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”.

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.

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X Marks the Spot – NYC © 21014 Bo Mackison

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

~ Woody Allen from Manhattan

Experimenting – Or Mostly Playing – from an Airplane Window — Part III, Clouds, Clouds, Then Land Sighting

Flying from Madison to NYC

“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends.
You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things: air, sleep, dreams, sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.”
~ Cesare Pavese

The flight from Madison to New York City was a window view of ceaseless change.

It made me realize how little I know about the clouds I look at nearly every day, and discover that I wanted to learn about clouds. I couldn’t even recall the name for the study of clouds.

Nephology is the study of clouds, a subset of meteorology.

Nephology? No wonder I couldn’t recall it, I don’t think I have ever known that -ology. And cloud naming appears to be a mix and match affair, one that requires more than looking at a few photos to get an identification.

So for now, I’ll just go with:

Enjoy all the pretty clouds from the airplane window!

Flying from Madison to NYC

“Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.”  ~ Pat Conroy

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“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”  ~ Leonardo da Vinci

Flying from Madison to NYC

“The wish to travel seems to me characteristically human: the desire to move, to satisfy your curiosity or ease your fears, to change the circumstances of your life, to be a stranger, to make a friend, to experience an exotic landscape, to risk the unknown…”
~ Paul Theroux from The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road

Flying from Madison to NYC

“We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us. Even while the earth sleeps we travel. We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered.”   ~ Khalil Gibran from The Prophet

Flying from Madison to NYC

“I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. And I have trained myself to love it. Because it is only when we are suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and begin our flight. And as we fly, we still may not know where we are going. But the miracle is in the unfolding of the wings. You may not know where you’re going, but you know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry you.”  ~ C. JoyBell C.

Flying from Madison to NYC

“The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”
~ Christopher McCandless

Flying from Madison to NYC

“Nobody can discover the world for somebody else. Only when we discover it for ourselves does it become common ground and a common bond and we cease to be alone.”  ~ Wendell Berry from A Place on Earth

Experimenting – Actually, Mostly Playing – from an Airplane Window: Part II, Clouds, Clouds, Clouds

Flying from Madison to NYC

“Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?
Is it for such I agitate my heart?”
~ Sylvia Plath, from Ariel

Flying from Madison to NYC

“The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn’t it be?–it is the same the angels breathe.”
~ Mark Twain, from Roughing It

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“We pledge to fight ‘blue-sky’ thinking wherever we find it. Life would be dull if we had to look up at cloudless monotony day after day.”
~ Gavin Pretor-Pinney, from The Cloud-spotter’s Guide

Flying from Madison to NYC

Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place. Every bit of you has been replaced many times over… The point is that you are like a cloud: something that persists over long periods, whilst simultaneously being in flux. Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made.”
~ Steve Grand

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“Clouds suit my mood just fine.”
~ Marie Lu, from Champion

Flying from Madison to NYC

“There was a star riding through clouds one night, & I said to the star, ‘Consume me’.”
~ Virginia Woolf, from The Waves

Flying from Madison to NYC

“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.”
~ Rabindranath Tagore, from Stray Birds