LAMORINDA, CA — As we welcome the fall season, we thought it was a good time to share this flashback to springtime in Lamorinda. That is when Patch reader Arleen Thomas captured this photo — it was 5 p.m. May 23 to be exact — while hiking a trail in the Wilder area of Orinda.
” … Where the hiking trails are now very narrow due to the high grass and weeds,” Arleen wrote in an email to Patch. “What an absolutely beautiful day to hike the hills! The mustard is growing like crazy!”
Thanks so much for sharing, Arleen.
It’s Your Shot: Pictures You Take and We Share
Have you got the next incredible photo? If you have an awesome photo of nature, breathtaking scenery, kids caught being kids, a pet doing something funny or something unusual you happen to catch, we’d love to feature it on Patch. We’re looking for high-resolution images that reflect the beauty that is the East Bay, and that show off your unique talents.
So, bring ’em on. No selfies. Not here.
Send your photos to [email protected]. In your email, please be sure to include information about when and where the shot was taken and any other details about what was going on.
A few years ago, during a wonderful summer of hiking in the Pacific Northwest, I found myself writing haiku to caption some of my nature photos on Instagram. This little practice—which I termed Insta-Ku—became the perfect way for me to enjoy and share my passion for nature and my love of language.
Because I am a teacher, it wasn’t long before it occurred to me that Insta-Ku might be a fun and meaningful activity for my high school English students. This activity became an easy way for me to learn a little about my students and to share a little about myself. It also reflects my central goal of bringing attention and mindfulness to every class activity, and it’s a creative, engaging and low-stakes writing assignment that gets my students thinking and talking.
Why Haiku?
The best haiku is a lightning flash of language that artfully narrates an instant in time in a spare and often startling way, compelling its readers to see something familiar in a new light. I love its simplicity and the way it invites its writers to observe closely and to boil language down to its very essence.
For students, a lesson in haiku is an introduction to an art form that they may not fully appreciate. It offers a review of basic language concepts, such as syllabication, imagery, and concrete and abstract word choices. It also can cultivate attention and appreciation of the natural world, language conciseness, and problem solving. Because it is such a short and simple form, haiku can be used effectively across grade levels as both an antidote to writing reluctance and a tool to nurture creativity and confidence.
The Activity
I use this assignment as a back-to-school icebreaker, but it can be used at other moments as well. The goal is to use haiku to boost attention and cultivate creativity, confidence, and community in the English language arts classroom. It takes one 50-minute class period.
The day before I do this assignment, I ask my students to find a photo in their camera roll that really says something about them, or about a thing or a place that they find interesting or beautiful or compelling but doesn’t have them in the photo, and email it to themselves so that they have access to it during class the next day.
On the day we’re doing the assignment, I begin by projecting an image of my Insta-Ku, and I briefly describe where I took the picture and what I was thinking when I wrote the haiku.
Courtesy of Suzanne Caines
Here is the haiku I wrote to go with the photo of Smith Rock in Oregon:
cloudless sky glitters against sun-drenched rocks at noon reflections in blue
This becomes a positive way for my students to get to know me a little better, as I explain where I was traveling and that I love nature and hiking, and also that I enjoy writing poetry in my free time. I have a colleague who uses pictures of her dogs for this activity and finds that students really connect with her by getting to know her dogs’ names and sharing the names of their pets.
Next, I ask students to explain what they already know about haiku, and I use this short discussion to review the basic 5-7-5 syllabication rule.
Then, I emphasize the lesser known tenets of haiku by encouraging students to pay attention and observe closely, describe what they see using concrete imagery, and end with a subtle twist oraha! moment in which they share some new insight about or reaction to their subject.
Finally, I present a slide show from a previous class, which seems to give the activity validity and also helps students to visualize our final product. I then direct students to open the Google Classroom assignment I have posted, noting that I have attached a blank slide show, which they have access to edit. I have already added the first slide, which has a unique picture for each class, the title of the assignment (Insta-Ku), and the class period number.
As students are working on their slides, I keep our work-in-progress class slide show projected on the screen. As I see the photos begin to populate the slide show, I admire and compliment the photos and casually ask individual students where and when the picture was taken.
Because students are focused on their own slides, the attention on each student is subtle and the conversations that ensue are natural and easy. Other students usually begin to join in, and I have found this period of easygoing sharing and conversation to be a positive way to build community in my classroom and to get to know my students.
