Items

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  2023-03-25

  Lockdown Story from A Different Perpective

  “During the lockdown, it seems that everyone took on a small hobby to keep themselves busy. For me, I took on a couple to keep me busy. One of them included going for daily walks and taking photos of the scenery around me. I’ve taken walks even before COVID, but this was the only time where I really took my time and payed attention to my surroundings. I normally don’t bring my phone as that time is my 20 to 30 minutes away from technically, however I started to bring it along with me to take photographs of the trees blooming in spring and everything starting to grow and looking amazing. For the remainder of 2020, I kept to my hobby of taking photos and made sure to capture scenery I thought looked interesting. I especially made sure to snap photos in the same spots to capture what they look like in each one of the seasons. Luckily with it snowing weeks before Christmas that year, I was able to get a photo of one street during each one of the seasons. To me, they looked really cool!” Photo by Kyle Collesano, April 19th, 2020 #lockdownstatenisland
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  2020-07-21

  #twilight on the #highline #nyc #elevator #greenflash

  #twilight on the #highline #nyc #elevator #greenflash https://instagr.am/p/CC7EA8ApfcE/
• 
  2022-04-12

  VAP and SMhopes #19

  More nature
• 
  2020-04-20

  Nature can boost your mental health during COVID-19 pandemic

  The pandemic has negatively affected many individuals' mental health. This article describes the benefits nature can provide in improving one's mental health during this time.
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  2021-03-04

  Sacramento artist, David Smith's display of COVID-19

  I heard about David Smith's COVID tree from the interwebs and set out to find it "in the wild" on Sunday, March 7th. The initial article says he created a total of seven giant viruses, and I was able to snap this photo of one in the tree, along with a giant Pfizer vaccine syringe, and a sign at ground-level that reads, "WEAR YOUR MASK."
• 
  2020-08-20

  Get Out!

  Even in a global pandemic when everything is shut down, there are still a million things to do and see. This was our family’s trip up Kennebec Pass, which is only an hour from our hose. Covid is the perfect opportunity to explore your own back yard, provided you do so safely!
• 2020-10-26

  Leaving the House After 4 Months of Quarantine

  Leaving the house in this climate has been an event and a half each and every time it happens. You really begin to take it for granted- all those months in quarantine and not seeing the outside world really does do numbers on your perception of what is real and fake, as odd as it sounds. Everything changes when you’re deprived of something for so long. I remember the first time I left the house. It was my family and me- we were leaving to go to my Grandma’s house, I think, and this was four to five months into quarantine. Prior to this, I haven’t been past my backyard for the past half a year. I’ve never been a big outdoorsy person, so there was no reason to really leave my house the entire time. So my family drags us all out to go and see my Grandma, who has been doing somewhat meh recently. We get ready, take showers, the whole shebang. I remember seeing trees again. You’d think that oh, seeing trees is completely normal, it’s something we see on a daily basis. But the difference between seeing them through my bedroom window and in real life was honestly kind of shell shocking. I spent the entire car ride just watching outside the window and absorbing the world back in. It seemed so much greener than before’ I’m not sure if that’s because no one has been outside and that helps the environment, or if it’s just been so long since I saw plants that it almost seemed unreal. The smell, too, oh my god. I forgot how the outdoors kind of vaguely smells like plants all the time depending on where you are, but the area near my grandma's house smelled exactly like flowering trees. My family were all laughing seeing my reactions because it seemed so odd, but honestly, it genuinely shocked me. You don’t realize how much you take for granted until it’s ripped away from you, after all. They’ve been able to leave the house, but I haven’t, so of course I’m going to be super confused and astounded. But yes. Was a weird experience. Trees really did look greener back then and the world seemed so new- it’s weird to think about since it’s not something people think about often or re-evaluate. After all, it’s something that’s meant to melt into the background, since people have more to focus on than trees passing by on the highway or the smell they make.
• 
  2020-04

  Hickory Run State Park

  Since I work and go to school full time, it can be hard to find time to get out into nature. However, since the coronavirus caused my job to be furloughed for a time, it allowed my fiancé and I to use our newfound time to explore the amazing beauty of Pennsylvania's state parks.
• 
  2020-04-22

  Bringing Photography Back to My Life

  The image is of a white flowering tree in a family member's garden, that has a ray of light in the corner of the photo. This was taken during a social distancing visit with family, and in way made me realize that I would like to bring photography back into the forefront of my professional career and don't want to be stuck in an office all day.
• 
  2020-04-18

  Green Spaces

  I live in a city. I have lived in this city for about seven years, but I did not grow up here. I grew up in a place with space and trees and green, green grass. Birds and deer and foxes in the backyard. Sometimes I would forget how much I missed that room to breathe. When things started shutting down, when I got sent home, removed from my day-to-day of work and grad school and working out, I started taking walks again. I got a bike and began roaming around the threads of city park sewn together from patterns of a previous century. The trees there are so tall, and the lawns so wide, the paths are empty and the remains of stone foundations and concrete ponds are hidden under the grip of viney tendrils. Things feel slower now, they feel more like when I was a kid on long days outside, sitting on the grass with the four o'clock sun and no responsibilities. It feels strange, it feels a little guilty, to admit that right now I am more relaxed that I have been in years, but the streets are empty and silent at night and I can hear the crickets. For the first time in my life here, I walk down the street without catcalls, without fear of strangers. I am more confident in this new world where we are all afraid of each other. There is reason to keep away from me and from me to keep away from you. And this is privilege too. I still work, I still have school, I have a car and I have good health. I wear my mask and wash my hands after going to the store, I volunteer, I leave groceries on my neighbor's porches. I donated my $1,200. But in some ways these actions feel like penance for my guilt at being okay. Being calm and centered. It hasn't hit me yet. Maybe this is shock, maybe when it comes and I get it or my partner gets it or my parents get it everything will change. The world has changed so much already, I see both good things and bad at work. I have no ability to think about when it will end, I don't think it ever will. We are fundamentally different now and deep wounds will remain in us forever, but if men no longer yelled at me on the street, if I felt safe in my own city, if I knew the green spaces to retreat to in the worst moments, at least one small good thing would happen.
• 
  2020-03-15

  Birds keep building nests

  This is a photo I took while walking in the park. It is nothing extraordinary it is just a picture of a leafless tree with several birds nests sitting in its branches. I took it because I remember feeling really off that day. I had that feeling in my stomach and arms, the feeling you get where you are anxious but you do not fully know why. Work was hectic, outside seemed to quiet to be outside and something about this tree captured a normalcy I wished I felt part of at the time. I can not say this virus is what scares me. I am not underestimating the abilities of an illness with no vaccine but I feel if anything, it is people that have scared me. The second it seems that the world is not working in our favor we have turned against one another, hoarded, fought, been unsympathetic in nature to the only other beings that can truly understand how we feel. While all the while, the birds remain unfazed, building their nests in their trees.