Transitions

Transitions

Transitions © 2011 Bo Mackison

I love how this photograph so captures both the last bit of the growing season and nature’s preparation for winter.

Flowers and all their complicated, tiny parts hold a fascination for me, and add to my interest in photographing them. But there is something deep and grounding about the autumn trees and the annual dropping of their leaves, as they prepare to withstand a long winter.

Nature gives us so many lessons if we only pay attention.

Appreciate the beauty of each day, but also prepare for the coming days. I am pondering that it is often true — that less is more.

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Bo Mackison is the photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  She is paying attention to nature and change, listening and watching.

Autumn Winds

Autumn Winds

Autumn Winds © 2013 Bo Mackison

“The leaves fall, the wind blows, and the country slowly changes from summer cottons into its winter wools.”
~ Henry Beston

It must have something to do with the middle of October.

Early autumn outdid itself with sunny days and mild, breezy nights. Then October reached its halfway point, and the skies turned dark, the clouds gathered in layers of grays.  Now the strong winds gust and swirl and the leaves either hang on tightly, or they whip off the branches and take flight before darting to the earth.

The first weeks of autumn were truly autumn.

But the last weeks of October have a wintry feel, and signal the approaching long chill.

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Bo Mackison is the photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  She will take photos of autumn until there is no autumn left to photograph.

Sunlit Milkweed Pod

Milkweed Pod

Milkweed Pod © 2011 Bo Mackison

By cultivating the beautiful we scatter the seeds of heavenly flowers, as by doing good we cultivate those that belong to humanity.
~ Robert A. Heinlein

I wouldn’t be autumn without a photo session with a milkweed pod, recently split open, and spilling its many feathery light seeds into the world. Even as I was shooting, a light breeze picked up many of the seeds and sent them sailing into the sky.

I was lucky to be shooting early in the morning, when the winds had not yet turned strong and the morning sun rays illuminated the milk pods in its golden light.

Milkweed seeds are closely associated with my business name, Seeded Earth.

I began taking macro-photographs of the many autumn seeds in a nearby prairie in early October, 2007, and really took my first prolonged look at a few of the millions of seeds covering the earth. At the time I thought of how the earth was a “seeded earth”. When the time came to choose the name of my first blog, one in which I planned to feature a daily photograph of nature, the name “Seeded Earth Photography” came to mind.

Macro Milkweed Exploding Seeds

My First Milkweed Seed Photograph © 2007 Bo Mackison

This is one of the first photographs I took when I began my daily photography challenge in October, 2007. And that was the beginning of Seeded Earth Studio.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.

Red Maple and Early Morning Sun

Early Morning Sunlight on Red Maple

Red Maple and the Early Morning Sun

Turning toward the other side of light,
In a tower of wind, a tree idling in air,
Beyond my own echo,
Neither forward nor backward,
Unperplexed, in a place leading nowhere.

~ Theodore Roethke,  from “Journey to the Interior”

The last few mornings have been both ordinary and extra-ordinary.

This morning I was in my backyard watching the sunrise as I have done the past few days. The sun is hidden behind a large stand of trees, so I don’t see the sun as it peeks over the horizon. Instead I see the sun’s first light rays not in the sky, but as the light strikes the tops of trees  several blocks away from my home.

Then I wait about five minutes, and I am treated to one of nature’s finest gifts – and it takes place in my backyard.

I watch as the sun’s rays hit the very top of the red maple in my yard.

The maple has just begun to change colors, and the colors change from top to bottom. The maple reminds me of a giant green candle, and the candle’s flame? The red leaves flashing in the early morning sunlight.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She quickly pulled on a jacket and a warm hat to take photographs of the red maple in the early morning sun. Unfortunately, she went out wearing only socks on her feet, and had to come inside quickly because her feet were wet and cold.

Autumn’s Hello?

Leafy Shadow

Leafy Shadow © 2011 Bo Mackison

Is this early autumn’s hello?

These shadows of a breeze-inspired dance imprinted on this golden leaf?

Those hidden leaves — my camera records only their browned shadow, though they are green for a few more weeks perhaps. Remnants of late summer, hugging the earth to escape the cooling nights.

I notice the sun’s lateness in rising and its hasty departure at suppertime.

No more suppers on the porch, taking in the last hours of daylight. No more thrown together meals. Lounging on the porch, munching salads and sandwiches, stripping corn off the cob, typewriter style, re-filling our glasses of iced tea repeatedly.

Now supper wears an air of autumn formality. A tablecloth is spread on the polished wood. Fiesta Ware replaces the old plaid Melmac. Autumn meals require tableware for thick stews and casseroles, mashed vegetables.

I put the gallon glass jar for sun tea on the storage shelf in the basement next to the summer dishes.

The garden flowers have turned to seed.

They stand tall, awaiting the winter birds who will be eager to find a meal in January.