Now that the weather is warming up and it’s actually nice outside, I can enjoy taking a few snaps. I’m really fortunate my phone has a really good camera so I don’t have to haul out the SLR to get good pics. With a little help from Photoshop Elements, I can make some really amazing looking pictures.
I set the phone down on the ground and told it to focus on the dandelion head. Once I got back into the house, I use Photoshop to blur out the background so it would pop. I’m really happy with the result on this one.
I didn’t do any color correction on it because I liked the lighting as it was. The sun was setting so everything had a warmth to it.
Our little dog, Ginger, loves to sit outside in the evenings. She looks forward to me taking her out to sit after dinner every night the weather is good. She chased a squirrel up a tree and she was watching it intently. She really wanted it to come down so she could bark at it and chase it.
Sometimes, the squirrels will sit up in the tree and chatter to her; it’s pretty funny to watch. She really is a very sweet girl.
I’ve always loved to take pictures. Unfortunately, I had someone ruin it for me for a long time. When I was teaching, I was very involved on campus. I loved to take pics for the yearbook kids. Since many of the kids at my school were socioeconomically disadvantaged, I did football and basketball portraits really cheaply. I even did it for free for the ones who couldn’t afford it. I’d pull the kid aside and let them know that I understood money was tight, but to let me know what sizes and how many their family might like. I’d deliver them along with the rest of the kids’ orders.
I wasn’t out to anyone at the school and thought I hid it pretty well. I was pretty popular with the kiddos because I was the teacher who would listen to their problems and encourage them without any judgment. A lot of kids, both girls and boys, would run up to me and hug me throughout the day and it made me feel really good inside because it was nice to see the kids smile. The teacher across the hall started making things up and reporting me over and over and over again saying I was being creepy. It was a gut punch to be called downtown to the district administration building and cautioned about sexual harassment. I didn’t understand where it was coming from, but it really felt like I was being targeted.
There was the one kid who I was fond of who was known as a troublemaker. He called me after dark one January night saying he didn’t have anywhere to go. I wasn’t going to leave a 14-year-old out all night on a bad side of town. I picked him up, fed him, and we called his mom to tell her he was safe. He hadn’t been home in two weeks. He ran away because mom had just given birth to another kid, and he felt they’d have more money from welfare if he wasn’t there. I worked with his mom and really tried to get him to go home, but he just wouldn’t. We decided he could stay with me from time to time and his mom actually gave me legal power of attorney for that purpose.
The school didn’t like it and called child services. I was placed on paid leave while they investigated me. I ended up losing my job and having my teaching credential flagged for inappropriate behavior. There was no hearing. There was no opportunity for me to defend myself. I was just thrown out of the profession and told if I didn’t resign, they couldn’t promise to keep my name out of the media as a child predator. Yes, I was blackmailed into walking away.
The teacher across the hall had insinuated that I had “pictures of kids on my computer”. They were football portraits or pics from pep rallies. There was never anything inappropriate about any of them. It didn’t matter, though. My reputation had been ruined and that is the trauma that ruined my passion for photography. It’s taken me more than 15 years to feel comfortable taking pictures again.
I’m only taking pictures of flowers and my dogs right now because I still feel really scared to take pics of people. I might get back into it one day, but I don’t know when that would be.
