Whole Schools Summer Institute
Julie Owen and I taught our “Read a Book, Make a Book” workshop this week at the Whole Schools Summer Institute. We taught three book forms: the instant book, Wolfsnail On the Move, and the Fibonacci Folding Book.
Here I am showing, and reading from, a book I made when I was in early elementary school.
Here Julie is demonstrating how to make the scroll part of the Wolfsnail on the Move book.
Update on the New Website
Having killed my first (bad) idea for the new concept on my website, we have a new concept that we like. I’ll share it here so you can see what we’re considering. It is very different from what we did before, but we want to make it open, friendly, and easy to use. Do you folks have any thoughts?
The photo on the top right (a water drop falling) would change each time a person landed on my homepage, in the same way the header photo changes now. Each photo will be trimmed so that it floats in the space. We have already decided to change the color of the swirl.
Clouds
The clouds just tugged at me today. I want to get a good photograph of an interesting cloud; and, like so many things, this is easier said than done. I set the camera to bracket so that I got many different exposures of the same photograph. I haven’t learned how to put all these photographs together into one, yet. But, I’m not sure I got anything I can use anyway, because the clouds didn’t stay still. I had a tripod, but the clouds were on the move. So, instead of crisp edges, I have fuzzy edges.
This will take some work.
Update:
Richard performed some Adobe Lightroom magic. I watched. I like the photo better now. We tried putting three exposures together, but it didn’t seem to do what we wanted.
Digging Deep Workshop at Mississippi Museum of Art
I spent a few hours Thursday, helping teach a workshop at the Mississippi Museum of Art. Elizabeth Williams, the museum’s education director, and Carol Cox Peaster, the director of the museum’s Art Garden, and I guided 15 teachers through Digging Deep, the art/science/nature curriculum we put together earlier this year. We piloted it with fourth graders at Davis Magnet IB Elementary School. (You can read more about the pilot here.)
Teachers who participated learned the 20-Second Nature Break, some nature journaling techniques, how to use Private Eye loupes, basic sketching, and how to turn a sketch into a watercolor. Everything we did was with the goal of developing observational skills for scientific research, writing, and making visual art. We didn’t talk much about photography, but I couldn’t resist taking my camera along for some more shots in the gorgeous garden.
Last of the Fancy Ones
We’ve come to the end of the fancy photos. After today’s bunch from Guildford Cathedral, what’s left are the snapshots, which we also love because they include family and friends.
This is the son of some friends of ours. He was practicing before the Evensong Service.
Photos From England
We did a little less sightseeing, and more visiting, in England. Here are some of our favorite photographs from the second half of our trip.
This is at Lacock Abbey, which is part of the National Trust. It, along with the nearby village, has been featured in many popular British films and TV series, including Pride and Prejudice (the one with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle), Cranford, and three of the Harry Potter movies.
One of the owners of Lacock Abbey — after it was transformed into a country house — was William Henry Fox Talbot. He was one of the first people who learned to do photography the way I first was taught –by exposing a negative and printing a positive image from it.
There were several interesting things to note about the paintings at Lacock. In this one, the glove has too many fingers.
In this one, restorers were cleaning it up and found the people that had been clothed were actually nudes, so the clothing was removed.
This impressive flower is an Allium christophii, or star of persia.
Rennes, France Photos
We stayed in a town near Rennes, France. We took a day trip to visit the Cathedral, plaza, and wander the streets. Here are some photos from the day:
Fancy Photos from Mont St. Michel
Richard created more panoramas and high dynamic range photographs. I love the way these images bring out the drama in the sky and highlight the colors in the buildings in the Abbey. For those who are interested in such things, he uses Photomatix from HDRSoft for most of the HDR images and Photoshop to make panoramas.
Snail in Iris
My Dad sent me this photo that he took in the ruins of Heraclea Minoa on the Mediterranean coast of Sicily. I know that the place I saw the snails on grass and wild flowers near Mont St. Michel, France, is under water some of the time. I’m wondering if that accounts for the profusion of snails.
More From France: The Louvre, Chateau Du Luynes, Gar du Nord
More of Richard’s photographs. Some of these are regular images, but others are panoramas and HDRs. Click on an image to it displayed larger. (The blog makes these panoramas, many of which are very, very wide landscapes look so tiny.)