After many years of teaching high school students, I have come to believe that building student confidence is a first and necessary step to help students engage in deep learning. The minute students feel that they can be successful is the minute they become highly motivated to engage in the work and to push themselves academically.
Low-stakes writing assignments that center students themselves and value creativity are a perfect way to cultivate this type of confidence. Not only do assignments like this one give students an immediate sense of success, but also they can become a space where teachers can engage in positive and uplifting conversations with their students. This translates to trust and community building, which ultimately makes for the most productive kind of classroom.
Manx National Heritage has launched a new photo competition celebrating the Island’s natural environment.
‘Wild Mann’ invites professional and non-professional photographers of all ages, from all over the world, to enter their best nature photo from the Isle of Man.
There are seven different categories, including birds, mammals and invertebrates, and participants have until March 4 2024 to submit their entry.
The organisation says the aim of the competition is to celebrate the natural world, so images featuring farm animals or pets will not be accepted.
As Raquel García-Álvarez guides hikers on a trail surrounding the Sand Ridge Nature Center, her remarks on flora and fauna are interrupted by geese honking. She explains, as curious onlookers admire the birds skirting the water, that there’s more to them than meets the eye.
Geese are known to display “homosocial behavior,” she said. For example, there’s been documented instances of two male geese pair-bonding with each other.
“Wildlife does not live within the context of us assigning them, ‘Oh, you’re gay, you’re straight.’ They show homosocial behavior because they use it to bond. It also just brings them joy,” said García-Álvarez, the policy and sustainability manager at the Forest Preserves of Cook County.
Raquel García-Álvarez, a Cook County Forest Preserve policy and sustainability manager, holds a photo of a gynandromorph rose-breasted grosbeak during a “Queerness of Nature Walk” at the Sand Ridge Nature Preserve on Sept. 15, 2023. (John Smierciak/for the Chicago Tribune)
On a sunny September afternoon, about 20 community members embarked on the “Queerness of Nature Walk” at the South Holland nature preserve. Naturalists used plants and animals like geese to teach queer ecology, the idea that nature doesn’t always express itself in a binary way.
Lanie Rambo, a Forest Preserve naturalist, described queer ecology as “a new way of looking at nature” that acknowledges how sometimes labels such as gay or straight, and male or female, aren’t precise. She said people often “anthropomorphize,” taking human characteristics and applying them to nature.
“This is a bad idea, because nature is much more fluid. It’s much more flexible, and there’s a lot more going on than just these binary categories,” she said.
In fact, Rambo said there’s evidence that 1,500 animal species, from insects to mammals, engage in same-sex behavior. These relations weren’t historically recognized largely due to homophobia, she said.
“A lot of times when scientists saw these things, they’d say, ‘Oh, this animal is doing something abnormal or this is wrong. This is bad or this animal has gone crazy.’ That’s not necessarily true,” Rambo said.
Eliot Schrefer, author of the book “Queer Ducks (and Other Animals),” chronicled some of this history in an article in The Washington Post. Explorer George Murray described same-sex relations among penguins as “depraved” in 1911, and the Edinburgh Zoo director T.H. Gillespie said bisexual penguins “enjoy privileges not as yet permitted to civilized mankind” in 1932.
Visitors walk through the Sand Ridge Nature Preserve during a “Queerness of Nature Walk” on Sept. 15, 2023. (John Smierciak/for the Chicago Tribune)
Some theories suggest scientists mistakenly misgendered animals engaging in same-sex relations, while others believe scientists overlooked the behavior to avoid censure from colleagues, Schrefer wrote. Emerging research also acknowledges that some animals have sex for reasons other than procreation, and it doesn’t necessarily affect their species’ ability to survive.
Rambo said female-female pair bonds in American kestrels, small falcons that are common in Illinois, have raised eggs together successfully.
“As someone who has been working with animals since I was about 18 years old, my working theory is that it brings them joy to live this way, to be with each other,” she said. “They don’t need to be ostracized from their communities. Things that bring you joy reduce your stress and reduce your heart rate and prolong your life.”
At the beginning of the walk, Rambo pointed out the nature center’s resident great horned owl, identifiable based on its prominent feathered tufts and large yellow eyes. At first, she said staff believed the owl was male based on size, but recent behavior seems better aligned with a female. Rambo said it’s difficult to tell males and females apart in many bird species.
