who made it just perfect?

Take a photo of your bed made up with your favorite sheets, blankets, quilts.

What makes your bed special? Do you sleep under quilts hand sewn by your great-aunt? Are your pillow cases scented with lavender? Do you love the feel of silk sheets or down comforters?

Take a photograph of the TV screen (and you) while watching your favorite show.

(Substitute a movie, a sporting event, or a concert if you prefer.)

If possible, have someone take a photo of you watching your favorite show. Why do you like this particular television show?How do like to watch TV? With your feet propped up, totally relaxed? In your pajamas, at the end of the day? With a book in your hand or a computer on your lap?

What other favorites might you photograph?

A collection? A favorite flower in your garden? A favorite perfume? Favorite outdoor spaces?

This is the important part of the project – print those photos.

Don’t just store your photos on your camera or cell phone or leave them in a file on your computer. Print them. Get these photos printed. Then you can study these photos. Hold them in your hands. They will be available for they are inspiration or interpretation. They are memoir-photographs!

Take a few minutes to label them with place and time. Jot down a few words about what is happening in the photographs, or why you enjoy drink apple fizzy, or how you feel when you look at your favorite piece of art or listen to your favorite music.

Put the photographs and their annotations in your memoir container. They will be there, ready and waiting, when you are inspired to write. Writing prompts just for you. When you are ready, elements in the photos will tickle your memory and provide rich details for your writing.

Do you have a photograph in your stash that might inspire you to write that proverbial one thousand words, memories that might have been forgotten and not recorded without the inspiration from a “memoir-photo”.

Filed Under: Photography, Writing Practices Tagged With: memoir writing, photographs as memoir prompts

Essence of Place – San Pedro Riparian Area

January 22, 2014 by Bo Mackison 4 Comments

On a visit to San Pedro Riparian Conservation Area, I again captured the essence of the area in a few select photographs.

When I visit a natural area, I make a point of taking a variety of photographs including landscapes, intimate landscapes, portraits (wildlife or people), macro-photographs, abstracts, and details which capture the essence and personality of the place. I capture the essence of the place using one or two photographs in each of the categories.

Abstract.

The above photograph, the river with reflected trees, is abstract in feel. But it gives a feel for the area — river dependent, tall trees along the river banks, a quiet place.

Landscapes

The next two photographs, black and whites of the San Pedro River and its riparian corridor, are typical landscape photographs.

The San Pedro Riparian Conservation Area encompasses a desert riparian ecosystem – a river flowing through a desert – rare now but once common throughout the US Southwest. Tall trees – mostly cottonwoods and willows – hug the river banks.

The San Pedro River is one of the few rivers with a perennial flow. Its headwaters are in Mexico and it flows north into the United States. The river is protected from the US/Mexico border to St. David, Arizona, a span of 40 miles.

Intimate Landscape

The next photographs are intimate landscapes — they show only a part of the landscape and focus on color, texture, patterns.

Macro-Photography in a Landscape

The close-up of the soaptree yucca dominates the photograph, but the background of desertscrub provides context.

The San Pedro River flows through the Chihuahuan and Sonora Deserts. Away from the water, the landscape is dominated by Chihuahuan desertscrub — soaptree yucca, creosote and agave are common. Mesquite and sacaton grasses grow in the bottomland.

Portrait in an Intimate Landscape

The portrait of waterfowl in this intimate landscape adds another dimension of place.

The riparian corridor and its abutting lakes are home to 250 migrating birds, and over 100 breeding birds. Half the known breeding birds in North America have been spotted in this riparian region.

Macro-Photography and Detail Photographs

These photos capture the personality of the place, and often focus on wabi-sabi characteristics – textures and details.

An added note: This area is also home to a significant archeological site – home of the Paleoindians or the Clovis Culture, the earliest known inhabitants of North America. They lived in this area and hunted mammoths in the last Ice Age, over 11,000 years ago.

Filed Under: Nature Explorations, Photography Tagged With: "Essence of Place", Arizona, capturing the essence of place, landscape photography, San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, San Pedro River, Sierra Vista Arizona

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

January 21, 2014 by Bo Mackison 1 Comment

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.

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.

Filed Under: Photography, Writing Practices Tagged With: documenting the day, memoir, memoir writing, photography project, your life story

Essence of Place – White Sands in Chihuahuan Desert

January 20, 2014 by Bo Mackison 2 Comments

White Sands National Monument, New Mexico

White Sands National Monument in southern New Mexico is a desert within a desert.

The park is surrounded by the Chihuahuan Desert – a desert of low scrub plants. This desert of white sand dunes has even less vegetation than the Chihuahuan Desert.

Sherpa and I stopped at White Sands on our cross country trip from the Midwest to Tucson. Since I had a limited amount of time for photographs, I attempted to capture the essence of the park in a few select photographs.

The above landscape photo shows a progression of dunes, each topped with low grasses and yucca. The dunes are spotted with plants that thrive in gypsum — the white sand is pure gypsum. Gyp moonpad and gyp nama are common.

This photo of the arch of a crescent shaped dune is a small part of the larger desert landscape.

This kind of landscape photograph is often called an intimate landscape, and is a technique pioneered by Eliot Porter. Typically there is little emphasis on the horizon, the lighting, or a long shot of a vista, but instead the focus is on pattern, texture and composition.

Intimate landscapes often have an abstract feel.

The ripples of sand drifts offered plenty of opportunity for a close up photo.

The texture of the fine sand is nearly visible, the texture of sugar. This isn’t a typical macro-photograph, but it does give a good indication of the movement paths of wind blown sand.

Photo Session in White Sands National Monument

A portrait in a landscape, or an unexpected detail in a landscape.

When I saw this photographer setting up his equipment for a portrait, I had to get a shot even though they were far away. It gives a different perspective of White Sands – the grasses in the foregorund, the gently rolling sand hills, and then the tiny figures on the horizon – a photographer adjusting his camera on a tripod, and his posing subject.

White Sands National Monument attracts a fair number of sledders.

The gift shop at the park headquarters even sells the round discs for sledding. So it seemed appropriate, as part of capturing the park’s overall feel, that I include a photograph of the visitors who came to the desert for a sled ride.

And a final photograph, a bit of the hardy vegetation that grows in one of the more hostile climates in the world.

Not many plants thrive with little rainfall, constant wind and creeping sands, drastic changes in temperatures of day and night, scorching sun and intense heat in the summer, and a soil that has minimal nutrients. The rabbitbrush and dune grasses are highly adapted plants that live where few plants can.

Filed Under: Nature Explorations, Photography Tagged With: "Essence of Place", capturing the essence of place, landscape photography, national monument, National Park Service, New Mexico, sand dunes, White Sands National Monument

Renewal – A Desert Meditation

January 16, 2014 by Bo Mackison 4 Comments

“You are sand, wind, sun, and burning sky,

The hottest blue. You blow a breeze and brand

Your breath into my mouth. You reach—then bend

Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.”

~ Benjamin Alire Sáenz, from “To the Desert” in Dark and Perfect Angels

Filed Under: Art of Healing, Nature Explorations, Photography Tagged With: Arizona, meditation, Nik Color Efex Pro 4, opening, palo verde, renewing self, seed pod, seeds, Southwest