The backyard of the house I lived in through elementary school was one of my favorite places to be when I was little - we had a playset in the back of it and a huge garden on the left side. There is a small shed in the corner between the garden and the playset. The playset had a slide, two normal swings and one of those swings that two people could sit on, in a fashion like a teeter-totter. My mom would always take photos of my sister and myself in front of the garden near the sunflowers every summer, and I have several photos of myself on one of the swings when I was about two years old. The grass was always super green in the spring and summer, and the leaves were always the brightest reds and oranges. In the center of our yard we had one of the tallest trees in my neighborhood, and we always had a thick layer of leaves on the ground at fall. Naturally, we had epic leaf piles as well. I haven't seen that place in ages - I have no idea what it looks like now, but I would hope that the garden is still there. I hope that the tree didn't cause any trouble like it's brother in the front, which had to be cut down because the roots were causing flooding with our pipes. I would imagine that they got rid of the playset by now.
Memory of a Photograph
When I was little, there was a small boulder on the front lawn of my grandpa's house in California. Every time we go out there, my mom will always take a photo of my sister and I sitting on the boulder. It's not so much that the place has changed, other than the different variety of flowers in the background of the front yard, but when I look through the series of these photos I notice how I get bigger. A reenactment of this photo would be my sister and myself sitting on the boulder, barely having enough room for both of us. Things always seem so much bigger when you're little.
Human-Made Space
It was interesting to watch the field behind my current house transform into more of the neighborhood. We were one of the early families to move in - I've lived there for a little over nine years now, and my bedroom window had a perfect view of the back field. Nothing but grass and in the great distance a line of trees - before my neighborhood existed, it was farmland, where country kids would ride their horses through, or so I heard. Wasn't hard to believe since I could also see horses from my house. I remember there were some days that I would watch the construction workers because they began to work while I was still sleeping and they would wake my up with their dinosaur-like machinery. I remember that sometimes after the workers went home I would go inside the houses as they were in mid-construction and explore. If I were in this class as this was going on, I would probably go in the houses and take photos from the inside of the house with the bare frame, before they put the walls up, so that you could see the rest of the natural land and fields.
Unknown vs. Familiar Space
Familiar: The Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
Unknown: Hawaii.
I could use photography to show the differences in temperature, how people dress, how the land looks, how the bodies of water are different and how the beaches look in January. Have you ever seen snow on a beach? It's pretty amazing.
A place that has been "touched" very little by people is space. Because it's so massive and so little of it has been explored in person - so much machinery and telescopes do the looking for us - that many things about space are still uncertain. We use telescopes to photograph the many stars and asteroids and planets, but I'm sure that it's an entirely different experience when you're there experiencing the event with your own two eyes. Like seeing the Grand Canyon, and standing right next to it while you're looking at it - it's just breathtaking.
In-Camera Collage
When I was little, I was always in my bedroom. I hardly ever went to play with the other kids on my street. I had a sliding-door closet, my twin bed right next to my windows, and my Beauty and the Beast sheets. This was the bedroom in my old house. I am not in my bedroom in my current house as much now, but through high school I was there a fair amount too. It would be interesting if I would be able to have a long shutter speed and set up so that there is a young me and then the current me sitting on the beds of our respective times in the same position. The current me would be more bold, but still transparent, and I think I would show the current me leaving the bedroom as well; to imply that I'm finally leaving to explore the space beyond my bedroom (finally!).
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