a few more reunion pics

my mother has long maintained that food or wine (or both) always tastes better when it is consumed with in a place and/or with people that one enjoys. word. and i guess i'd say that i'm finding the same to be true when it comes to taking photos. for example, i was not in a good place (neither physically nor emotionally) when i tried to take the photo [left] of the large, nearly baby mouse-sized cockroach-looking insect that walked across the carpet of the lecture hall (with its seating capacity of roughly 300 plus, of course, room for the bug) in which i am currently assigned to teach a discussion/workshop-based course that is (and always has been) capped at 25. had i been in a better place, for instance, when i shot this picture, i might have done more by way of providing viewers with a frame of reference for the bug's (truly hugely horribly large) size. as it is, the only frame of reference i can provide here is: 1. "take my word for the fact it was really pretty big" or 2. the portion of the metal bracket/pole for the first row railing in the lecture hall. in prep for tomorrow's class, however, i have placed a medium-sized apple in my purse. should the bug attend class again tomorrow i will set the apple next to the bug and attempt a much better photo.

moving on, i took this campus photo a half hour or so before heading off to my discussion/workshop class that is currently being held in a lecture hall that seats 300 people (and, as i would soon discover, one big bug). i was in a fairly good place (both physically and emotionally) when i took this picture and i was alone which tends to make me pretty happy. this picture is much better than the picture above though i think the pond/library shot might have turned out far better had a student not happened to see me, stop and ask--seconds before i took this shot, in fact: a. why i was outside shooting pictures of algae and b. if i thought algae in any way qualified as a kind of communicative practice. though i am quite fond of this particular student, his question (the first one not the second) took the wind out of my sails and forced me to see the composition in a new (and less pleasing light) as i had always thought that green stuff was simply lawn cuttings that had gotten blown into the water.

by the time the time for the 486 reunion rolled around, i was, indeed, in a much better place which i think positively impacted the kind and quality of photos i was able to take. i think this was especially true with the staircase series as my neck hurt so much from looking up five flights of stairs i was, at least while shooting those pics, unable to think about the bug or fixate on the algae business. it was actually kasandra [left] who suggested that the staircase might make for a good photo op. she was right. (unless, of course, it happened to have been erin, adam, violeta, megan, josh, or liz [bottom left] who suggested the pictures on the stairs.)