Archive for August, 2009

Most of the ways I use photographs these days are digital. I capture them using a digital camera, edit them using Lightroom or Photohop, post them on my blog, website, and Facebook page. When I submit them to editors for magazines or books, I submit a digital file. Every once in a while, I upload my digital images to an online photolab (I use Kodak Gallery) and get prints or calendars made. Most recently, I have purchased photographic prints to make photo albums as gifts. I rarely print photographs at home — unless I am printing on plain paper as a proof of some kind.

Today, I made homemade cards. I printed several copies of the above image on matte photo paper using my Canon IP 4600 printer. They turned out very nicely — except for the one I mis-loaded. Only the front of the paper is appropriate to receive the ink. You can see how the cards turned out. I tried different sizes and mounted some. It was fun to make nice prints and work with them to make a final product at home.

These will go in the mail on Monday.

While I was at the kitchen table putting these together, today’s mail came and with it a nice note from my editor. He passed along a note from Sue Margulis, chair of the Children’s Book Award Committee, of the Animal Behavior Society. Wolfsnail was one of three Boyds Mills Press books (Ookpik and The Puzzle of the Platypus were the others) named as finalists for the 2009 ABS Outstanding Children’s Book Award. Richard and I are honored to have Wolfsnail recognized in this way.

The caterpillars took their leave.

I helped the first bunch find new homes. Two went to neighborhood kids. Six went to an elementary school librarian who planned to take them to friends and several classrooms.

We had six left. Munching happliy. We were planning to take pictures images of their transformation. When we went out to walk this evening, however, the remaining caterpillars had disappeared. Poof!

Richard suggests they left because their food supply had been depleted. Maybe. Maybe they noticed that their buddies had been removed. We’ll have to get back in touch with some of our adopters to see if we can get photographs of the chrysalis and adult stages.

How many black swallowtail caterpillars can you see eating my parsley? I already farmed out three to friends whose kids wanted to watch the transformation. I don’t really feel like sacrificing my parsley, but I don’t feel like ending this either.

Here’s a slightly different angle. Both of these images were taken with my Nikon Coolpix S560. I decided to see what I could do with the macro lens and the tripod. The ones that follow were taken with my Nikon D70 with the Tamron macro lens.

I spent the day Tuesday teaching teachers how to use photography to document their work integrating arts into the curriculum. At the invitation of the Ask for More Arts Collaborative, I led two groups of elementary school teachers through several hours of work on creating and capturing high quality images of arts integration. Parents for Public Schools is the convening partner in the AFMA collaborative. Last year, I was a partnering artist, working with second graders at Davis Magnet School on a project called Davis on the Map.

I divided the workshop into two sections: How do we create the image we want to communicate? and How do we capture that image? Roughly, these translated into the big picture and the practical considerations. We discussed how to create engaging lessons, inviting spaces, and trusting communities. I told them the biggest, hardest part of the job had to happen before they ever picked up a camera.

I was warned that teachers don’t like to sit still for long lectures any more than kids  do so I created two hands-on activities. In the first, each group of teachers considered a batch of images from a single school project or event. They had to choose six images from the dozen or so they had to “tell the story” of the project or event. Next, they had to choose two images for a newsletter they would send to parents or a communication with funders. Finally, they had to choose one image for the newspaper and they had to write a cutline.

During the second half of the workshop, the teachers made frames from single sheets of cardstock. Others at their tables photographed the frame-making exercise. Several volunteers handed me their cameras’ memory cards and we conducted a group critique of the images they’d captured. The biggest challenge, as it often is in indoor settings, was light. We were in the fabulous grand hall at the Mississippi Museum of Art, but we were in the side without windows. This was good for watching the slideshow and viewing images on screen, but not for capturing.

We learned a lot and had a good time. I wished for more time to address the questions the teachers had about specific cameras and settings.I learned that some teachers are already using photography in collaborative art projects with their students: self-portraits and bookmaking and in communicating with parents through blogs and newsletters.

I told the teachers that it was near-about impossible to take good images and teach the class. (You can be the judge of these images.) Please send images if you took some during the session that you’d like to share with everyone. I know you have some good ones.

A proof of Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature arrived in my inbox on Friday. I printed it because I can’t really reivew a book unless I can page through it. Richard and I found a few things that need fixing and we’ve weighed in on some design decisions. The photo you see at the left is on the cover. I am very excited about seeing it as a book. I took it to some of my young readers and they read it for me so I could watch for things like line breaks, etc. I also sent it off to my expert reviewer. It is getting so close, now. Yipee!

We had a few glitches this weekend on the website. It disappeared during an attempted upgrade. Richard got the backup restored today. We’re still having to recreate a few things that had gone up between the last backup and the disappearance.

My website was created using Joomla!, which has a very blog-like user interface. I find it easy to update my site because Joomla! stores content in ways that make sense to me. Rather than creating individual pages that remain static and must be changed individually, Joomla! creates pages on the fly by pulling the blocks of information you tell it to. A block of information could be an article, a document for download, a menu, a photograph, etc.

The other great thing about Joomla! is that it is free. Richard did the set-up but, by and large, I keep it maintained. Since Joomla! is an open source program, there are a lot of add-ons available. This means we can choose from several types of photo galleries, search functions, etc.