A great horned owl greets visitors at the Sand Ridge Nature Preserve during a “Queerness of Nature Walk” on Sept. 15, 2023. (John Smierciak/for the Chicago Tribune)
“For us, as the caretakers of the animal, it doesn’t really matter. They’ve got to eat. They need to have enclosure, they need to have stimulation for taking care of them,” Rambo said. “But whether or not they’re male or female, it doesn’t matter.”
Later on, a bright red northern cardinal, the state bird of Illinois, perched on a fence in front of hikers. Though rare, García-Álvarez said “bilateral gynandromorphism” is possible among the birds, essentially meaning that they’re half-female, half-male. These birds appear almost perfectly split along the middle, with bright red feathers characteristic of a male on one side and pale brown feathers common to females on the other.
García-Álvarez added scientists have also identified half-male, half-female rose-breasted grosbeaks, a common summer resident in northern parts of Illinois. The gynandromorphs have one yellow-brown “wing pit” that is common in females, while the other side has the pink color typical in males.
“There’s a lot of violence toward individuals who consider themselves trans — trans women, trans males, and there’s also high suicide rates within the LGBTQIA+ community because they are not accepted,” García-Álvarez said. “So imagine if they were to hear those words, ‘You are perfect just the way you are,’ or ‘You are natural just as nature intended.’”
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Flowers also prompt people to think critically about gender, García-Álvarez said. A flower is considered “perfect” when it has both male and female parts within one flower structure.
“Imagine if we talked about humans in that same way, like you are perfect because you embody both the masculine and female spirit,” she said.
For some, this science feels personal. When Christine Fleming, who volunteers at other nature preserves throughout the state, got an email explaining the event, the 22-year-old knew it was worth driving an hour from her home in Skokie. She thought the discussion on the cardinals was particularly informative.
“I love nature. I’ve been camping with my family since I was a kid,” Fleming said. “I had gotten a major in environmental science. So this is my thing.”
As a gay Latino member of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, Anthony Quezada said it’s important to talk about different identities — even in nature. The walk was part of the county’s Racial Equity Week.
“As a queer person growing up in a poor community, I was thought to believe in a binary for myself,” Quezada said. “But as I got older, I started to understand that I love multiple people, that I express myself in multiple ways, just as nature does.”
One Redditor posted a photo of a hilariously unnecessary product sold next to the body lotion.
This post appeared with the r/Anticonsumption subreddit’s “plastic waste” tag and pictured a store shelf lined with bottles labeled “Sand Away.” According to the label, the product is “the quick and easy way to remove sand from legs and feet.”
Photo Credit: u/apriljeangibbs / Reddit
Of course, as the original poster pointed out, “Water works just fine … ”
The 226-gram (almost 8-ounce) bottles were being sold for 99 British pence, or about $1.25. The original poster thought any amount of money would be too much for something so unneeded. “I don’t care how cheap it is,” they said.
The r/Anticonsumption subreddit is dedicated to reducing unnecessary purchases and waste. Not only is that philosophy good for members’ budgets, but it’s also a crucial step in protecting the environment. Reducing consumption means fewer resources harvested from nature, less pollution from manufacturing and transporting products, and less garbage taking up space in landfills.
“In my 30+ years of living on the ocean, I’ve never needed anything other than water, my hands, or a towel to get sand off my skin,” they added in a comment.
A few commenters disagreed, saying that they like to use a similar product like baby powder to get off the sand. However, they also said there were more efficient and eco-friendly ways to apply it.
“I have a little bean bag full of baby powder that serves the same purpose and lasts for many years,” said one user. “I use it on my legs and feet before I get into my car at the beach. This company is just ripping people off with that bottle.”
Another user, concerned about what type of powder was being used, commented to outline the risks of using talc, also called talcum powder. Talc, they said, has been strongly linked to cancer.
“Yeah, talc is not good,” agreed the user who had suggested the bean bag method. “I use cornstarch powder.”
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An annual nature photography competition that seeks to showcase the beauty of Malta and Gozo has whittled entries down to the top 15 photos.
The 15 winning entries to the 2023 edition of Wiki Loves Earth in Malta feature a variety of landscape, flora and fauna shots, all taken in Malta or Gozo in the past year.
