I recently went home to help my parents with some things and I took a picture of the front yard and the backyard as seen through my window.

I thought the front yard looked so serene with the snow dusting the trees. It made me feel very calm to look at this picture again; The mix of nostalgia and also the coldness of winter was really interesting to me. I really like looking at the front yard and driveway of my home since I have so many memories from so many contexts. The yard could be icy and dangerous one day but fun and covered in perfect packing snow in a different light. I feel like this image of the front yard captures both the beauty of winter but also its harshness. The trees are bending from the weight of the snow, the spots where the cars are usually parked are the only spots not taken by the ice, and our beaten-up front porch is lazily shoveled off. All these pieces of this photo tell a unique story.

The second image I have is one I took just before the prior one. It is of my cats hanging out on my bed like they usually do when I am there to visit. I feel like having other living things other than the environment really adds to a written scene, even if you just describe the bustling street or the bark of an agitated dog next door. I also liked this picture because of the juxtaposition between the warm and inviting bed against the cold and unwavering winter outside.

I think both these images serve similar purposes in terms of storytelling. From my perspective, both convey a feeling of comfort and nostalgia for places I no longer stay in regularly. The first image also makes me feel worried about the cold affecting my parents’ health and how the winter will affect the condition of my childhood home. The second image makes me worry about how the cats feel when I leave, if they are happy without me there, and just a feeling of sadness about losing the place I grew up in to time (it doesn’t feel the same way as it used to).  I thought this exercise was fun, since I take a lot of pictures but don’t usually take note of what was important about them or the deeper meaning behind them.