Travel – Page 44

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

Road Trip – Day One

November 22, 2011 by Bo Mackison 8 Comments

We are on our way.

Monday we packed the art show trailer, adding some of my Southwestern photographs to my Midwest collection. I’m thinking of calling my trailer the “Sardine can” – packed to the gills. Bad pun, hmmm? Only been on the road a full day and already I’ve caught the infectious pun bug from Sherpa.

We are driving the trailer that holds all the makings of an art booth to the Southwest in preparation for the upcoming Arizona shows. This year we decided to travel in November and hope for good weather. Last year the weather gods failed us in late January and we drove most of the 1800 miles in a mix of rain, ice and snow. An experience we’d rather not repeat in this lifetime.

Before I left, I grabbed more books than I’ll admit to, and stowed them in the car. Then I said goodbye to one of my many book cases. Sherpa doesn’t understand why I can’t go on a trip without taking a large sampling of my library. I don’t understand how he can go on a trip without taking a pile of books.

Goodbye, books.

If there is one thing I miss when on a road trip it is my bed. My firm mattress, my bunches of pillows, my layers of soft blankets. I am not a fan of hotel beds, but then I’d rather deal with hotel beds than no bed at all.

Goodbye, bed.

If you are a regular reader at Seeded Earth, you have already noticed that these photographs look nothing like what I typically post. After another photog introduced me to his iPhonography, I decided it would be easier to chronicle my travels via cell phone camera compared to my regular camera gear. So I packed my big camera safely among great piles of suitcases and boxes, and I’m having a great time taking photos with this wonky App called the Hipstamatic.

Since I have little idea how to use its many hidden features, I’ll let you follow my progress as I learn by experimenting. I think there is no better way to learn than by playing with all the buttons and looking at the results.

Others may read instruction manuals first. I find it much more expedient to read the instruction manual after I’ve used the product for a while. Then I have a better idea what the manual writers are trying, in their round about fashion, to tell me.

If you were particularly attentive, perhaps you noticed the title of the above photo, “On (the road) Wisconsin!” I don’t have to explain to my fellow Wisconsinites the meaning of the title. To anyone else, just know it refers to football and badgers and meat packers.

I made up a few rules for my introduction into the world of iPhonography. As I already noted, no instructions. The other rule is no stopping for photos and no regrets.

Whenever we have been on the road on previous trips, no matter how short or long, our conversations follow this line of thought:

Me: [looking in the distance] Oh, that would make a great photo!!!
Sherpa: Do you want me to stop?
Me: [sad voice] Nooooo. If we stop for every photo, we won’t get to [fill in the blank] today.
Sherpa: [as we drive ever farther away from the un-photographed scene] Well, give me more notice and I’ll stop.
Me: [in deep confusion, not knowing how I can give him notice any sooner] Oh.

This conversation no longer exists. I snap away happily (with the touch of my finger pad against a tiny glass surface) and capture the mood of our trip. I am not going for classic photographs at this point anyway. And Sherpa gets to drive with as few stops as is humanly possible.

And we are both happy.

This is what the scenery looked like traversing the length of Iowa and much of Missouri. Enough said.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer, owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is on an extended explore with Sherpa. She is also adapting to on the road photography.

Filed Under: Photography, Travel

Exploring the High Line

October 16, 2011 by Bo Mackison 3 Comments

Sherpa and I paused on one of the stairway entrances to High Line Park in the Chelsea neighborhood in New York City. The High Line is on Manhattan’s West Side. The first section, a mile long, opened as a public park in June 2009. The second section, which added another stretch a half-mile long, opened in June 2011 and runs between West 20th and West 30th Streets.

The original High Line was built in the 1930s as part of a massive transportation project. It removed dangerous trains from one of Manhattan’s largest industrial districts by raising the tracks thirty feet in the air. The High Line was abandoned in 1980.

Friends of the High Line, a neighborhood group, and the City of New York work in a partnership to preserve and support this hugely popular public park. (Last year 2.2 million people used the park.)

The park features an artfully designed landscape which combines a meandering concrete pathway with natural plantings – trees, wildflowers, grasses. A variety of seating, both movable chairs and built-in benches, is scattered along the walks, specially designed lighting illuminates the walking paths, and water features provide opportunities for splashing and cooling off in warmer weather.

The High Line also features both permanent and temporary art installations. Photographs will be in the next High Line post.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. One of her favorite autumn destinations in New York City is the High Line Park in Chelsea. Urban renewal at its best.

Filed Under: Photography, Travel Tagged With: High Line, New York City, park

Chelsea Market Dressed for October

October 15, 2011 by Bo Mackison 3 Comments

We spent the weekend on Long Island.

Then some of us had to head back to Madison and show up for work on Monday morning, and some of us spent Sunday night in the City. I was one of the lucky ones. My flight didn’t leave until 2 p.m. on Monday.

The locals told us how horrible the weather had been in September and early October, but this weekend could not have been more perfect. Blue skies, puffy clouds, moderate temperatures. Warm days, cool evenings.

On Monday morning, we went to the Chelsea Market — a sensory feast in the truest sense of the word.

Especially in October when they celebrate both the harvest and Halloween. Produce is piled high in front of the store, plus more fruits and vegetables inside the Manhattan Fruit Exchange.

