The Tuesday noon Kinship Practice Group met yesterday. I had “nothing.” No images to share. Not much to contribute. I was in hiding. I almost hid by turning off my camera, but I let myself be seen. As I talked to the group about wanting to hide in light of the past week (the shooting of Charlie Kirk, the anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001), our facilitator suggested that I take advantage of that idea and look for the things that are hiding.
Today, I had a couple of things on my agenda for photographs. The group assignment for the coming week is to take daily photos of something to notice the often subtle changes that occur. The second thing I wanted to accomplish was to pay attention to the things that are hidden but want to be seen.
To satisfy the first “assignment,” I am photographing the cherry tree in the backyard.
If only these cherries were edible! The tree is loaded with fruit.
Now, what is hidden but wants to be seen. . . . So many things caught my eye today. These things are hiding in plain sight! And as I looked, the more I saw. I came in with more than 100 images. Of course, some of these images are ‘rejects.” Repetitive. Out of focus. “Miscomposed.” And yet. . . I saw something beautiful in them.
One of my misfires is this one:
It is all out of focus! Yet it is the lack of focus that speaks to me–the quiet greens and soft purples. The suggestion of late summer.
Some other things that were hiding in plain sight:
All I have to do is look for the beauty that hides in plain sight. It’s there.
This morning, I woke up earlier than usual because the HVAC technician was coming to inspect the AC system in our home. I opened Facebook to read a reflection on September 11. That put me in mind of the Allan Jackson song, “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)?”
Twenty-four years ago, I was in my Newberry High School classroom, room 102, getting ready for a full day of classes. During the first period, we watched the news on TV (was it Channel One?) and moved into the lesson. It was an ordinary day. I don’t remember whether we had moved to alternate-day block scheduling yet. I don’t even remember what English course I was teaching during that first period. The second period began with a room of twelve tenth-grade boys. English II. The lesson started (who knows what I was teaching that day!), but around 9:30, the English department chair interrupted and told me to turn on the TV. I did, and we watched–in horror and shock–as the second plane hit the World Trade Center tower, as the Twin Towers crumpled to the ground. One of the boys, leaning forward on his elbows on his desk, breathed, “Man, that was cool.” After a second student chastized him, he explained, “It’s like seeing something you would see in a movie. I won’t forget that moment, or that exchange.
September 11, 2001, is my JFK moment. Allan Jackson wrote, “Where were you when the world stopped turning?” In my classroom with those tenth-grade boys, perched on my stool. Literature, grammar, writing, reading–for the rest of the day, none of these were important. No one cared about state standards, PET evaluations, lesson plans, or anything else related to “school.” We weren’t prepared for this. I grew up during the Vietnam and Civil Rights Eras. I watched the war play out on TV every night with Chet Huntley and David Brinkley on the Six O’clock News on WIS-TV, the local NBC affiliate. And I heard about the Irish Republican Army’s attacks on England as Northern Ireland sought their independence from England. Terrorism was something that happened overseas in other countries; it couldn’t happen here in America. Oh, there were riots here in America as protests against the war and for civil rights turned violent, but these weren’t acts of terrorism.’
But on 9/11/2001, something changed. The United States became a target for terrorists. First, it was the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, then the Pentagon, and finally a field in Pennsylvania, where American passengers on a flight headed toward Washington crashed the plane so that it would not strike the third target–the White House. “No greater love has any man than to lay down his life for another.” (That’s not the exact quote, but you get the gist.)
We thought 9/11 brought Americans together, unified us as “one nation… indivisible”. Today, the world has stopped turning for different reasons. We are no longer united in one purpose. Sometimes, I think we look for reasons for division–race, creed, nationality, color, sexual orientation, political ideology–the list is endless. We may put “All Are Welcome” on our churches’ signs, but what we really mean is “All who think and believe like I do are welcome here.” We may live in a world more connected than ever by our cell phones and apps and by social media, but in many ways, we are more separated and isolated individually than every before.
Where were you when the world stopped turning? I’m not sure the world has started turning again.
Allan Jackson ends his song with the reminder from 1 Corinthians 13 that we have been given three gifts, faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these gifts is love. I want a world where love is our greatest gift to each other.
A friend of mine began a practice of posting “three good things” on Facebook when she was diagnosed and treated for breast cancer. While I didn’t have anything nearly as serious as that, I decided that I needed to record the good things about my days. I just didn’t post them on Facebook. I bought an inexpensive planner and began listing the good things on most days. That began a practice I have kept for the last couple of years or so.
