Articles by Bo Mackison

Playing with Photography – A Focus on Light, Glass, and Silver at the Vineyards

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Five Bottles and a Pitcher © 2014 Bo Mackison

Exploring what my camera will do with a row of glass bottles stored on a shelf behind a white wooden shed.

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Filling the Pitcher © 2014 Bo Mackison

Add a spigot with running water as it is filling a silver pitcher.

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Still Life and a White Shed © 2014 Bo Mackison

The glass bottles and pitcher, running water from spigot, and two silver pitchers.

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Silver Pitchers © 2014 Bo Mackison

Two silver pitchers, overflowing with bubbling water.

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Glass, Water, and Light © 2014 Bo Mackison

And finally the glass pitcher surrounded by bottles with caps.

… from Mattebella Vineyards’ website:

Mattebella Vineyards is a small family farm, in New York State’s oldest town, Southold (established in 1640), on the eastern end of Long Island. The vineyard is a gently sloping 22 acre parcel of land and has predominantly European clones of grape varietals, tight spacing (6×3), and low vigor rootstock.

At Mattebella Vineyards things are done the old way, by hand. No mechanical harvesters or leaf removal equipment. Fine wines are difficult to make consistently if mechanized harvesters and other machines are introduced into the process. Machines simply cannot execute our commitment to quality and make the decisions we consistently must make throughout the growing season. Hand crafting includes fruit thinning to ensure even ripening and higher quality concentrated juice, leaf pulling, weed removal, pruning, canopy management and, most importantly, hand harvesting of all our fruit.

Mattebella Vineyards is committed to using sustainable viticultural practices and incorporating organic practices as feasible into our farming methods, hoping to make a “footprint in your memory but not on the environment”.

Patience – A Desert Wisdom Card

Patience © 2014 Bo Mackison

“Patience is not passive resignation, nor is it failing to act because of our fears. Patience means active waiting and enduring. It means staying with something and doing all that we can – working, hoping, and exercising faith; bearing hardship with fortitude, even when the desires of our hearts are delayed. Patience is not simply enduring; it is enduring well!  ~ Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Patience. Certainly a wisdom gift of the desert. Certainly a quality required when one is actually walking/living/being in the desert, and for those desert-like times when life feels arid and silent, or overwhelming and fragmented.

I love this photograph, a photo taken at Mission San  Xavier del Bac, a mission church in southern Arizona built in the 1700s. The church took decades to build by hand with primitive tools.

There were no supplies of paint or marble or fabric. Even the wood had to be hauled from a distance of twenty miles.  They built the walls with lime-kiln clay. They carved statues from wood and dyed them brilliant colors using both native dyes and imported gilding. They carved shells, roping, and drapery-like sculptures for windows ornamentation and the choir.  They painted wall murals and patterned arches. They sculpted a baptismal font and painted it to look like marble.

Works of art that required patience and determination, and which are still in use, and honored by the present day parishioners.

“A waiting person is a patient person. The word patience means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us.” ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

In the photo, I stand in the shadows.

Waiting. Watching. Questioning.

Listening to the Silence.

Practicing patience.

Playing with Photography, Part VI – The Vineyards

Channing's Daughters Vineyards, Long Island

We ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season
without thinking of the grapes it has borne.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Atlantic breezes cool Channing Daughters Vineyards and create a climate hospitable to a wide array of grape varieties.

 

Channing's Daughters Vineyards, Long Island

The Vineyards are on a beautiful plot of land in Bridgehampton on the North Fork of eastern Long Island. Twenty-five acres of vines, a small winery and a bustling tasting room.

Channing's Daughters Vineyards, Long Island

Owner/Sculptor Walter Channing’s works are present in the vineyards, tasting room, and almost anywhere you look around the estate.

Channing's Daughters Vineyards, Long Island

Sculpture © 2014 Bo Mackison

Sculptures emerge unexpectedly the end posts of vineyard rows and less subtly in the form of towering inverted trees against the horizon.

