Creativity – Page 12

My 4th Annual Alphabet – Part I

December 29, 2011 by Bo Mackison 10 Comments

As I have done for the last three years, I again end the past year and welcome the new year with a Photographic Alphabet Post. The very first one (2008-9) rhymed and had a Wisconsin theme. In 2009-10 I didn’t get my Alphabet post done until the second week in January, but I made up for the short post with a photograph that looks quite Arctic-ish! Last year I posted a single photo and wrote a short paragraph for each alphabet letter in four parts.

This year I’m featuring more photographs and fewer words, though something about the end and the beginning — it encourages my tendency towards verbosity. (See?) I’ll watch my word count…promise!

BO’S PHOTOGRAPHIC ALPHABET — 2011

A IS FOR ART AND ART FAIRS.

Seeded Earth Photography Booth at Agora Art Show 2011

Art Fairs were a significant part of my life during 2011. Sherpa and I took Seeded Earth Photography to fourteen shows beginning in February and ending the weekend before Thanksgiving. We did shows in six states – Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Iowa and Arizona.

Great Dogs at the 57th Street Art Fair Hyde Park Chicago

This was my second full year exhibiting my photography on the art show circuit. In 2010 I did local and area shows in Wisconsin, and learned the art business. By the end of 2011, after a total of 24 completed shows, I felt less like a novice and more like an artist. That was a grand feeling.

Seeded Earth Studio Booth at Winter Art Festival

In a few weeks, I will be heading to Arizona. My upcoming shows in the Tucson area will be the first ones I’m doing solo. No Sherpa to grab a drink for me or tend the booth while I walk to stretch out muscle kinks. No Sherpa to help me set up the tent or the booth interior, or hang the art. I’m excited and nervous, both.

B IS FOR BOOJUM AND BOTANICALS

I love photographing botanicals. A boojum is a botanical. Therefore I love shooting boojums. But I would love shooting boojums even more if I could attach my camera to a crane, because the part I want to photograph with my macro lens is not in a convenient place.

C IS FOR CACTI AND CONSEQUENCES.

Ah, now cacti are also botanicals, and they grow in a more convenient size than the boojum. Or at least many of them do. There are many a saguaro or an organ pipe cactus that are far beyond my reach. But I still have plenty of macro opportunities with the smaller cacti crowd.

I love to take photographs of the mighty cacti, and the smaller varieties, too. But I’ve decided that the entire cactus family has been introduced into my life to teach me a big lesson.

They teach by consequences. Almost every time I photograph cacti, I am so focused on getting a photo that I inch closer and closer to the plant. And each time the cactus teaches me a lesson about their boundaries by poking me with a sharp thorn, or by attaching a cluster of spines to my clothing or shoelaces. If I didn’t have a camera up to my eye, perhaps I would learn the cactus lesson much quicker.

D IS FOR DELIGHT AND A DOODLE-DOODLE-DOO.

It is quite common for people to imagine that an artist’s life is filled with creating and traveling and meeting new and interesting people. True, true, and true. I can’t think of a thing I would rather do than take my camera out on a photo exploration and I love to bring home the filled memory cards and watch the photographs ‘develop’ on my computer. And now I am adding what I consider to be the frosting on the photographs – post processing so that the vision I saw when I took the photo can be captured in my studio.

But I work long hours, many more hours a week than if I had a 9 to 5 job, and so I’ve learned to add delight into my day whenever I find it. These roosters, rows and rows of roosters on an outside stand, made me laugh so hard I could hardly hold the camera still. I was waiting for one of them to begin crowing at me.

It’s those bits of time that add the ‘extra-extra’ to the unpredictable life of an artist on the road.

And a doodle doodle doo to you, too!

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Today’s post has been brought to you by the letters A,B,C, and D.

Part II is brought to you by the letters E, F, G, H, I and J.

Filed Under: Creativity, Photography, Writing Practices Tagged With: annual photo alphabet, photo alphabet, Photography

A Heavy Weight, Lifted

December 14, 2011 by Bo Mackison 3 Comments

“For the next 30 days—the time most experts agree it takes to make a practice into a habit—I’m going to return to my practice of deep writing and walking meditation. Both of those practices help me nurture my spirituality, work on karma debts, hatch some creative ideas and allow them to fledge, and explore the rough ledges of forgiveness and healing.” – Quinn McDonald

I decided to do the practice of writing and walking, especially appropriate during this season, a hustling — and yes, I used the word hustling without the bustling, because I feel rather hustled by the Holiday consumer push — and busy time of the year.

Also, in the upper Midwest, it is a dark and gloomy time as we approach the shortest day of the year. It has been days since even the sun has come out for a peek. And yes, I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by all this, and the idea of meditative walking and writing sounded like a great prescription for my darkening mood.

In fact, I needed the meditative experience so much, I decided to take the day off from my photo work and from the computer yesterday. I needed some “me” time to refresh not only my wellspring of creativity, but also my “soul” well that felt painfully dry.

When I went walking, I walked around the neighborhood pond, noticing the thin ice, the bare sticks poking from the rough surface. At the north end of the pond, a large patch of browned stalks of water plants sprang from the slushy surface, not yet decayed. There was beauty there. Deep beauty. I stood and watched the silent landscape for many minutes. It was meditation, of sorts.

I wrote at different times during the day, paying attention to how the different times worked for me. I slipped in a couple of naps, too, for it was such a silent, dark day. I read poetry – pages and pages of poetry. And I experienced a wealth of emotions – from despair to facing reality with a stiff upper lip to hope, and everything in between. I went to bed very early.

This morning, even though the light of day has not yet come, even though a steady cold rain is pelting the earth and it is likely to be another gray day, I feel as if I have refilled my soul well, at least partly – enough so that energy has returned, determination to see my way through has returned.