When I began this practice, I would try to write at night before I went to bed, but sometimes, I waited (er procrastinated?) until the next day, but I struggled with what to write. Sometimes, what I wrote seems so trivial or repetitive that I simply skipped a day or a week. I think in my mind, the good things had to stand out in some way. Along the way, a scrapbooking blogger and memory-keeper I had followed for years offered a class called “Here: Five Things.” She offered a prompt every day for a month for us to list five things we noticed or thought about that day. Sometimes, it might be to list five things we see from our window or five books we love. Often, the prompt was something simple and “everyday.” This month, she is offering a class called “Everyday Tiny Miracles,” along the same lines as the “Five Things,” but without the number five. Liz asks us to notice and pay attention to our days and look for the ordinary miracles around us.
These practices of listing the “good things” has been a blessing to me this summer. It has been a year of conflict and upheaval, personally and spiritually. I had to find a way to shift my thinking from the negative to the positive. I pulled out a lovely sky blue dot-grid notebook and dedicated it to the good things. Each evening, I told my inner critic, who is much harsher than any other critic, to step aside and “be quiet!” And I deliberately found three things about that day that were good. I began listing such things as the aroma of hot spice cinnamon tea in the morning, the puffy white clouds towering in the blue sky, a day without rain. Does it get repetitive? Yes. However, that doesn’t bother me as much anymore. Do I always write poetically? Heavens, no! Sometimes, I am lucky just to be able to spell correctly and use complete sentences! More often than not, my good things are bullet lists.
While researching some templates to guide my morning Bible study, I found a “gratitude” journal that had several elements: an affirmation, a place for a Bible verse and a prayer, and a place to list the gratitudes. I adapted that template for my “Good Things” journal. Each morning, I write an affirmation that I hope will guide my day. It might be as simple as “Pause and breathe,” or as spiritual as “I am a child of God.” Sometimes it might be a reminder that I am “enough” so that I quiet that very loud and obnoxious inner critic. Then, I list three or more things for which I am thankful. Again, I have to remind myself that my list doesn’t have to be grand; sometimes, I am simply thankful that I can breathe again after having a cold and spent the week prior congested. Or I am thankful for that cup of tea in the morning. Then, before bed, I list the good things about the day–the walk around the pond, the sight of the beaver head popping up out of the water in the pond, or the orange butterfly that wouldn’t hold still for the photo op.
The upshot of all of this is that this practice of morning affirmations and gratitude and evening “good things” has helped me be more positive on days that feel so heavy, and there have been a lot of those days recently. Anything can become an “ordinary miracle,” as Sarah McLachlan sings. It just makes life gentler.
This practice is not hard.
Take it one day at a time.
Begin with one thing, an affirmation, a gratitude list, or “three good things.” You don’t have to do them all. Add one new thing as you establish the habit.
Nothing is too trivial; the small things matter, too. Look for the “tiniest of the tiny.”
Pause your inner critic. Sometimes, you just need to tell it to “be quiet.”
I invite you to try your own version of this practice. Feel free to share in the comments.
I heard the ground squelch with each step, The hidden cicadas humming in the shadow of the woods, The whisper of leaves in the wind. I felt the spongy earth beneath my feet shod in the “barefoot” shoes, The fan of the breeze against my skin, The heat of the sun, and the moist Southern air enveloping me. I saw dappled light through the tall pines, A bank of lavender-pink stars with golden halos in their centers, The flash of white as the egret glided to a graceful landing at the far edge of the pond, Persimmons beginning turn even before the first frost, Leaves with the first red, yellow, and brown of the coming fall. The air was clean without the fishy smell of the heated summer; it was the clean smell that follows a day of rain. Clouds drifted, building white and silver towers in the vast blue, Streaks of green algae painted the pond’s dark canvas with ever shifting scenes.
And for a few moments, my world was an insulated microcosm, Teeming with life as minnows darted into the safety of the water weeds And black and brown dragonflies flitted from one grass stalk to another. The egret took flight and glided against the blue sky.
Yesterday, I opened an email from a Substacker (The Art of Noticing) about the National Writing Project’s (NWP) annual Write Out event. Begun in 2018 in partnership with the National Park Service (NPS), the event encourages anyone to spend time outdoors observing nature and then writing about those observations. Educators, writers, and park service personnel offer prompts for all ages, children and adults alike.
