Digital Playground

Creating a digital composition is like placing life in play mode. The joy of spontaneously capturing vivid images in natural surroundings sets my thinking in motion. The world becomes a playground of color, sound, and action with a lens in my hands. I observe, wonder, create and then tell a story digitally.

My passion for photography and design started back in college. I distinctly remember a country ride outside of Albany, NY.  The weather was temperate and the scenery was just so different than what I was used to back at the modernistic campus. Red barns and flower fields were perfect settings to capture pictures for a photo journal I was creating in my photography class. I noticed, wondered, played with photo layouts, and created a scrapbook portfolio.

With the advent of apps and iPhones, I have advanced from photo scrapbooks to digital portfolios and global galleries of artistic expressions. The techno world of today allows me to couple writing with art, technology, and design in a digital playground of creation. Images are shot; words revolve; writing flows. As I continue to play with digital tools, inspirational quotes, image poems, and or digital inspirations are created. Life stands still at these times in my office. Play is celebrated; thinking honored; writing connects with life experiences.

An example of this evolved when the storm, Hermine, started moving up the eastern seacoast with a reported destination to New York. Luckily, it fled from the Long Island shoreline. Witnessing the after effects of the storm surge, set my mind in motion and a story unfolded.  Watching the children on the beach gleefully climb the dune to see what the ocean was doing on the other side set a playful tone to my picture taking. When I tried the same walk-over I was surprised at how difficult it was. Shifting sands only found me sinking into deep holes until I figured out how to transverse the dunes. 

Life was surreal as I watched the surging waves.  The baby seagulls were having just as much fun as the children. They darted toward the flowing water and quickly waddled back as the waves moved closer to shore.

The surfers darted in and out of the ocean as they decided how to ride the waves. 

I delighted in capturing all of us this and then deciding what to digitize.

I am turning around this passion of telling story through photography by providing teachers with the tools to uncover the power of  images. Given choice in the digital playground, students can observe the world with a different lens and tell their story. 

Margaret Simon opened DigiLit Sunday with a call to reflect. While this piece is being submitting, I spent a good deal of time reflecting on the Day of Remembrance tracing back to 2001 when my community was faced with a tragedy, the loss of 45 lives. Please read Remembering #911 here. You can access others' thoughts here.