Top picks were selected by Wikimedia Community Malta in collaboration with Friends of the Earth (Malta) from 463 entries submitted to the competition by 43 contestants.
They range froma stunning vista of clay slopes to an aerial shot of Comino, a macros shot of a tiny spider and an underwater photo of a Flying Gurnard.
Unlike in previous years, photos have been divided into two categories: one focused on landscapes and the other on details of local flora and fauna.
The top five landscape shots and top 10 flora/fauna shots will now be submitted to the global Wiki Loves Earth photo contest, where they will compete with similar images shortlisted across 50 countries from a total of 60,647 entries.
Aside from the image of clay slopes featuring at the top of this article, these are the other 14 Malta winners:
Landscape winners:
Ġebla tal-Ġeneral – Fungus Rock, Gozo. Photo: Terry Caselli Photography
Bird’s Eye View of Comino. Photo: Martin Galea De Giovanni
St. Paul’s Island. Photo: Christian Formosa
Wied il-Għasri, Gozo. Photo: Marika Caruana
Flora/fauna winners:
A Maltese wall lizard, Podarcis filfolensis Photo: Christian Formosa
Flying Gurnard – Rundunell (Dactylopterus volitans). Photo: Saviour Bonnici
Flower Beetle (Labidostomis taxicornis). Photo: Terry Caselli Photography
Some scuba divers look for coral reefs, and others look for trash. In a Reddit post from the r/detrashed thread, some Texan good Samaritans took a dive in their local lake to pick up trash from the bottom.
Photo Credit: u/Millennialdad72 / Reddit
The original poster wrote, “We detrashed a lake in Texas! 4,000 pounds of beer bottles and beer cans. With about 30 scuba divers and 4 boats. Did it in about 4 hours.”
They also posted a photo of an impressive pile of trash bags being hauled out of the lake.
These good Samaritans are part of an informal network of people who “detrash” their local neighborhoods. Some people do it alone, and others bring in friends, families, and local organizations to clean up any mess. This litter clean-up is driven by the desire to take care of their neighborhood and surrounding natural areas.
Improperly disposed of trash can be an eyesore, but it can also cause harm to the environment.
Metal, plastic, and glass, when exposed to natural elements, have the potential to cause many problems for nature and humans. Metals may leach toxins, broken glass can cut an unsuspecting person or animal, and plastic won’t biodegrade in nature.
While the detrash movement doesn’t stop the source of litter, it does keep the trash from doing any more harm in nature. The best solution for litter is to stop it before it occurs, which can be achieved through education and the placement of proper waste receptacles.
The comment section was filled with praise for the Texas detrashers, saying, “We need more people like you.”
Another added, “Wow what an amazing effort, excellent job” to which the original poster replied, “Appreciate that! Unfortunately we hardly made a dent. There’s tons of it covered in silt. But it’s a start!”
The community of good Samaritans doesn’t end with the original poster and their clean-up boat crew. Many commenters shared similar stories. Dive clubs run similar coastal clean-ups, with a commenter saying, “Scuba cleanup is a lot of fun!”
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A Fairfax County mother and education activist says that a school board candidate used her name and photo to pose online as a failed porn actress, according to a lawsuit filed last week.
The suit alleges that Fairfax School Board candidate Harry Jackson created an account on X, formerly known as Twitter, with the handle @pornobsessedffx and display name of “Stacy Bartell-Langton Only Fans,” referring to the media platform OnlyFans where subscribers pay for access to videos and photos. Fairfax mother Stacy Langton says the profile page, which featured her high school yearbook photo, defamed her by falsely describing her as a “failed actress from porn valley” in the bio.
Jackson declined to answer questions about the allegations and the lawsuit. He instead provided a statement to The Washington Post about his opponent’s positions.
The lawsuit is the latest controversy to dog Jackson’s candidacy, after an earlier appearance online in December with an alleged white-nationalist group and an incident in which he mocked a disabled child and then temporarily withdrew from the race. Although Jackson secured an endorsement from the local GOP chapter, some of his critics, including Langton, are conservatives. The unusual conflict on the right in Fairfax reflects the wild nature of education politics amid rising tensions in a nationwide culture war surrounding schools — one that sometimes scrambles party allegiances and can have little to do with education policy or what kids learn. Northern Virginia has often been at the center of those debates in recent years.