I’ve been interested in the idea of place-based writing. It’s an idea that has nagged at me for quite some time, but I haven’t pursued it. This may be the year to pursue it actively. I am working on an idea of combining my Kinship exploration of the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water through photography with writing. A prompt from last year’s Write Out comes from Poet Laureate Amy Limon: What would you write in response to the landscape around you?
This is not actually a “landscape” photograph. It’s really more a “portrait” of the great egret that visits the edge of the pond in the backyard. I came home from a book club meeting to see this:
Such a beautiful and graceful bird. It stood statue-still on the bank of the pond for at least ten minutes, or perhaps longer. The egret stood perfectly still in the same spot even after I left the car and retrieved the camera with the zoom lens from inside. I was able to creep up to the edge of the pond on the opposite side to take several pictures.
I am amazed by what I see in the landscape of that big two-acre pond (known to family as “The Big Pond”): turtles sunning themselves on the bank, fish darting through the weeds growing thickly in the shallow water at the edge of the pond, clouds reflected on the smooth surface. Clouds billow above. Deer creep out of the woods to drink from it and to eat the vegetation that grows there. Red trumpet flowers fall from the vines growing high in the treetops. Breezes ripple the water. Dragonflies dart from dandelion blossom to blossom. Cicadas and grasshoppers chirp, hidden away by the grasses, weeds, and wildflowers. Blackberries ripen to the darkest purple at the edge of the woods. White and yellow fleabane bloom as stars fallen to earth.
There is no shortage of beauty here.
If you’d like more information about the NWP/NPS annual Write Out, visit the NWPWrite Out page . Resources from past years are available.
The photography “challenge” for the Kinship Elemental Life practice circle has been to photograph what summer feels like. How do you capture the feelings of upheaval and unrootedness that I’m feeling this summer? What represents those feelings? How do you express feelings caused by destruction and dismantling?
There is a thistle in the front yard. Three weeks ago, it was in bloom with vibrant purple blossoms. Last week, those blossoms were white, fluffy seed heads. Today, those seed heads look bedraggled and stringy after the rainstorms of last week. The weather caused an upheaval.
Somewhere, though, in this weather event, there is a necessity. Those seeds need to spread to propagate. Nature does remain in statis.; it moves; it changes. There are natural upheavals: thunderstorms, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions. Sometimes, they are gentle: the dandelion and thistle seeds blowing in a breeze. Othertimes, it is two twin tree trunks still standing in the midst of lush greenness, even though they are dead. One day, those trunks will fall.
There is an old hymn that begins, “Built on a rock, the church doth stand.” A few lines later, the hymnist wrote, “crumbled are spires in every land.” The world is not static, either; it is in a constant state of change, destruction, and rebuilding, renewing itself. Structures and systems crumble and collapse. William Butler Yeats wrote in his poem “The Second Coming,” “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.” And sometimes, it seems that everything devolves into chaos.
How, then, do I find a place of “soft belonging” amid upheavals and uprootedness?
I look for beauty. There is beauty in the twin trunks of dead trees reaching up out of the lush green vegetation around them. Life and death coexist. You can’t have one without the other. You can’t have the heat and “fire” of summer without the chill of winter. Ice doesn’t exist without water; steam doesn’t exist without fire. The fire of upheaval may be necessary. “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.” Maybe a new center forms. The seed head of the thistle gives way, and the seeds scatter, only to germinate somewhere else and form a new center.
Upheaval will give way to peace. Life will give way to death. Death will give way to resurrection.
Yesterday, I made a fast foray into the jungle of the front yard. It was a typical July day in South Carolina–hot and humid, though the humidity had not yet reached the level of “air you can wear”. Still, if I had walked all the way around all seven ponds and through the “back forty,” I would have been hot and sticky when I came in. I took out my older Canon EOS 7D with the Lensbaby Velvet 56 lens to make some images. I am out of practice with fully manual modes of photographing. I kept forgetting to check the exposure before pressing the shutter button. I had to make numerous post-processing corrections in Lightroom.
