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Simone Barley-Greenfield is a senior in Biology and co-terminal Master’s student in Earth Systems with a focus in Conservation Strategies. She has pursued her love of wildlife and ecosystems all over the world, from remote field research in Southeast Alaska to scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef. While at Stanford, she has explored ecosystem function in terrestrial and marine habitats, and she recently completed an honors thesis studying the kelp forest of Monterey Bay. Having spent so many summers tackling field work and crunching data, Simone decided to branch out and try something new, embarking on a three week trip to Costa Rica to study Conservation Photography before the start of this academic year. Her first time picking up a DSLR camera, Simone couldn’t put it down, and she has been photographing wildlife, and food, ever since. The power of images as a medium for storytelling fascinates Simone, and she jumps at any opportunity to get out and shoot.

See Simone's story Apple Harvest.

Simone Barley-Greenfield

Hive to Table

The arts have never been absent from my life. Be it standing in line for hours at the Sydney Opera House to snag a fifty dollar ticket to the opening night of Madame Butterfly or gathering a group of friends for a special trip to the Gauguin exhibition at the De Young Museum in San Francisco, I seek out opportunities to absorb whatever art culture I find myself in. Before The Senior Reflection, however, I felt I had to go off campus to truly engage with the art community. Sure, I had been to Cantor a few times with my parents, and even taken advantage of the delicious catering for Art After Dark, but, even then, I saw Cantor a venue to view art brought into the “bubble” from somewhere else. Stanford wasn’t an “artsy” place. Maybe I could get my creative juices flowing by writing a particularly abstract analysis of an assigned IHUM reading, but, more often than not, my attempts were met with B’s while my formulaic block essays yielded more GPA – friendly results.

As I made my way from freshman year to sophomore year, my approach to schoolwork became even more robotic. Every quarter I would sign up for at least one English course, eager to feed the voracious reader I once was, but inevitably I abandoned my creative ambitions and drop those classes as my major requirements – chemistry, BioCore, physics, and math – took over my schedule and my perspective. Tomes on Native American story telling, Arthurian literature, and contemporary American poetry littered my shelves, most of them unopened. I couldn’t bring myself to return them to the bookstore; I naively told myself I would get to them at some point. I knew exactly how much time to budget for every single one of my problem sets (and there were many), and the time I had left I dedicated to sleeping, eating, and engaging my classmates. I had no time to be an introvert at Stanford, and I forsook the time I had once reserved for reflection, be it on my life, the world around me, or the complexity of Ken Kesey’s Sometimes A Great Notion, for trips to the Axe and Palm, midnight premiers of action movies, and ultimate Frisbee tournaments.

I barely noticed my creative self slipping away; I thought I was finally coming out of my shell and making friends which was why I no longer had time to read. I knew I could make my essays tighter and more lyrical if I gave them another edit and played with the language. However, the idea of spending another hour or two alone at my desk stressed me out more than the thought of turning in an “adequate” paper. I did not feel accountable to the begrudging graduate students who TA-ed my required humanities classes, so I let things slide. I never thought that I ought to be accountable to my own sense of quality.

By the end of my sophomore year, my course load was utterly devoid of arts and humanities. I had never felt less inspired by academics, but I put my head down and kept studying mechanisms, copying procedures, and memorizing formulas and pathways. Everyone called sophomore year “grindstone time” for biology majors, and the only time I had left for reflection I spent frantically searching for research internships for the summer. I found a position studying sea otters in Alaska and walked out of my last BioCore final straight onto a plane from San Jose to the tree-lined shores of Southeast Alaska.

Away from the constant pressure and stimulation of campus, I spent my workdays hunched over a telescope, straining to identify the various crabs, shellfish, urchins, and other invertebrates grasped between the otters’ paws whenever they popped to the surface. I loved the puzzle-like nature of collecting data in the field. I lost myself in the striations on clamshells, vertical indicated Prototheca staminea (or steamer clams) while horizontal ridges belonged to Saxadomus giganteous (butter clams). My crew sped out of camp in our research skiff, the Sea Weasel, each morning surrounded by the towering backdrop of mountains, sky, ocean, and trees. Spending every waking second of every day observing wildlife put me back in touch with driving force behind my pursuit of a biology degree; my love of animals and the ecosystems they inhabit. I found art in the complexity of food webs and ability of life to manifest in oddest ways, from the tiny tube feet on sea urchins to the frayed baleen in the mouths of humpback whales.

