Never Lose Your Sense of Wonder

For the last couple of summers, I have raised monarch butterflies. From May to September, I hunt for monarch caterpillars to move inside and take care of. My goal is to further the population of monarchs and limit exposure to OE (a deadly parasite that causes defects, lack of flying capabilities, and even death). This past summer was the first time my daughter, Catherine, could understand the concept of Bradley Miller’s quote, “Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child, as it is to the caterpillar.” I ended up teaching her a lesson about the butterfly life cycle for her and she was amazed!

For context, I don’t think there was anything wrong with the original, but the balance was off because the caterpillar isn’t focused. When I originally took it, I was so focused on her love and care for the caterpillar and the other photos from that day focus intentionally on the caterpillar crawling on her hand. However, her eyes spoke differently to me when I looked at it through the lens of this assignment. Thus, I cropped it this way to focus on the sense of wonder in her eyes. She was learning, experiencing a new “thing,” pointing out all of the butterfly stickers on our back porch, etc. – it was a moment to hold on to. I hope she never loses that sense of wonder, and I hope to remain a witness of all the moments that take her breath away.

For this assignment, I was inspired to crop her into a different position in the frame. I wanted to focus on her emotion and use the rule of thirds to mark the twinkle in her eye as the focal point. She is also uncentered, which helps build ambiguity of what she’s looking at above. Finally, I took out all of the background so she is the sole focus of the image.

At the end of everything, it was no longer about the caterpillar, but rather about what the caterpillar had done for my child.

Tags: compositions