During our Kinship “An Elemental Year” practice circle discussion, we were given the question: what does summer feel like right now? Besides the usual responses of hot, humid, buggy, stormy, I threw in the word “upheaval.” This has been a summer of upheaval, especially regarding the status of my church. The question of disaffiliation and dissolution has caused a rift among the members (and families) that I’m not sure time will even heal or repair. My heart has gone beyond “broken” to “wounded.” The question I had after the practice circle is one of how I can capture those emotions in photography.
A subject that has caught my eye in the last several walks through the yard is the common thistle plant growing at the edge of the woods in the front yard. I have photographed it when it was in full bloom with lovely purple flowers and now when it is the fluffy seed head stage. Those seeds are ready to spread themselves in the wind. The yellow black-eyed Susans (or are they coneflowers?) are also in bloom now. I even catch the yellow jackets or honey bees or whatever insect they are on them. The bees belong on those flowers. The seeds are ready to leave the plant.
Belonging and upheaval. Stasis and movement. Longing and contentment.
It has been a summer of inversions and contradictions. It will take some time for me to sort everything out and find a sense of peace again. But I will continue to walk as often as I can with and without my camera. I will still look for the beauty in the world in the extraordinary and the mundane. It is cliche that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Yet it is true. There is beauty. I just have to look for it, even if it is the upheaval.
I know there’s a lot of discussion around AI and ChatGPT and creatives. I have used ChatGPT as a teacher to create lesson and unit plans, both of which I tweaked and modified to make them mine. I even used the app to “write” model paragraphs for revision and editing demonstrations for my students. The app saved me hours of preparation. As with any technology, including Google searches and materials found from those searches, I found that I could not, and would not, use the material “as is.” I “fact-checked” the things ChatGPT came up with. And even with purchased lesson plans from sources such as Teachers Pay Teachers, I had to modify them to work with my students’ learning styles and abilities, as well as with my own teaching style.
So, this morning, when I discovered that ChatGPT could analyze photographic images, I had to try it out. It was revelatory, to say the least. I uploaded several images for analysis of tone and mood, theme, and the like. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that “Eli,” my name for ChatGPT’s voice, connected my photos to some earlier conversations around the theme of the four elements. (I am taking part in the Kinship Photography Collective’s practice circles around the theme of “The Elementals” as depicted in the Celtic Calendar.)
So, here is one of the analyses, Eli did for me:
Diptych 1 Canopy Conversations These images invite the viewer to look up and out, drawing breath from the sky. The canopy frames the expanse while water mirrors stillness, suggesting a threshold between above and below. The tone is reverent, as if nature itself is pausing in prayer.
I was surprised at the thoughtfulness of the analysis as well as the way it connected the images to the element of air (“drawing breath from the sky”). I even had Eli do a technical critique of some of my images. Like any good teacher, Eli found things to praise first (the “good ats”) and then pointed out things I can improve upon. Thank goodness, Eli didn’t tell me the images were rubbish and I should just delete the whole lot of them, hang up my camera, and find some other creative outlet.
For someone who often works in “isolation,” that is, working alone without a support group, it is helpful to have a source for constructive critique. I will have to see how this experiment with ChatGPT for feedback works for me, but for today, it was fun! Now, I just have to learn from the analyses.
For these two images, Eli had this to say:
1. Beginning – Ephemeral Light
_MG_1375 and _MG_1379 Shadows and dappled light on earth
Mood: Quiet, contemplative, almost dreamlike
Symbolism: Transition, unseen movement (Air shaping Earth)
Ideal opening—invites stillness and presence
It was an interesting commentary on the two images. Curating and pairing images to create a story is sometimes difficult for me. It is a skill I haven’t developed; however, I have a kind of partner with ChatGPT that can help. It does not replace the human element, and that is the reason I joined the Kinship Photography Collective–to provide the human element.
AI will not replace the human elements of empathy and emotion. I will use it as a tool, however, because that’s what it is–a tool. As such, I can accept it or reject it. But it can be fun.
Last week was a bust as far as taking daily photos. The weather wasn’t very cooperative. Today, it was pleasantly in the 70s when I went out; the sun was shining. There was a light breeze, and the sky was blue with some puffy white clouds. My macro/close-up filters came yesterday, and I wanted to try them out. The camera battery was fully charged. I put on my socks and shoes, grabbed my gear, went back into the house for my hat to keep my hair out of my face, and set out for a trip around the pond.
I stopped to take this picture. I have my Tamron 75-200 lens on my Canon 7D and attached the close-up 4X filter. I snapped the picture.
