A Distraction of Poppies

Poppy and Bokeh © 2011 Bo Mackison

Sherpa and I spent last weekend in Milwaukee. We attended the Wright and Like Tour, a tour of eleven houses in the Milwaukee area, all designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and related architects. The annual tour is sponsored by the The Frank Lloyd Wright® Wisconsin Heritage Tourism Program, Inc., created with the assistance of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the State of Wisconsin Department of Tourism.

This is the third year we have attended. We attended our first tour in Madison in 2009 and last year toured homes and businesses in the Racine area.

The main tour was held on Saturday, and although the weather was overcast with a few sprinkles here and there, it was not unpleasant outside. As an added bonus, I much prefer taking photographs of architecture when it is cloudy. Sunny days, especially during the mid-day, casts harsh shadows and the light is too bright and washes out details.

I have hundreds of photos to go through, and so I will be posting photographs of the exteriors of the houses we toured, but it will take me a while to organize them.

Since Sherpa and I were celebrating our anniversary, we splurged and added the second day of the tour. It turned out to be an excellent decision. We saw the Lyndon Sculpture Garden in the morning and visited the Greek Annunciation Orthodox Church, one of Wright’s last designs, in the early afternoon before heading home.

The weather was sunny and mild, with a few scattered clouds, on Sunday, providing great background for our walk through the 40 acre sculpture garden. The garden was the creation and much loved project of Margaret Blakey Bradley, one of the greatest benefactors of the arts (and other projrects) in Milwaukee.

Finally, the visit to the church was the highlight of the tour for me. I sat in the church’s interior for well over an hour, just looking in awe of the beauty, the design, the details. Of course, I took lots of photographs in both the garden and of the exterior and interior of Annunciation Church, so I will have plenty of photographs to share with you.

So…if I took hundreds of photographs of buildings and sculpture, why am I posting yet another photo of this lovely pink poppy? Well, because I absolutely fell in love with one of the tour home’s gardens and I received permission to photograph some of the flowers. There were hundreds to choose from, but I was totally captivated by this particular poppy and spent the majority of my time ooh-ing and aah-ing and admiring three pink poppies.

It seems no matter where I look, there is always a wonder or two to photograph.And that truly makes me a happy photographer.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is catching up on some photo business today before diving into her new stash of photographs.