Take a picture, why dontcha? It will last longer - Common & Proper Nouns

One of my favorite things to do is......... take pictures! One of my earliest memories is playing with my mom's old film camera, the kind that used the long film cartridge and had a pop-up flash on the top. When I was younger I asked for a camera, one that I did not have to share with anyone, not even my mother. I got my wish on my 8th birthday and it was perfect. It was a Fuji Polaroid camera that I took everywhere with me. I clearly recall one of the warnings my mother gave me, "Don't take pictures of just anything, make sure you really want to capture it on film." This was not her attempt at getting me to notice composition and design within the viewfinder, rather this was her way of gently reminding me to use the polaroid film sparingly because it was kind of expensive. When I began to take pictures I started to take pictures of my family. My grandmother, my uncles and cousins were all subjects in my photographic endeavors but within a few weeks I got bored of taking their portraits and looked for other things to shoot. I started to focus on the things inside my house. For instance, the lamp that had dangling colorful beads hanging from the lampshade, the flowers inside the flower pots, the shoelaces in my Nike sneakers, my brother's toy cars, basically anything that didn't move. As I grew older my interest in photography grew as well and all throughout high school and college I dabbled in photography. This time I was working with really wonderful cameras that allowed me more creativity while shooting, and I developed an interest in shooting architecture and flora. I use my Iphone and my husbands Samsung cellphone to take pictures. Smartphone cameras have come a really long way and they take wonderful high definition pictures. Everywhere I go, whether vacationing in a new country or to my friend's house to visit, I am ready to captures new images in even the most unexpected places.

Few of the pictures I have taken over the years

Vocabulary List - Nouns

Pictures                                    viewfinder                             beads                       Iphone

Film                                          family                                    flowers                     Samsung cellphone

Camera                                    grandmother                        flower pots                 country

Cartridge                                  uncles                                   shoeslaces                images

Mother                                     cousins                                 Nike sneakers

Fuji Polaroid camera               endeavors                              high school

birthday                                   portraits                                 college

warnings                                  house                                    architecture

composition design                 lamp                                       flora

Vocabulary Exercise - Nouns

Nouns are words that refer to a person, place, thing, idea and emotion. Circle the nouns in the word search puzzle below. 

Grammar Point - Nouns

Nouns are words that identify a person, place, thing, ideas and emotions. Nouns can be:

1. Common nouns and refer to the common name of things, people and places of a given class.

    Ex: shoes, car, socks, glass, hero, phone, doctors, teachers, arena, theater, soda

A useful way to identify common nouns is by placing "the" in front of the word.

2. Proper nouns and refer to the particular of things, people and places.

    Ex: a) places-Italy         b) company-Nike, Coca Cola      c) movie-Goodfellas, Bourne Identity     d) person-Matthew, Peter

Proper nouns do not usually have "the" in front of them and usually begin with a capital letter.

Proper & Common Nouns Exercise

Determine if the words are common or proper nouns.

shirt_______________                         tommy hilfiger____________

company____________                       music___________________

airplane_____________                       san diego_________________

shoe_______________                        chicken__________________

samsung____________                       pizza___________________

pencil_______________                      mc donald's______________

new york_____________                     notebook________________

fish_________________                      grade__________________

susan_______________                      father__________________

crayons______________                     furniture________________

ibm_________________                     church_________________

macy's_______________                    world war I____________    

harvard______________                     sunday________________

dancer______________                      city___________________

biology_____________                       eiffel tower_____________

holiday______________                     germany_______________

For further reading on nouns, please visit www.englishclub.com/grammar/nouns-what.htm