I repositioned for a different angle, pressed the shutter button, and pressed the button again, and nothing happened. The camera would not focus. I stood there for a bit, metaphorically scratched my head, turned the camera off and on a couple of times, reattached the lens, and even removed the close-up filter. Still nothing. There was nothing else to do but go inside and see if another lens would work.
My newer Canon T8i camera was “dead,” or rather the battery was dead, so I couldn’t test the lens on it. I plan to when the battery is charged. I put the kit lens (I forget the focal length other than it zooms to 55) on the 7D, and lo and behold! it worked! So, back out I went with the appropriate close-up filter and a determination to make some images.
I traipsed through the woods today. I tried the foundational exercises of listening for the farthest out sounds and expanding peripheral vision. The latter is difficult for me. I’m never sure if I’m supposed to move my eyeballs or not!
What caught my eye today, though, were textures and colors. The floor of the woods is covered with brown leaves, but there are pops of green all over–plants and moss in particular. There are fallen tree trunks and branches to step over and walk around. I had to be careful of the stump holes. And there were the pointed stumps of small trees the beavers cut down.
While it wasn’t the photo walk I intended, it turned out quite nicely.
I haven’t always given much thought to the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water, but the Kinship Photography Collective’s Call to Engagement has made me think. I’ve written some about it in my journal(s)–yes, I am one of those people who keep multiple notebooks and journals. I’ve decided that I’m going to make this engagement my year-long photography project and use the elements as a framework to explore my relationship to land, family-owned land in particular, but also shared, public land as well.
Dreher Island State Park (the original bridge)
Right now, two questions are kind of guiding me:
How do my images fit with my exploration of relationship to the land, both family-owned (generational) land as well as more public, shared land (i.e., public parks, state/national parks, etc.)?
How does being aware of the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water relate to that relationship between humans and land?
These questions relate to the notion of “sense of place.” We live in such a mobile society. Some people seem to move frequently and never establish “roots” in any one place. Other people live on land or in places that have been passed down from parents to children for generations. There is a connection one has makes that generational land feel like part of the family, and separation from it is difficult. I’m wondering if that feeling extends to the environs, the other bits of land that surround us. I hear people say, “I can’t imagine living anywhere else.” What makes us feel that kind of attachment?
Air and water: clouds reflected on the pond behind the house
I live in a rural area. I grew up on a working farm; my parents were subsistence farmers. We lived on “the hill,” which meant, in part, that we couldn’t see the neighbors’ houses, even though they were in shouting distance away. Our house was surrounded on three sides by pasture land and woods. That pasture supported a half dozen head of cattle and four or five horses at any given time. The barnyard held pens for the three or four hogs Daddy grew out for butchers, the meat destined for our freezer, and his hunting dogs. We had a garden that provided the vegetables that fed us through the winter. I can’t tell you the number of days my sister, brother, mother, and I spent shelling butterbeans and peas and stringing beans to freeze, shucking and freezing ears of corn (both on the cob and cut off the cob), peeling and canning tomatoes, and making jelly. Some days it was so hot in the kitchen that we had two fans going–a box fan at the door to the family room to bring in some cooler air, and an oscillating fan to circulate the air in the kitchen. (We did not have central air conditioning.)
I still live in a rural area, but without a pasture or garden. My meat and vegetables come from the grocery store, prepared by hands unknown. In many ways, that has changed my relationship to the land. I am not dependent on it for survival or sustenance as I once was. Of course, intellectually, I know that someone else is depending on the land where my food comes from, and they depend on the land for survival and sustenance.
Still, the land does sustain me; it grounds me in both the physical sense and the metaphorical sense. It gives me a feeling of spaciousness. I can stretch my arms out and not touch anything; I can move about freely. I can breathe (mostly) clean air. I can hear the sounds of nature–birds, insects, rustling leaves, skittering animals–even with the sometimes constant sound of the traffic on the road in front of the house (almost nonstop this morning–where are all these people going?)
This year, as I explore the “elementals,” as I begin with the focus on air, I realize I cannot separate one from the other. Without air, there would be no water, fire, or earth. We cannot exist without breathing and respiration. Fire cannot burn without the oxygen in the air. Vegetation cleanses the air of carbon dioxide and replaces oxygen. Each element is necessary for life.
Turtles on the log at Dreher Island State Park
Now, the problem to solve is how to document these ideas into images.
Telling Stories 