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

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

Desert Views, The Second Month

Summer Books © 2010 Bo Mackison

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?

IMG_3364

Grandma’s Quilt © 2013 Bo Mackison

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”.

Essence of Place – San Pedro Riparian Area

San Pedro Riparian Area

River Reflection © 2014 Bo Mackison

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.

San Pedro Riparian Area

San Pedro River © 2014 Bo Mackison

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.

San Pedro River

San Pedro River © 2014 Bo Mackison

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.

San Pedro Riparian Area

Log Dam on San Pedro © 2014 Bo Mackison

San Pedro Riparian Area

Aquatic Plant on San Pedro River Bend © 2014 Bo Mackison

 Macro-Photography in a Landscape

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

San Pedro Riparian Area

Soaptree Yucca © 2014 Bo Mackison

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.

San Pedro Riparian Area

Waterfowl in Lake © 2014 Bo Mackison

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.

San Pedro Riparian Area

Shindagger Agave © 2014 Bo Mackison

 

San Pedro Riparian Area

Branches in San Pedro River © 2014 Bo Mackison

 

San Pedro Riparian Area

San Pedro River Cottonwood © 2014 Bo Mackison

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.

 

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.

 

 

Essence of Place – White Sands in Chihuahuan Desert

White Sands National Monument, New Mexico

White Sands National Monument ©2013 Bo Mackison

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.

Sund Dune

Sand Dune ©2014 Bo Mackison

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.

Sand Drift

Sand Drift © 2014 Bo Mackison

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

Portrait Session in White Sands © 2014 Bo Mackison

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

White Sands National Monument © 2014 Bo Mackison

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.

White Sands National Monument, New Mexico

Rabbitbrush in White Sand © 2014 Bo Mackison

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.

 

Bookmaking in the Sonoran Desert – Featuring the Roadrunner

Roadrunner Book

Roadrunner Book © 2014 Bo Mackison

I’ll be doing a bookmaking project in 2014, featuring a different aspect of the Sonoran Desert each week.

My first subject ran through the back arroyo as I was enjoying my sunrise coffee. A roadrunner would make a great feature for the first book, I thought, as I watched him ducking in and out of the brush. Then I decided, instead of traveling to the wide open spaces of the desert, I’d choose a subject from my backyard, the back arroyo.

Not only would it make the study of a particular animal, plant or mineral convenient – my subject would always be available – but it would also encourage me to learn more about my backyard habitat. Perfect.

No Wonder, This Bird is a Cuckoo

No Wonder The Bird is a Cuckoo © 2014 Bo Mackison

When the roadrunner visited, I took a couple of photographs, but mostly I just observed his behavior. I was amused at his rather peculiar antics — the bobbing of his crested head and the high jump he executed in the air, even the flip-flip of his tail as if he was telling me what he thought of my coffee drinking in his neighborhood!

I did some research on the roadrunner and made a simple accordion book. Then I added content. Even though I am not an illustrator, I plan to do simple drawings for these books. I’m not going to stress about this, figuring that as I practice it will get easier.

The writing was fun, especially since I uncovered so many interesting, and humorous, facts about the roadrunner’s habits. The first page of the book is an introduction and the sketch was on the next pages.

Most Famous of Sonoran Desert Birds

He skitters across the arroyo, shaking his shaggy crest,
Gives me a flip of his tail, no wonder. The bird is a cuckoo.

Two Poems in One

Two Poems in One © 2014 Bo Mackison

I wrote words and then added type cut from magazines to make two poems in one.

I decided to incorporate a second poem into the first by highlighting specific words. The first poem reads normally; in the second poem the read only the cut out words. This poem-inside-a-poem reads a little rough, since I didn’t think to add the second poem until  the words were already written in the book. I’m looking forward to planning a bit more in the next book.

Here is the first poem, read normally.

He has the habits of a slap stick comedian, a relative of acclaimed characters in Western tall tales & Saturday morning cartoons.
I’ve seen him do a helicopter dance, land with a bird in his beak. He’ll do combat with a rattler…and win.
And yet, Mr Cavalier, when courting, he presents his intended with a twig or blade of grass,
then the chase is on — ’til she decides yea or nay.
On cool desert mornings he spreads his tail feathers, exposes dark flesh,
& warms himself with the heat of the sun. An energy conservationist.

And here is the mini poem, composed in cut out words:

Sonoran Desert. No Wonder.
Come To the West & Dance…
and With A Yea!
Desert Warms the Sun.

Bookmaking - Accordion Book featuring Greater Roadrunner

Accordion Book Featuring Greater Roadrunner © 2014 Bo Mackison

See the agave plants in the corners and the sun symbols on the end covers?

One of my favorite parts was cutting out parts of the agave plant and adding them to the corners of the front and back inside covers. The endpapers remind me of a multitude of suns, appropriate for a book about the desert.

Now it’s time to go for an evening walk in the arroyo, and see if I can spot my next subject!