My crewmate, Stena, and I spent the majority of our free time exploring the secrets of the wilderness around us. Two years my senior and a recent graduate in biology, Stena became the older sister I not only looked up to but knew would share my excitement over finding a tiny sea anemone adhered to the side of hermit crab’s shell. She lived for the little details in life, and we uncovered them everywhere. From the fuzzy patterns of lichen decorating the tree trunks to sunburst flavor of wild thimbleberries, every discovery brought out her freckled smile.

We filled the void of social media and phone service with sunset fishing trips to catch something for dinner and midnight paddles in our blow-up zodiac. Stena and I would wait for the dark to settle around us before stealing down to the beach to cast off in the two-person boat. We floated in silence listening to the silvery sounds of our kayak paddles sliding through still water, igniting sparkling bioluminescence. We swirled the paddles back and forth, watching light scatter and fade, casting a pale blue glow in the blackness below.

We bore witness to so many beautiful sights, every adventure reminding us of the complexity of the landscape surrounding us. I kept track of our escapades in a lab-notebook-turned-journal, but I felt my words still could not capture just how stunning the northern lights appeared on the midnight of my twenty-first birthday. Returning to Seattle to prepare for my imminent quarter abroad in Australia, I purchased a used, but still rather expensive, point-and-shoot camera. I wanted a nice camera to document my journey, but I had no idea how to operate a DSLR.

My quarter in Australia continued to rekindle my fascination with the natural world. Despite being about as different from Alaska as possible, the ecosystems of Australia captivated me in the same way. Diving on the Great Barrier Reef was like playing “I-Spy” with Mother Nature; I could hover above the same spot for hours and watch as hundreds of organisms swam, scuttled, or floated past. With crowded office hours and three-hour finals far from my mind, I took time every day to peel off from the group and explore my environment with my camera in tow. I took thousands of photographs, from the Royal Botanical Gardens in Sydney to the koala-filled eucalyptus groves of North Stradbroke Island. Photography, albeit point-and-shoot, motivated me to take a closer look at the world around me, and I loved having the ability to show my loved ones not only the beauty of these places but also the little details that made them special to me. I could describe to my mother the feisty, curious, but also skittish nature of the butterfly fish I studied for my targeted research project, but the photo I took of a blue-streaked specimen peering out at my camera from behind a cluster of coral conveyed it all. The photo captured the attitude and appearance of the animal and placed it in the context of its natural habitat – something words could never do.

The power of photography excited me, and I saw an opportunity to make this power my own when I came across a Conservation Photography summer seminar in Costa Rica while browsing next year’s Overseas Seminars. All of my friends pushed me to apply to the Coral Reef Ecology course in Palau, given my addiction to diving and tropical ecosystems. Both sounded life changing, but I could not shake the thrill I felt every time I thought about traipsing through the rainforest, equipped with state-of-the-art technology, determined to show mankind that the natural world is not only worth conserving but also worthy of awe and respect.
I still felt in touch with my artistic side – from going to art exhibitions, concerts, and poetry readings – but more as an art appreciator rather than as an artist myself. As an aspiring scientist, I had resigned myself to a life of amateurism when it came to art. I could pick up a camera, a paintbrush, or a microphone, but my efforts would never hold their own in the world of serious art. Looking back, I do not know where this lack of self-confidence came from, but I am so glad I took the risk to try something new rather than continue a direction I already knew I wanted to go. Yes, Palau would have been incredible, but learning how to take well-composed, and, more importantly, compelling photographs gave me a means of expression I can take to Palau or any other place I choose to go. My experience in Costa Rica showed me how to take my knowledge of biology, my appreciation for the incredible details of the natural world, and my understanding of a camera to create images that tell stories. I had found a medium where the art and the science could not be separated. I did not need a degree in biology to find the photographs our class took striking, challenging, and intriguing, but my training guided me and helped me find the stories I knew needed to be told.