Perhaps exploring the depths of emotions leads not only to a re-emergence of creativity, but also a sense of rejuvenation and a renewed understanding that life is a set of many cycles, that winter’s gray and silence provides the base for spring’s renewal, that a season of light always follows a season of darkness.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer, owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is spending 30 days exploring and refreshing the wellspring of creativity. And Bo is refilling her soul well, too.

Filed Under: Creativity, Writing Practices

Spanish Bayonet

December 1, 2011 by Bo Mackison 5 Comments

We need a renaissance of wonder. We need to renew, in our hearts and in our souls, the deathless dream, the eternal poetry, the perennial sense that life is miracle and magic. ~ E. Merrill Root

There is much in the desert that prompts a sense of wonder. These agave leaves — long, narrow, remarkably rigid, and with dangerously sharp tips — are capped in a bright red, and make me think immediately that this plant has repeatedly engaged in battles with inquisitive fingers.

It’s not the least bit difficult to understand why one of this agave’s English names is “Spanish Bayonet.” Perhaps requiring more imagination that I possess, I do not know why anyone would call this same plant “Our Lord’s Candle,” but my reference book, The Natural History of the Sonoran Desert, says it is so.

I did some manipulation of the original photograph so the cluster of tips in the center of the plant remain visible, but the background leaves seem to be melting into abstraction. Maybe it is like a candle! Or maybe my imagination got the best of me!

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Bo Mackison is a photographer, owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. Loving the desert and its amazing plant life. Must remember everything in the desert, however, is sharp — no unplanned movements.

Filed Under: Creativity, Nature Explorations, Photography Tagged With: agave, post processing, Sonoran Desert, Spanish Bayonet

Rules of the Road

November 23, 2011 by Bo Mackison 5 Comments

Day two of our 1800 mile sojourn across half the country and we spent the majority of our traveling time traversing the state of Kansas. Kansas does not seem like one of those states that should take most of a day to cross, but we began our day near the northeast corner (Kansas City) and crossed the border into Oklahoma near the southwest corner (Liberal). All in all, we drove just over 600 miles in Kansas.

Plenty enough miles to photograph a dozen or so photographs in the minimalist style. Road, grass, road, more grass, field, foothills, fog.

Minimalism, Midwest style.

Here is my best view of Wichita. It seems like a nice city, and its the largest city in Kansas. I hoped for a chance to get a photograph of the downtown from the right lane of the interstate. But it seemed appropriate to keep up with the traffic, and I guarantee you, the drivers in the other vehicles were not the least bit impressed that I was manuevering for a clear photo of Wichita.

While on the road, and under a fair amount of pressure to “not stop unless the car needs gas”, Sherpa and I have come up with a fair number of rules regarding my photography habit. This is not as dire as it might sound, for we generally make up the rules while in a subdued fit of hysterical laughing. (There is only so much hysterical laughing one can tolerate while maintaining control of speeding car and trailer, so subdued laughter is appropriate.)

A few of the rules we have instituted are:

no slowing down for any photographic experience, traffic flow must be maintained at all times
no detours of any sort, not even a half block in and back
no turn arounds, none — no photograph is worth a turnaround (says Sherpa) when we are on a schedule with a deadline

This is certainly not the kind of photography I know so well. It is a different kind of photography. And one I am beginning to develop an appreciation for. I think there may be times for slow photography — my usual MO — and fast photography, which I seem to be experimenting with on the fly.

One thing I have already discovered that is worth remembering — slow photography is best done as a solo activity or an activity with another person with a definite start and stop time. Fast photography can be done with a spouse or in a crowd. Since there is no stopping in fast photography, no one is ever inconvenienced. A new concept for me, perhaps, but one that all slow photographers should probably learn at some point in their career.

Fast photography does require some abandonment of truths I thought were universal and inviolable. One does not always need to change lenses so that a teensy, far away, red barn can be seen in focus and close up. One can merely give the suggestion of a red barn in the distance and most viewers will accept red blur in distant background as a red barn. Excellent to know when practicing fast photography.

Does anyone reading this NOT see the red blur, uh, barn in the background? I thought not.

Sometimes in fast photography, the photo is all about color. After driving for eons and seeing nothing that resembled a splash of bright color, the mere fact that these cottonwoods were glowing in the sunlight in an aura of gold was noteworthy.

I have just been informed that the motel check out has been completed and the car is packed. Day Two will continue when internet access is again available.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio. She is learning fast photography while on a fast road trip. She promises — more to follow.

Filed Under: Creativity, Photography, Travel Tagged With: iPhonography, rules of photography in the car, slow photography vs fast photography

Frosted Leaf

November 9, 2011 by Bo Mackison 4 Comments

We do not remember days, we remember moments. – Cesare Pavese

Maybe this is a good time to post another frosty photograph. I checked the weather forecast for later today and saw a four letter word — snow. So, before the snow flies and my outdoor world becomes white, I’ll share one of my more colorful autumn macro photographs.

When this maple leaf fell from the tree, it became wedged on its side in the grass. The frost added an outline of lacy white ice to the orange-red leaf.

I love how the maple leaf’s familiar outline is highlighted, how the simplest things in nature — a fallen leaf, a touch of frost — turn into a captured moment of beauty, of life.

And how the photograph also captures a moment of time, and I watch as autumn turns her face towards winter.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer, owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She also loves the very first snowfall of the season when her whole world looks freshly dressed in pure white.

Filed Under: Creativity, Nature Explorations, Photography Tagged With: autumn, frosty, maple leaf

My 4th Annual Alphabet – Part I

BO’S PHOTOGRAPHIC ALPHABET — 2011

A Heavy Weight, Lifted

Spanish Bayonet

Rules of the Road

Frosted Leaf

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