Tag Archives: photography

Five Stories, Five Photos Challenge – Day 2

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I was invited by Elizabeth from Tea and Paper to join the Five Photos, Five Stories Challenge “Post a photo each day for five consecutive days and attach a story to the photo. It can be fiction or non-fiction, a poem or a short paragraph and each day nominate another blogger for the challenge.” Elizabeth is a fellow Canadian who lives close by but never reveals exactly where. She loves to journal, take photographs and write poetry.

Today, on day 2, I’d like to invite  Woolly from Woolly Muses who resides ‘way down under’. He describes himself as a former wool chaser and after 30 years changed careers and became a teacher. He loves all kinds of photographic challenges and I hope accepts this invitation to join in on this challenge.

After yesterday’s poem I felt I had jinxed the weather. We had a beautiful, albeit cool day, and I really felt in my heart of hearts that Spring had finally arrived. I did say that more snow was still a possibility in this neck of the woods but I guess I was quietly hoping that after our long and bitterly cold winter that we might get a break from that prediction. Silly me!

Last night, after watching a movie with my husband, I decided to quickly check on my emails before heading off to bed. The dog started to whine, indicating that a quick trip outside was in order. I put my laptop aside, slipped on my shoes and without putting on a jacket I opened the door and this is what I encountered.IMG_4384 IMG_4385 IMG_4386

Arrrgghh!!!!!

You can’t really tell from the photos but the snowflakes were big and fluffy and they clung to the branches of the trees. I have to admit that it was pretty but enough is enough.

This morning when I woke up the ground was still covered. Later in the morning didn’t it start to snow again. Once more the flakes were big and fluffy but the temperature must have been hovering just above freezing because it didn’t amount to anything. Later this afternoon all traces of the snow were gone.

Is this the last of the snow?  I’m not saying anything this time. I don’t need to jinx us again.

Cheers!

Sticks and Stones

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…..make wonderful art

Last week I was assigned a project that involved gathering up bits of nature to create a temporary work of art. After we finished creating we could photograph our masterpieces and then return the bits back to the environment or leave our creations somewhere outside where others could enjoy what we made. This idea came from Lynn Whipple who is one of the artists from Year of the Spark. This is a year long on-line art class brought to us by Carla Sonheim and Lynn. Every month they take turns coming up with wonderful and innovative assignments that bring out our inner spark. Every two weeks we get a new assignment.

I was really inspired by this project and came up with my own ‘Learning Stick’ and a composition of stones and dried foliage and grasses that I turned into a card. IMG_4249 IMG_4256

I’m hoping to make more but in the meantime I offered this assignment to my kindergarten class and they ate it up.

Before I arrived for our regular weekly art class, the children took a walk around the school yard and gathered up as many bits of nature that they could find. Between me and the ECE teacher and  what the children gathered we had a very nice collection of materials to work with.

I told the children that we weren’t gluing anything down and when their picture was done I would come around and photograph it and then we would take it apart and if they wanted they could make another picture. When we finished with the materials we would return them to nature.

I printed the photographs on my printer at home onto regular sized photocopy paper and then I made one 4 x 6 glossy print to mount onto a card. Here’s what mine looked like.

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After we mounted all the photographs onto a black background they were put up outside the kindergarten class for all to enjoy. Today they were moved to a more central part of the school so that more people would see them. The cards that I made will be given to the parents as a special gift on Earth Day.

Happy Penguins

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….tell kindergarteners that they can dress up their penguins and they instantly become ‘happy’ penguins

We started our project by painting our background with ribbons of watercolour. The only restriction was ‘no’ black or brown paint. While the paint was drying they drew and then cut out their penguin bodies, eyes, beaks and feet. This pretty much took up the entire first class.

In the second class I showed the class how to draw an ice flow so that it had some dimension and then I instructed the students on how to put everything together. When the penguin was glued into place with all parts intact the students then had the option of making hats, scarves and sweater from some scrapbook paper that I had.

The inspiration for this assignment came from Deep Space Sparkle.