I spent several hours yesterday and today updating my website. I didn’t do any major overhauls, but I added new pictures to the galleries, updated the information on my appearances page, and added some new teaching materials in the photography section. Please let me know what you think. Also, if there is content you’d like to see that’s missing, please let me know.

Richard took this close-up of an amaryllis. I love the detail.

I think I’ve got it: Lyre-leaved sage. I found it on pp. 56-57 of George H. Dukes, Jr.’s The Gardener’s Guide to Mississippi Wildflowers. Then I confirmed by surfing the web for more pictures and descriptions. The scientific name is Salvia lyrata. A common name is cancer weed. Salvia is from Latin salveo, meaning to save  or heal.

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Here is the photo we are considering for the book.

This flower has a funnel-shaped corolla with lobes. Corolla is a collective term for petals, which may be arranged in a regular or irregular way. When regular, all the same parts of a flower are alike in size or shape and may be cut along more than one line to obtain mirror images. When irregular, the flower is either totally asymmetrical or, if cut along only one axis, will reveal bilateral symmetry. So, it seems to me that this Lyre-leaved sage is an irregular funnel-shaped corolla with two lobes on the lower part.

This is a flower from a wild potato vine. Its corolla has five fused petals and there is purple at the center of the funnel. I love these delicate flowers. I see them on my daily walk. The vines grown wild near the bridge over our neighborhood creek.

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Here is another view.

Does any one of these images say one to you?

As in one petal?

Here’s our gecko in its habitat. It’s a crafty little critter. We’ve found that it stays still for a few moments, but it moves with lightning speed when it decides to move. Richard took these. We watched its tongue moving in and out as it seemed to be lapping up water droplets, but by the time Richard had repositioned the camera, it was gone. We have a few blurry images of its head and its legs.

I love seeing its coloring up close. I also like its little toes. I’ve been dousing its habitat with spring water and I moved it off of the screened porch and onto the deck so it’d have access to flying insects. Since we took these, however, I haven’t caught a glimpse of it. One of the boys found a small toad and I added it to the habitat. We haven’t seen the toad either.

I spent much of the day locating, editing, and transferring photos, and doing more research on flowers and petals. I have a few more botanical words for you: spathe, spidex, bilabiate. I think we’ll be adding a note to our definition of petal or adding another note to the notes page. The title might be “when is a petal not a petal?”

My editor has a rough layout of Growing Patterns from the art department! He went through the book and came up with a handful of questions and/or comments. I was able to answer most of them easily. He wants to see a few more photographs.

We need another example of a one-petal flower, a different photograph of an amaryllis (from a slightly different angle) and, perhaps, a different example of a four-petal flower. As I was going back through the photographs in the “Fibonacci” category in Lightroom, I came across the above photograph. I think Richard took it. I’m glad I found it. It won’t serve our needs as a flower photograph, but the bug is really cool.

Does anyone know the name of this flower? It is a wildflower and it blooms in April (or was blooming in April 2008, anyway). I’ve scoured the two books I have on Mississippi wildflowers and have come up blank.

The questions at this point in a nonfiction book’s process get very tricky, I’ve found. Once editors and writers face having something printed (that means forever, right), we start getting really nervous about having everything right, right, right. Because I am trying to write about a complex subject in a clear way, I sometimes simplify to the point of making something wrong. This is what we’re trying to avoid.

Experts can be a big help in this regard — or they can muddy the water. Before starting this project, I had no idea how many different words there are for petals (corolla, ray flowers, disc flowers). What a layperson calls a petal may actually be another part of the flower that has taken on petal-like attributes such as color. You see what I mean? At this point, it is very easy to get lost in the trees … and miss the forest. But, we’re close.

Well, it finally arrived. The first day of school. They might say it arrived too soon, but not me. G was excited because he doesn’t have to wear a uniform anymore. N and D piled into Richard’s car and G and I settled in to wait for the bus. When it didn’t get here by 8, I drove him to school. The bus did show up, finally, so I feel good about him being able to catch it tomorrow.

After basking in the quietness, having a glass of iced roobios tea, and reading a 5,000-word article online without interruptions, I started in on some work. Marketing work. In addition to maintaining a website (and maybe a blog), authors need to manage their online presence in other ways, too. For example, about a week ago, I was checking around on Amazon.com and found that Amazon had set up an author’s page for me. There was no content on the page — just an anonymous silhouette in the place of a photo and no biographical material. In order to add content, I had to create a user name and password. I was able to upload my photo and my bio, but before it went live, Amazon had to check with my publisher to make sure I was who I said I was. I was notified today that I could proceed with updating the page.

I linked my blog to my Amazon author page and I was able to correct a problem Amazon has had with the Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator page since the book was published. They listed Richard’s name wrong (I won’t repeat the error here) and they had him listed as the illustrator. I fixed both problems. Besides having an Amazon author page, I have a page on Jacketflap, Facebook (this one is a personal page, but I am considering developing a professional page on FB), Authors Round the South, SCBWI/Southern Breeze, and I have content on teachingbooks.net.

Wolfsnail had been listed on Amazon.com for at least a year before I realized that I could create tags for my book. Tags are essentially search words that people might use when looking for a book. I added all the ones I thought were relevant to my book. I’m not web savvy enough to know how much of a difference this type of online refining makes, but I operate on the theory that every little bit helps. Does anyone else know some similar things authors can do online to make themselves easier for readers to find?