Langton, the plaintiff in last week’s suit, who speaks often at school board meetings and has opposed Jackson’s candidacy since last year, filed the lawsuit in Fairfax County Circuit Court on Sept. 14. Langton alleges in the suit that Jackson has also told people in-person that Langton is a porn actress.
She says that she has never been a porn actress.
Fairfax school board hopefuls apologize after laughing at student
In fact, Langton, a self-proclaimed “ultra-MAGA” voter, has spent significant time over the past three years challenging books she deems sexually explicit in school libraries, part of a rise in book challenges nationwide led in part by conservative parents. (Jackson also supports removing such books from middle school libraries.) Langton seeks $850,000 in damages for “reputational harm, mental anguish and emotional distress, shame, embarrassment, and humiliation.”
“Defendant made the defamatory statements with the intent of injuring Plaintiff’s reputation in her community and, specifically, to diminish her credibility in advocating about an issue that he has appropriated and made central to his own campaign for school board,” the lawsuit reads, referring to his platform on school library books.
“I can’t think of a worse thing to say about me,” Langton said in a news conference earlier this year, “given my fight against porn in schools.”
The suit also points out that Jackson posted screenshots online indicating he was signed in to the @pornobsessedffx X account, suggesting he had ownership of it.
Many education activists in the state’s largest school district have vocal social-media feeds, where they lob criticisms, critiques and concerns at one another. It was there that Jackson’s persona came under scrutiny.
Jackson dropped out of a school board race last year after a video showed him laughing at an autistic student singing the national anthem at a school board meeting. At the time, he offered an apology in a statement to The Post and said he was committed to supporting students with special needs.
Jackson did not answer questions about why he decided to rejoin the race for school board, but his website states that his goal is to restore “parental rights in education, transparency, trade and financial literacy, school safety, staff recruitment and retention, mental health, and a focus on core learning concepts.”
His critics have also drawn attention to an appearance in an online chat in December with members of the far-right group the Groypers, which the Anti-Defamation League identified as a white-nationalist group that holds antisemitic beliefs. Jackson joined a “Twitter Spaces” live conversation with a group of users who said they were Groypers. During the conversation, Jackson discussed his run for school board and said he was interested in learning more about what the group was about. In the nearly three-hour conversation, one member of the Groyper chat said they try to help people see that for “almost every degenerative quality of the progression of our nation, there is a Jewish element that’s in power.”
Jackson did not answer questions from The Post about his involvement in the conversation, but previously told WUSA9 in a statement that it was “a political spin story” and he does not agree with the views of the Groypers.
Jackson is running against incumbent, Melanie Meren, for the Hunter Mill District seat. School Board races in Virginia are nonpartisan, meaning there is no party affiliation or primary to nominate candidates. But the politicization of education policy in recent years has led political parties to endorse school board candidates regularly. Meren is endorsed by the local Democratic Party, and Jackson by the Republican.
Photo draws attention to Virginia school system’s use of seclusion
In a statement, Michael E. Ginsberg, GOP chairman of the local congressional district, did not address the claims that Jackson has posed online as Langton, but he defended the candidate: “Instead of dealing with these serious issues, a Twitter-obsessed activist, Stacy Langton, is spending her time focused on meaningless Twitter games that will do nothing to improve educational outcomes in Fairfax County. … Her complaints about Mr. Jackson’s Twitter activities are an unholy combination of projection, a personal animus against Mr. Jackson, and a desperate need for attention.”
During a Fairfax County Republican Committee meeting in May, party members voted to reconfirm Jackson’s endorsement after some voters — including Langton — raised their concerns about Jackson’s background. A small group of members spoke both in favor and against Jackson during the discussion about his endorsement before he took the stage to defend his campaign.
The party decided to maintain Jackson’s endorsement as the only Republican running to unseat Meren.
A father of three, Jackson is a co-founder of Coalition for TJ, the parent group that sued the school board over reforms to the admissions process at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. A federal district judge initially sided with the parents who argued that magnet school’s new admissions criteria discriminated against Asian American students. That decision was reversed earlier this year by an appellate court, and the case now awaits a ruling on an appeal to the Supreme Court.
Early voting in the school board race opened Friday.
