Chevron Focus Environment Photography Competition

November 26, 2023November 26, 2023 Katherine Kucharski

How would you like to win $3000 for one photo? The Chevron Focus Environment photography competition is an annual contest where the winners share $25k by entering photos in the three categories of sustainability, habitats and ecosystems and native species. It encourages Kindy to year 12 students to explore Western Australia’s biodiversity. The prestigious Harry Butler Award, named after the famous Western Australian naturalist, is given to one person with the best photo out of all the entries.

In 2022 I took up photography for fun and began to grasp the multiple aspects of taking photos, such as exposure, shutter speed, settings such as auto-tracking objects, and aperture. For me, the most interesting subjects to photograph were birds as they also pose a challenge due to their speeds and skittish nature. I started exploring a variety of fauna-rich areas including Margaret River and Exmouth where I was able to find birds, animals and breathtaking scenery. To identify and learn about the birds that I saw, I found apps such as Merlin Bird ID and Michael Morcombe’s Australian Birds. When I entered the competition in 2022 as a learning experience, I was awarded second and third place and $250, which encouraged me to continue this hobby to greater heights. ASC also received $750.

2022 Photo- 2nd Place- *Daunting Majesty*

2022 Photo- 3rd Place- *Puffed and Proud*

In 2023 I went back to the places I discovered, as well as going to new places. I repetitively went to the bird hide in Exmouth when I was there on holidays due to my previous success, but surprisingly on the way back to our hotel I found countless birds of prey such as white-bellied sea eagles. I took one winning photograph of an eagle plucking a Pink and Grey Galah on top of a termite mound. Although this was a gruesome photo, I decided to enter it and played around with different titles such as “Bird Eat Bird” and “Pecking Order”, but finally decided on “Apex Predator” which was apt because the eagle was perched on a termite mound.

On one of my orthodontist visits around Karrinyup, I noticed “Lake Gwelup Reserve Rainbow Bee Eaters” was nearby. These incredibly swift and photogenic birds started to consume hours of my time as I tried to find the perfect shot of one in flight. These unusual vibrantly coloured birds migrate to Perth in Spring and dig tunnels in the ground to lay eggs. As their name suggests, they feed on bees by first rubbing them against branches to remove the stinger but also feed on dragonflies and even scorpions. My winning photograph captures two Rainbow Bee Eaters sharing a bee which I named “Bee Sharing, Be Caring” inspired by Jacob Powell.

2023 Photo- 1st Place and Harry Butler Award- *Bee Sharing, Be Caring*

Caption: Rainbow Bee-Eaters, or “Birranga”, migrate to Lake Gwelup to mate and nest. They acrobatically catch bees in flight before carefully removing the stingers and sharing.

Jewellery & Sculpting

June 14, 2022June 14, 2022 Katherine Kucharski

For my Semester 1 InnovatED, I chose Jewellery and Sculpting. Our aim was to make bracelets, anklets, rings and photo frames using recycled beads as gifts for children in hospitals. We later found out that the hospitals wouldn’t accept recycled objects, we then decided to sell out bracelets etc at the Runway Market and give all profits to the hospitals.

The process

Once we had been given the thrown out beads, all of us started destroying them to get the beads. Once we had all of the beads (a lot), some of us went through the painful process of organising the beads by colour. The rest of us tried packaging, logos, company names, messages for the children (as we still did not know that the hospitals reject recycled products). I worked on packaging with a partner.

Internet images because you can’t distinguish whether our boxes are boxes or monsters

Once we had gathered ideas, we came up our company ideas. We decided on Wishmakers. A week later we found out that the hospital doesn’t accept recycled products, and started to make the products tailored towards older recipients. We scrapped the idea of notes for the children and scrapped the idea of putting cardboard behind them so it would stand out. We found boards which we could pin the bracelets on, which we decided to use for displaying the bracelets.

We felt that we didn’t have enough variety of products (we just had bracelets) and decided to make more products. Half the class went off and made anklets and photo frames, the other half (including me), went off and made more organisational things like price stickers. I was tasked with making the price stickers which we later put on the boards and the spreadsheet, which had quite strict requirements.

At last it was time for the market. In total we managed to raise around $115 for the hospitals, although we could have raised a lot more.

We could have improved the process by:

Coming up with a clear idea. Finding out that we had a completely different idea during the process wasn’t fun. If we had a clear idea in the first place, it would have been a lot better (the happiness of the students would be raised)
Coming up with the selection of products in the first place. I think we should have come up with our product range in the first place, we would have more of a profit because coming up with products last minute was unproductive and made us slightly more money.

I enjoyed this InnovatED topic as it was a relaxing way to end the day. No stress in a subject felt so right and just comforting. Knowing there was (most of the time) no homework put me into a relaxed mindset which I think we all need with the rush and pressure of year 8 (especially tests). I heard from other students from other InnovatED topics how confused, bored, or stressed they were because of their topic, which made me feel better about mine. I mainly chose this InnovatED because it could involve sculpting, but if I knew that we would be doing this relaxing topic, I would have chosen it for this topic.

Project Utopia Reflection

October 26, 2021December 2, 2021 Katherine Kucharski

Project Utopia is a project dedicated to redesigning the Fremantle Port into a place where all people thrive. In this project, we were put into groups of about four and developed different ideas for what to put into Fremantle Port and how it could built. The project work required team skills including the College Capabilities, mainly communication and organisation. I found that I improved these skills throughout the project.

My team in order from left to right: Katherine (me), Penelope, Saya, Dylan.

Good communication was vital. I was quite happy with my group which consisted of Dylan, Saya, Penelope and Maverick (who was absent most of the time). I communicated quite well with my group but could have communicated more and told them what I was doing/going to do. This would have improved our organisation. My communication skills came in most handy when we presented our HASS speeches about our Port redesign. I focused on culture and plants which I thought was an easy topic to write about and present. My feedback for my HASS presentation was good. My teacher recommended that I could have moved around more to keep my audience’s attention. My group didn’t give me as much feedback as I would have hoped. I thought that my public speaking was quite good. The showcase day went really well for me. However, Dylan and Penelope sometimes didn’t give Saya and I a chance to talk about our expert areas. I think that my communication could have been a bit clearer at times, describing what we chose and, in more detail, why we decided to put it there. I found communication quite an easy part of the project but could still improve in some areas.

Fremantle Port map with our original zone outlined in blue, and our final chosen zone in red.

Throughout the project, everyone had to be organised to enable us to meet our deadlines. I found it quite easy since I naturally organise my work. Our excursion to Fremantle Port made us reorganise ourselves and reduce our design area from the blue zone to the red zone to make it more manageable. We came up with our main idea of the water park and I organised what my group researched. I was tasked with researching the topics of plants, culture, and sustainability. I think I worked quite well when researching but I could have explored the topics in more detail. I organised our collaboration space on the OneNote as well. Notetaking was also well done but often I was distracted by my group. I could have made more organised notes on the excursion too. I would have preferred to walk around the area we were redesigning. My organisation skills helped my team to succeed in this project.

Project Utopia helped me develop essential skills like courage (public speaking), problem solving and collaboration. Project Utopia helped me to become better at communication and organisation