A few weeks ago I was sitting on the porch with my seventh-grade neighbor Luke Valcour, a Four Winds Nature Program graduate, just talking about what interesting things we’d seen in nature this summer. Luke pulled out his cellphone to show me some pictures, and I noticed how many photographs he was scrolling through. Here are excerpts from our conversation, along with some of Luke’s photos (and one of Luke at work). – Lisa Purcell, executive director
Lisa: “Wow. It looks like you do a bunch of nature photography. Your phone is full!”
Luke: “Oh, one of my favorite things to do if I have nothing else planned is to head up the back hill and see what I can find. I wasn’t very good at first, but my mom shared a few tricks for a good photograph: foreground, background, and lighting.
Like this one. At first all I saw was a tree, nothing really special. But then when you look really closely, you see so much more is going on. Sometimes the small things are the coolest, like this moss.
And this one was just so eerie, all foggy and frozen. The whole stream bed.
I like the creative process. Putting all the different pieces together. Looking for the hidden beauty.
And look at this! I found Oscar the Grouch hibernating!”
What has surprised YOU in nature recently?
this is wonderful!!! sure makes me want to help out!