Podcast

The speaker introduces herself as Amanda Haney and discusses some images she has taken for a storytelling course. She shares an image of students at a spelling bee, a photo taken without her glasses to show her blurred vision, and a chaotic picture of students in the car rider lane at her school. She also talks about a photo of a flagpole and highlights some images she really likes, such as a cat on her roof at night, a contrast between red and tan walls in her living room, and a photo of her daughter playing alone. However, she mentions that she didn't enjoy taking selfie images and pictures of a lone student in a crowded hallway, as well as a photo in the school cafeteria with glare. Hello, everyone, and welcome. This is part four of project one for storytelling with still images, and my name is Amanda Haney. The purpose of this podcast is to go through and talk about some of the images that I have already taken for the course and highlight some of those images that I really like versus some of those images that, honestly, I just wasn't that crazy about after I took them. So, I want to start today just talking about a few of the images that I have taken so far in the course. So, this first image you see is actually an image from our district spelling bee. The second young lady from the mics is my finalist from my school for our district spelling bee, and this is kind of like our top seven in the spelling bee here. You could really tell in this picture, and if it wasn't so kind of distorted from trying to zoom in, that all of the students were extremely nervous at this point. This young lady actually was the last remaining middle school student, and in the end, she actually took second place in the entire district bee, and now she will go on to compete here in a few weeks in what we call our metro area spelling bee. So, we're really looking forward to that. The second image that you're going to see is an image I took to show looking through a different lens. So, I am a glasses wearer. If I don't have my glasses on, I cannot see. And so, what I thought was really cool about this image is I took off my glasses and actually took the photo through them. So, essentially, everything that is blurry in that background is exactly how I see things when I don't have my glasses on. That was really cool for me because what I assumed was it would just take a photo and the glasses would be there, but everything in the background would be clear because to the naked eye of someone who doesn't have vision problems, you would think that they could be able to see all of those things. However, that was not the case. The photo literally came out exactly as I see things without my glasses. So, this third image that you're going to see is a group of our students at my school on the car rider lane in the afternoon. This is probably one of the most chaotic times of our day because it really depicts just the amount of energy our students have at the end of the day. So, they almost come flooding out of the building like a mass exodus. So, I took this photo just to really give an idea of just the crowd. There is really truly like no individual in this photo that you can obviously see. There's lots of horse playing going on in the background. You will have kids that get very close to the road in an attempt to try to look for their vehicle who has not arrived up the hill yet. So, lots of safety hazards in that, but nevertheless, this is a photo I took for that purpose to kind of illustrate everything that goes on in the afternoon. So, now I want to kind of shift the focus of my podcast. I want to talk about a couple of images that I really like, but before I do so, I almost forgot. I have one more image I just kind of wanted to share. So, this is actually our flagpole at school. Typically, we have students who will put up the flag every morning around 830, 845, right before announcements, and then they bring it down in the afternoons. Well, our flag has been weathered and worn to the point where we no longer actually hang it. And I don't want to get into what is and what is not the law or what is and what is not appropriate. However, just the visual of this bare flagpole with an active school in session I just thought was pretty powerful. So, now I want to get into a couple of photos that I have taken for this course so far that I really like. I'm going to set the stage for you for this first photo. In this photo, this is our cat on our roof. So, my husband and I recently adopted a stray cat. She started coming up several months ago, and I immediately told him, hey, I don't want any other animals in my house because we already have a dog. We also have two reptiles in our house. And he was obviously on board and understood, but slowly but surely, you know, she really did warm us over, and so now she is an inside cat. However, when she was an outside cat, literally just a couple weeks ago still, she one night opted to jump on top of a canopy that we have on our deck. And from the canopy, she chose to jump on our roof. I have never seen a cat on a roof before. I've heard about cats climbing trees. You know, the fire department has to get involved. But this cat decided to jump on our roof, and so it was really funny. And so, it was perfect timing to use this image for taking a picture of an object at night. So, here you have our cat. Now, the second image here, the second image is for the purpose of taking a photo inside using natural light. So, in this photo, it's actually what I love most about it is the contrast between the red wall and the tan wall. And this is actually inside my living room. So, in my living room, I have an accent wall, and so that would be the red wall. And all the other walls are tan. And what I love here is just the beautiful shadow that the blind and the natural light creates, really showing that stark contrast. Now, we'll say when the lights are on and things like that, it doesn't look as harsh. However, in that natural light, it does look like a very blunt difference. And this is the third photo that I've really liked from the projects that I've done so far in the course. So, this photo is supposed to represent someone by themselves. And so, this is a photo of my 10-year-old daughter. And what I love about this photo is just that childlike innocence she has. She has an entertainment room in her house. This is kind of where she goes, but she gets some space just to herself. So, in this photo, she's just kind of innocently playing on her iPad, playing a game. She's not talking to friends. Honestly, setting up the scene for this photo, I would have to say that I had to go find her. Because I didn't know where she was. She was just so quiet. And so, she had just kind of decided she needed a mental break, I think, from everybody else. And so, she chose to go to her entertainment room and just kind of relax and chill out and get some me time, as we know we probably all need from time to time. Now, while I have really either just absolutely loved or enjoyed taking all these photos, I have to admit that there were a couple of photos I did not enjoy taking. So far. And one of them is this. So, one of the objectives for the course was to take selfie images. And for me, taking selfies can be a very self-conscious thing. So, these are my selfies. I did not enjoy taking these. I did not like looking at myself from both sides and being able to be like, that's a wrinkle, that's, you know, an extra, looks like a little piece of extra fat there. So, for me, I didn't really enjoy this. However, you know, I did it obviously for the course. But definitely didn't enjoy this just because of that self-consciousness I have there with it. Now, another photo that I did not really enjoy was taking a picture of students in a crowded hall and kind of isolating one. So, in this photo, you will see that there are several students in the hallway. However, there's just this one young man. And you may not be able to tell, but it's a young man in the photo there. But he's all by himself. And what bothers me about this photo is just that idea of our kids sometimes get lost in the crowd and they don't get recognized. So, I almost feel like this is such a powerful photo to show that sometimes our kids really just feel alone. And so, I didn't like taking it because I just felt like it sent that message. Now, the third photo that I did not like is taken in our school cafeteria. And I don't like this photo because I really wanted to capture the different textures in the photo. So, the brick wall versus the steel beams. And then, of course, the glass window. But I don't like this photo because of the glare. So, between the natural lights, between the overhead fluorescent lights coming from the cafeteria, it created this terrible glare. And I took this photo a couple of times. I did it without flash. I did it in different modes, portrait mode, and things like that. But I kept getting the same results. So, I don't like this photo just because of the way it come out with almost like that glare. So, obviously, in my opinion, that's my best work.