Channing's Daughters Vineyards, Long Island

We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy,
even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry. ~ E.B. White

Experimenting – or Playing – with Photography. Part V, Flowers, Flowers, Everywhere

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Flowers in the Fountain © 2014 Bo Mackison

“I must have flowers, always, and always.” ~ Claude Monet

While I was visiting New York City and Long Island over the extended Labor Day weekend, our timing was perfect. The flowers put on a tremendous show for us. Everywhere we walked there were planters, gardens, even flowers floating with such grace and beauty in fountains.

I was with beloved family who I only see once or perhaps twice a year, and didn’t want me and my camera interrupting the flow. (Once my big camera is in my hands, this mysterious force takes over and I see photo ops constantly – not such a good plan with a group of four, including one pregnant daughter!) So I continued to “play” with photography while I was visiting family on Long Island. And yes, the cell phone camera can be a distraction, too! But not quite as bad, I’m told.

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Blue Hydrangea © 2014 Bo Mackison

“A flower blossoms for its own joy.” ~ Oscar Wilde

Hydrangea must be THE flower of eastern Long Island. They’re everywhere! They’re everywhere!

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Green-Eyed Susans © 2014 Bo Mackison

“Without darkness, nothing comes to birth, As without light, nothing flowers.” ~ May Sarton

Never underestimate the power of a flower! I stopped to admire two planters of green-eyed Susans flanking the door of a jewelry shop I had no intention of visiting. Then a too fancy opal ring in the front window caught my eye. I had lost my wedding ring several months ago, and I’d been casually looking at opal rings (I’d decided to go with an opal my birthstone, not another diamond).

On the spur of the moment, we entered this very formal jewelry store. Not even my kind of store, I thought. But my daughter – shopper extraordinaire – found a black opal way in a back case, on sale, end of season, etc., etc. and the pieces fell into place.

So I thank this charming bunch of bright flowers, for I now have a replacement ring. Deeply grateful!

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Red, White, and Green © 2014 Bo Mackison

“Nobody sees a flower – really – it is so small it takes time – we haven’t time – and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.”  ~ Georgia O’Keeffe

More Hydrangea, with a different color treatment…an unusual combination inspired from a shake of my camera and the serendipity of the Hipstamatic app…

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Hydrangea © 2014 Bo Mackison

“A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in–what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.” ~ Victor Hugo

And Hydrangea in blue. Don’t they have just the most luscious colors – that pale blue with lavender and yellow highlight?

Tomorrow, this atypical tour of my New York visit takes us to the vineyards of Long Island – what a feast for the senses, there…

Experimenting – Actually, Mostly Playing – From an Airplane Window — Part IV, Approaching New York City

Flying from Madison to NYC

Aerial of Williamsburg Bridge and East Harbor

“Chapter 1.
He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion…no, make that: he – he romanticized it all out of proportion. Yes. To him, no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin.’

Uh, no let me start this over.

Flying from Madison to NYC

Aerial of Brooklyn and Harbor © 2014 Bo Mackison

‘Chapter 1.
He was too romantic about Manhattan, as he was about everything else. He thrived on the hustle bustle of the crowds and the traffic. To him, New York meant beautiful women and street-smart guys who seemed to know all the angles…’.

Ah, corny, too corny for my taste. Can we … can we try and make it more profound?

 

Flying from Madison to NYC

Aerial View of Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridge © 2014 Bo Mackison

‘Chapter 1.
He adored New York City. For him, it was a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture. The same lack of individual integrity that caused so many people to take the easy way out was rapidly turning the town of his dreams in…’

No, that’s a little bit too preachy. I mean, you know, let’s face it, I want to sell some books here.

 

Flying from Madison to NYC

Descending into LaGuardia © 2014 Bo Mackison

Chapter 1.
He adored New York City, although to him it was a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture. How hard it was to exist in a society desensitized by drugs, loud music, television, crime, garbage…’

Too angry, I don’t want to be angry.

Flying from Madison to NYC

“The City” © 2014 Bo Mackison

‘Chapter 1.
He was as tough and romantic as the city he loved. Behind his black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat.’

I love this.

Flying from Madison to NYC

X Marks the Spot – NYC © 21014 Bo Mackison

‘New York was his town, and it always would be.”

~ Woody Allen from Manhattan