At the end of our three weeks in Costa Rica, my class gathered to view one another’s images and reflect on what we had witnessed and accomplished. I could not believe how many incredible photographs we had produced, nor could I believe that I had contributed some of those images. I no longer felt like an amateur. I wanted to show people my work so that they could share the surprise of looking up and spying a brilliant green iguana on the side of a coconut palm. One of our mentors on the trip, a herpetologist named Josh, urged us to hold onto the meaning of our time in Costa Rica, to not let it fade into just another “cool” experience. I realized that my final year at Stanford could not be just another year of science classes and requirements. I needed something that not only challenged me but also inspired me. So I signed up for TSR.

TSR did so much more than maintain my creative mindset throughout my senior year; it scared, exhilarated, and pushed me in ways I never thought I would experience. When I wasn’t riding the high of returning from a successful shoot or typing a particularly articulate sentence, I was desperately scrambling to figure out where to go or what to shoot next. Simultaneously driven by the thrill of composing the perfect shot of a salmon filet and the crippling fear of never managing capturing a bee in focus I left behind the “just get it done” mentality that had been plaguing my academics. I disappeared behind my lens and made my way from the Ferry Building Farmer’s Market to honey farms in Healdsburg trying to document all the ways bees contribute to human wellbeing. Everywhere I went I thought about the flowers, plants, and animals around me, constantly searching for new perspectives and frames to tell the story of pollination. I got to know Stanford’s campus not just as a network of buildings, classrooms, and resources, but also as an ecosystem with unique pockets of life. The orange grove by the History corner of the main quad had the most bees in the midafternoon, and the kumquat trees attracted mostly honeybees. Bumblebees preferred the smaller citrus bushes on the outskirts of the courtyard. I cannot count how many times I sped past the flower beds between Ike’s and Y2E2 in the last four years until, one day, while out searching for subjects, I found the bushes humming with insect life.

TSR helped me form the habit of keeping my eyes open for artistic potential in everything around me. My gaze travels a bit slower now; I absorb my surroundings, rather than simply assessing them. Twyla Tharp talks about her “creative habit,” and, while I agree that habit plays a critical role accessing creativity, I know now that creativity is more than just a habit; it is a mindset. Creativity is opening myself up to the infinite potential in the world around me – taking something that most people think is one thing, and showing them that it can be something else. Driftwood is more than just wood; it can be a breaching whale. Anatomy is more than flesh and bone; it forms the vessel containing our individuality and compassion. Words are more than just poetry; they evoke this compassion and force us to confront the harsh realities of poverty and abuse. Honey is more than something you put on toast; it catches the sunlight and glows.

Stanford will forever be “artsy” in my mind, now. TSR is like a secret society at Stanford; everyone in the class taps into the artistic potential around them, and each student has his or her own unique way of interpreting this inexhaustible source of creative energy. Simply having the opportunity to relax for two hours every week and chat about creativity gave me the support and sense of community I needed help me through the struggles along the way. Encouraging my classmates through their own challenges made my own roadblocks seem less insurmountable. My section-mates cheered me on as I work-shopped photo after photo honey bees on flowers, always acknowledging the hard work I had put into the images but never letting me settle for ones they knew I could top. I have my spring quarter section to thank for every single macro bee shot in my final exhibition. Despite my frustration, they urged me to keep trying, and their words motivated me to drive to a bee farm to find the shots I wanted.

So much more goes into art than crafting something pretty; there has to be passion. I saw so much passion at the exhibition, and what moved me the most was how much I could feel the passion of each artist in his or her work. Jade’s documentary on music and Alzheimer’s left my eyes stinging, not only because of the emotion she managed to convey with the interviews, but also because I knew how personal this project was for her, and she had nailed it completely.
As I stand here in Wallenberg, in front of my photo essay, I realize I truly am an artist. I know I can transform creative potential into a work I am proud of. Each of my photos has color, texture, and depth, but, more importantly, together, they tell the story of my childhood, my family, and a landscape I love. I understand passion as the life’s blood of art, and I will continue to search for ways to transform my passion into something others can access and understand. In my initial proposal, I planned to tell many more stories than the one on the wall today. I do not regret focusing on bees for the scope of this project, but I have many stories left to tell, both through writing and photography. TSR gave me a voice, as an artist, as a biologist, as a conservationist, as a girl who loves apples, bees, and baking, and I have no intention of keeping quiet.