Category Archives: Story Telling

The prompt for this week was to tell the story of a stranger. As mentioned previously on the photo blog, I visited several historical sites recently. If you really pause to think about it, historical sites are one of the weirdest things conceptually. You go to a place that is probably over a hundred years old, have someone walk you around a random dead person’s house, and take pictures of the random stuff they collected while they were alive. It seems a little strange, especially considering you don’t know any of the people whose house you are touring, but I think that is sometimes a little bit of the fun. Seeing the area they inhabited and the style of their kitchen and what knick knacks they had all tell a story of the person who used to live there. The pineapple wall paper and clock tell of the tastes of…

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The topic we had to explore in our photography this week was aging. In this photograph, there are several elements that I think indicate age. The burnt candles, old-fashioned glasses, worn case, and yellowing paper all seem to be telling the story of someone who was living there and spent time in that desk. The glasses case is especially telling as the seams are slowly starting to come apart. The glasses themselves are also extremely old fashioned. Aging can sometimes be told by prized possessions gaining wear and tear or holding onto the the relics of a bygone era.

The prompt for the week was telling a story with shadows. My family and I visited a historic jail, and the only light inside the criminal’s prison was a single candle (electronic, of course) in order to try and simulate what it would be like inside. I decided to photograph the tiny sliver window, with the shadows of the jail cell bars and other people against the wall, to try and capture the exhibit the hopelessness and trapped feeling.

For this week’s prompt, we were challenged to show “new beginnings”. Something that I love about the area that we live in is that after spending most of the year with golden hills, when it starts to rain, the hills are suddenly just covered in the green with all of the new grass. I think that symbolizes new beginnings because for all of the growth, they will eventually all turn golden and eventually brown as they live and die, but right now they are just at the start of the cycle where they will be bright and green until the rain eventually passes on.

The prompt for this week was hometown. One of my favorite parts of my community is that every year, we put on a parade called “Festival of Lights”. It is on a Sunday sometime at the beginning of December and the local marching bands performed and different organizations create floats to be featured. It never really feels like the Christmas season has started until we go to the Festival of Lights. This particular photo was of one of my favorite floats of the parade that we saw this year. It was challenging to take a picture of the float that was both moving and was extremely bright in comparison to the background.

The prompt for this photo was love story. In the flower language, depending on the color, roses have different meanings. The broad meaning of roses is love, but when you look closer at each of the individual meanings for each of the colors represented, it paints a very interesting story. One meaning for white roses is innocence. This rose also has flecks of pink, which symbolize happiness. I thought it was interesting that as the flower has begun to decay slightly, with yellow slightly overtaking the pink. Yellow roses stand for jealousy and a decrease of love. I think when you combine all of these meanings together, it creates a complex story of a new love that was originally happy, but slowly became more toxic over time.

When I thought of warmth, I first thought of fire. I didn’t really have a lot of access to fire, so I settled for the next best thing: light. This photo was taken at festival celebrating all the holidays that are related to lights, including the Chinese Lantern Festival, Diwali, and Christmas. I think there is also something to be said about the warmth that also comes with celebrating those holidays.