Chelsea Market is in what once was a Nabisco warehouse.

There are lots of niches and crannies, lots of brick walls and arches. And lots of areas to set up Halloween displays. These are not your run of the mill decorations — these would be in the professional class, if there was such a category. There are flashing colors in a rainbow of spooky hues. Chains rattle, and filling the halls are echoing howls and eerie screeches.

These ghouls were silent, but still scary enough. And tall. They were very tall, ceiling to floor tall!

I’ve seen this Fireman’s Carry Mural on several previous visits, but this is the first time I noticed that his fire coat sported grinning skulls — a novel decorating method that couldn’t be carried off successfully in too many places.

My favorite part of the Chelsea Market is deciding where to stop for food.

Shakes, bakery, just caught fish and seafood, chocolates, cheeses, gelato, nuts, Italian, Thai, French, comfort foods. The choices are endless. We generally snack our way down the hallways while admiring the arched passages cut out of brick walls and the aged, polished hardwood floors.

Once we had satisfactorily snacked our way from the front doors to the rear entrance, we headed for High Line Park. A long walk sounded like a good idea, and one of the most pleasant and unusual NYC walks takes place on the rehabbed High Line, elevated train tracks that is taking on a new life as an urban park .

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. Last week she took a few days off to celebrate her daughter’s wedding. She left her camera in the camera bag for the wedding festivities, but she put in plenty of photo time while on a one day visit to New York City.

Filed Under: Photography, Travel Tagged With: Chelsea Market, New York City

Journal Writing at Seth’s Cottage

May 3, 2011 by Bo Mackison 10 Comments

Wright Inspired Accessories at Seth Peterson Cottage on Mirror Lake, Wisconsin

I spent several hours writing by the light cast from this small lamp while I was staying at the Seth Peterson Cottage. Whenever I paused, I could look out the many windows and gaze at Mirror Lake, which wasn’t much of a “mirror” while I was there. It had a slate gray appearance that evening, no resemblance to a reflective mirror.

While I was there, I photographed some of the details of the interior. These particular photos do not show the rooms so much as the accessories in the rooms. (In the next and final post on Seth’s Cottage I’ll include photographs from the individual rooms.)

I also wrote and sketched in my journals while I was there. A few excerpts follow:

Flickering Fire, Fireplace designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, Seth Peterson Cottage

A lesson learned from lighting the fire. When lighting a fire with a full box of matches at your disposal, one doesn’t pay much attention to the number of matches it takes. If the fire doesn’t start with the first two or three matches, just keep trying until the fire catches. But when there are only six matches in the only box of matches, one plans carefully for the lighting of the logs. The kindling is laid just so, I stuff a bit of paper between the twigs for a bit of insurance, choose the smaller logs from the woodpile outside. Lots of planning goes on before I strike the first match.

I think of an analogy, comparing the starting a fireplace fire to caring for the earth. While the natural resources of the earth seem inexhaustible, there seems little need to use the resources wisely–lots of matches in the box to start the warming fire. But when the resources become threatened, endangered, the prudent thing to do would be to use them wisely, carefully, with great planning–don’t want to run out of matches before the logs are burning.

Star Floor, Radiant Floor Heating System, Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, Seth Peterson Cottage

I spent way too much time trying to find patterns and pictures in the random lines of the flagstone floor. Above is my interpretation of a “radiant” star — radiant because underneath these flagstone slabs are hot water pipes that provide floor heating. There were also pennies embedded in several cracks. I fully intended to get down on my hands and knees and check out the dates on the coins, but I never did find a flashlight and the areas were rather dimly lit.

From my journal:

I am quite loving this hard stone floor. Not because it is a comfy surface to stand upon in stocking feet, but because it is toasty warm. Even though it has dropped to the low 40s and will probably hit 35˚F by early morning, the warm floor is quite special in that it is so unexpected. There are no rugs, only this unending expanse of carefully matched stone slabs.

It is so quiet. Now, nearly six in the evening, and the skies are dark with heavy, threatening rain clouds. I expected to see and hear birds, but the birds are silent. There is no radio, no television, no neighbors, no motor boats on the “no motor” lake, no internet. It is quiet, except for the popping of the fire and the occasional cloud burst.

One gets lulled by the quiet. I intend to write, but instead I find myself passing long periods of time watching the logs burn, watching the raindrops plop in the puddles on the back stone patio, listening for sounds that don’t exist. We have learned to live in a noisy world, and often pay little attention to the constant background noises that surround us. But when there are no sounds, only silence, then I notice the silence.

I hear the silence.

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This is the second part of a three-part series written and photographed while I stayed at the Seth Peterson Cottage.

Filed Under: Photography, Travel, Writing Practices Tagged With: Frank Lloyd Wright architect, journal writing, Mirror Lake State Park, nature reflections, Seth Peterson Cottage, Wisconsin

Rules of the Road

Road Trip – Day One

Exploring the High Line

Chelsea Market Dressed for October

We spent the weekend on Long Island.

On Monday morning, we went to the Chelsea Market — a sensory feast in the truest sense of the word.

Chelsea Market is in what once was a Nabisco warehouse.

My favorite part of the Chelsea Market is deciding where to stop for food.

Journal Writing at Seth’s Cottage

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