With their ability to capture imaginations and evoke emotions, photos can tell us stories about nature that words alone can’t convey. The winning entries in the Nature TTL Photographer of the Year 2023 competition prove that, as far as nature is concerned, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Celebrating the beauty of the world around us, over 8,000 images were entered into this year’s competition, with nature photographers from all around the world vying for the £1,500 (US$1,840) prize money. In addition to naming the Overall Winner and Young Nature TTL Photographer of the Year, winners were chosen in each of the eight categories: Animal Behavior, Camera Traps, Landscapes, Small World, The Night Sky, Underwater, Urban Wildlife, and Wild Portraits.
Thomas Vijayan from Canada won the competition’s Overall Prize for their hauntingly beautiful image, Austfonna Ice Cap, which captures the impact of global warming on the world’s third-largest ice cap. The composition, which is made up of 36 stitched-together images, also took out first prize in the Landscape category.
“This is nature in its most urgent state of decay,” said Audrey Granger, manager of Nature TTL. “The vibrant colors of the towering waterfall are juxtaposed with the reality of its creation. The stark reality is that this image shows global warming’s impact on sea ice, where it is melting at alarming rates.”
Overall Young Winner & Under 17 Winner. “House Hunting” (UK)
Lucy Monckton/Nature TTL
Taking out the Young Nature TTL Photographer of the Year 2023 was the UK’s Lucy Monckton, who braved having hundreds of bees crawling over her to snap her winning entry, House Hunting, showing the process of bee relocation.
“Relocation is a natural process that occurs when a colony becomes too big for its home; the queen leaves with a few of the bees to find another home,” Monckton said.
Other standouts include the runner-up in the Urban Wildlife category, the surreal-looking Traffic Intersection by Simone Baumeister of Germany.
“I really wanted to do some photography one evening, but without light, this is always difficult,” said Baumeister. “So, I went to a pedestrian bridge that offered a direct view of one of the main traffic intersections in our city. There were many spiders on the railing of this bridge. Using an old analogue lens, I photographed a spire in front of the colorful lights of the city intersection with the many cars.”
Wild Portraits, Runner-Up. “Fading Away” (US)
Robert Gloeckner/Nature TTL
And another image that made use of the light from traffic signals was Fading Away by Robert Gloeckner of the US, which was the Wild Portraits runner-up. In it, Gloeckner captures the reflection of a great blue heron in water lit by the green of a traffic light. He used intentional camera movement to create a fading perspective.
Animal Behavior, Winner. “Seal Hunting” (France)
Florian Ledoux/Nature TTL
Florian Ledoux’s starkly white Seal Hunting captures a polar bear patiently waiting by a seal’s breathing hole for its next meal. Ledoux was the winner of the Animal Behavior category with the image.
“This male polar bear stalked seals at their breathing holes,” Ledoux said. “After they evaded him, he opted to rest, vigilant and patient.”
The Night Sky, Winner. “Milky Way” (Hungary)
Bence Mate/Nature TTL
Bence Mate took a unique approach to capturing a wild boar against the immense splendor of the Milky Way in their image Milky Way, winner of The Night Sky category: they used a remote-controlled camera placed inside a fish tank.
“It was lucky that the wild boar stayed unmoved for the moment the picture was taken,” Mate said. “In Hungary, where this composition was captured, the Milky Way is very rarely low enough in the sky to touch the horizon, and this phenomenon occurs only for a few days in the month of August.”
Next year’s Nature TTL Photographer of the Year competition will be open for entries in January 2024. In the meantime, have a browse through our gallery for all of this year’s winning entries.
Savannah Dodd (32), who is originally from St Louis, Missouri, relocated to Northern Ireland in 2016 to be with her partner, who is from Belfast.
Savannah is the founder and director of social enterprise the Photography Ethics Centre and has recently completed a PhD in anthropology at Queen’s University.
Savannah Dodd at work
Her new photography exhibition, titled Slow Still Life, at Ards Arts Centre, embraces reconnecting with nature and slowing down to pay closer attention to the ordinary. It is also about unlearning perfectionism and the urge to be productive.
“I think a lot of this exhibition really stemmed from this move from the city to the countryside,” Savannah says.
“I was really interested in how do we manage this land? How do we steward this land in a responsible way? We’re really interested in permaculture and rewilding. So when we first got out here, we really wanted to learn about all these things and to connect with the land and with nature in a way that we hadn’t really had an opportunity to before, especially because we were travelling so much. We had a really international career pre-pandemic.
