Having Fun with Poetry, My Camera, and Other Things, Too

January Six Word Photo Story Challenge: “Fun”

I play with toys differently now.

Sandi Parsons and Mary Chang Story Writer have challenged me to consider what exactly I do for fun these days. Merriam-Webster defines fun as something that provides amusement or enjoyment. I suppose most folks who participate in the Six Word Photo Story Challenge have fun taking photos, right? As writers, we likely all have fun reading and writing, too. For this story, I tried to bring all of these enjoyable pursuits together in one place.

When I feel an urge to be creative, to get up out of my chair, to play, and to easily enjoy myself, I often set up small scenes to photograph. I’ll arrange a still life with dried flowers and tea cups, stones, feathers, and candles; or I’ll place colorful, texture-rich items around a page of evocative poetry. I photograph the scene from different angles, play with the lighting, and then make edits with Photoshop, Pixlr, or Instagram. I don’t do this for any specific purpose— I just think it’s fun!

For the above arrangement, I placed a selection of my son’s old toys around a page from the Shel Silverstein book Falling Up, which displays his poem “The Toy Eater.” Fun on fun on fun! Here is the full text of the poem. It’s a fun one, as Silverstein’s poems always are. Thanks to my dad, I have most of his poetry books in my collection.

Fearing the wrath of the toy eater, I did pick up the pieces of this little scene and place them back into my son’s toy box.