“The move really created a change in me as a need to slow down, but I also found a new appreciation for things I think I used to overlook, like slugs — there’s a photograph of a slug in clover in the exhibition. It’s the little things that we have a tendency to sort of forget about.”
During the pandemic, Savannah learned how to process film in her kitchen. As she began connecting with the natural environment around her, she went on to set up her own darkroom and learned the skills involved.
With a desire to document her experience, Savannah felt analogue photography was the best fit.
“Analogue photography is a skill that I gained during the pandemic through a grant from the Arts Council,” she says.
“That was sort of a new thing that I was practising and enjoying working with, but I felt like the slowness of it also made a lot of sense, because when we moved out rurally, I felt like slowing down. I felt slowing down in myself, you know.
“And so it just made sense to make this an analogue project instead of a digital project. But it felt really wrong to try to create work about my relationship with the natural world while using toxic chemistry. It’s sounds incongruous. And so it was really an ethical and a methodological decision that the medium and the method had to align with the message of the work.”
A print featured in Slow Still Life
When researching sustainable analogue processing methods, Savannah found a “growing community of people” online who shared her interests. She also completed a workshop led by photographer Melanie King, who used mint tea to develop photographs.
Through a process of trial and error, the Slow Still Life series began to come together.
“What I’ve done in this exhibition is all of the film is developed with a homemade developer that’s made from basically a tea of brambles, vines and leaves,” Savannah says.
“That tea is steeped overnight and then mixed with vitamin C powder and soda crystals. And that’s my developer, and I’m developing the film with that, and then I’m rinsing it with rainwater.
“With each print, I experimented with different local plants. So some of the developers for the prints are made with rosehip, sometimes nettles, sometimes it’s dock, sometimes it’s brambles. I used apples from my apple tree and sycamore seeds before.
“So I really experimented with trying developers from different plants that I’m able to find in my back garden. That’s how the prints are developed, and then they’re rinsed with rainwater.”
For the final step in the process, Savannah looked to Strangford Lough.
“With printing and film, you have to fix it, because if you don’t fix it, it will just keep changing in the light,” she says.
“I had read about an artist who had used saltwater successfully. I can see Strangford Lough from my living room, so I decided to use that saltwater to make the fixer and give it a deeper connection with the environment.
“So I collected some water from Strangford Lough and I reduced it. Sometimes I reduced it over my fireplace and sometimes I reduced it on the stove if it was not suitable weather for a fire. And basically that makes it its maximum salination, so it really concentrated with salt and that can be used as a fixer.”
A print featured in Slow Still Life
Describing her methodology as “hit or miss”, perfectionist Savannah had to let go of aspirations for technically perfect prints.
An important aspect of creating Slow Still Life involved learning to value the process and find beauty in imperfection.
“There’s one print in the exhibition, it’s a wax cap mushroom, and it was the first successful print I had actually,” she says.
“And I was frustrated because there’s a bit of light: the way that it wasn’t totally fixed when it was exposed to light created different colours on the mushroom. I was really frustrated with myself because I thought: ‘Oh, you know, my process wasn’t totally lightproof.’
“But I shared it with one of those artists who’s also working on sustainable methods and she said: ‘No, that’s what makes it beautiful.’
“And that really was an important reframing for me: that I’m not striving for technically perfect prints, I’m striving to express something through this work and to also demonstrate something through the method.”
The series also features work created using flowers that had been foraged from the Ards Peninsula.
“In this exhibition, you will find anthotype photograms, photographic prints made in a darkroom and images that were transferred onto salvaged windows,” Savannah says.
“Anthotype refers to a photographic process that uses photosensitive extracts from plants. Photogram refers to photographic prints made by placing objects directly on a photosensitive surface. I extracted my own photosensitive emulsion from plants I foraged around my home.
“That’s another component, and that really helps me to learn how to identify plants and have a little bit better understanding of what plants are made of.”
Savannah hopes attendees will leave her exhibition feeling more mindful about the slow moments in nature.
“I’m trying to, I guess, show the value in those ordinary things that feel easily missed,” she says, “and maybe inspire others to slow down as well and think about how they can reconnect with nature and maybe live in a more harmonious way with the world.”
Slow Still Life exhibits at Ards Arts Centre until September 23
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