Badlands Trail – Badlands National Park

Badlands Trail © 2010 Bo Mackison

First stop — Badlands National Park in South Dakota.

An all day drive from Madison, if you start at 4 a.m. We did — leave at 4 a.m., that is –and so we arrived with enough light to set up camp before catching a dozen shots of the park dressed in the light of the setting sun.

In the morning we explored several trails, including this one across from the Visitor’s Center which led up the the peaks of those jagged formations. They were crumbly, slippery, and high. Hint: I did not climb all the way to the top this year. After all, it was only the second day out, and I wanted to stay in good condition for the next destinations.

My new camera is proving to be great, when I can remember the many settings, all of which are in different places than my Olympus. I only practiced with it for a couple of weeks before we left for the trip, and I am painfully aware that I don’t know the new camera as well as I knew my old one. I hope by the end of this trip, I’ll have learned this ins and outs of this camera.

Across the Mississippi

Across the Mississippi © 2010 Bo Mackison

Once I cross the Mississippi, I know it’s true.

It’s time for another trip to the land I love to visit – the western and southwestern regions of the United States. We crossed the Mississippi just after sunrise, and the sunlight made that Minnesota shore sparkle like gold.

That’s Lock and Dam #5 – located on Mississippi River about ten miles northwest of Winona, Minnesota. It was built in 1935 and underwent major renovation in 1987-98. The locks and dams control the flow of the Mississippi.

From its origin to St. Louis, the Mississippi is controlled by 43 dams. Fourteen of these dams are located above Minneapolis in the headwaters region and generate electrical power and provide a great recreational resource. The other 29 dams start in downtown Minneapolis and contain locks which were constructed to permit commercial navigation of the upper river.

These 43 dams shape the geography of this huge river, the largest river system in the United States. The length of the Mississippi, from its origin in Lake Itasca, Minnesota to where it flows into the Gulf of Mexico 50 miles south of New Orleans is about 2,320 miles.

I lived in a river city on the Mississippi for the first 18 years of my life, and I’ve always lived in a state that borders the river, so I consider the Mississippi “my” river.

Photography as Practice – A Guest Post by Marcie Scudder

Photography as Practice © 2010 Marcie Scudder

This is the third of several guest posts where blog visitors answered the question  “How has photography had a positive impact on your life?,” a question I’ve been exploring in my recent series “Why Photography?.” Marcie responded with this essay.

It’s something I’ve thought a lot about…so when asked to write about photography…and what it is…and why I practice it daily – I jumped at the opportunity.

Why photography?

A very good question.

I could go back in time and tell you about my very first Kodak instamatic camera..and how I carried it with me everywhere capturing life as I saw it from my knee-high point-of-view. My first ‘real’ camera – I received as a gift from my father while still in high school. It wasn’t long before I went about catching all of my moments of great significance and importance, and before I fell in love with the process of developing and printing in a darkroom. Watching the black and white prints emerge, as if almost by magic. Time taking on a whole new rhythm and beat.

Fast forward.

College…marriage…a career…kids.

Not for a moment did I stop recording my ever-changing life and especially that of my childrens’. It wasn’t until more recently that my passion was re-ignited, this time with a new and different focus.

This more recent story began with an unlikely pair of Pekin ducks, who were intended to live a domestic life, but were abandoned by their owners in a pond not far from my home. It was they who sparked my interest and prompted me to pick up my camera and record – not just my children’s world  – but that of the world around me.

I’d been walking the same path, always in a hurry get to wherever it was I thought I might be going. There was always somewhere I needed to be, someone I needed to see, something I needed to do. So focused on the destination, I was missing out on the journey. It was on this path that these ducks magically appeared. They – the pair of them together – became my daily muse…my inspiration and focus. White beauties in an ever-changing landscape on this singular quiet pond in the heart of the suburban town in which I live.

Quickly – this became not only about the ducks…but a daily exercise in recording the world as I viewed it through my camera lens. The ducks – sadly – met their untimely demise at the first of winter. With wings clipped and unable to fly…they froze in the first of the storms. But – I persevered and continued onwards. There was more – I was certain – yet to be found.

The ‘practice’, as I have come to know it, is about finding the new and extraordinary in the everyday ordinary. It is about nurturing presence and awareness, and recording what is. It is not necessarily about perfection. It reminds me that there is hidden magic in the details, if I actually stop and take the time to look and see what it is I’m looking at.

But then – why photography…and not some other creative form of self-expression?

Photography focuses and grounds me.  It forces me to pay the closest attention to detail. To shadow and light. To composition. To figure and ground. To balance. It acts as a quiet meditation. When looking thru my camera’s lens..the world stops. There is calm centered peace within. With my feet on the ground..and my eye to the camera’s lens – I see all…and only what it is that I am looking at. There is only me. The sound of my breath…my heart beating…an internal quiet where there is nothing other than this day.

Photography acts as a teacher. Through it – I’ve learned to identify flora and fauna and avians that I previously knew nothing about. I’ve learned that by sitting quietly and observing, I can anticipate and thus capture the behavior or movement that might come next. I’ve learned patience and persistence and perseverance. I’ve cultivated a sense of gratitude for whatever opportunity is presented, and an appreciation for that day.

I like to believe that I ‘practice’ photography, that with my camera-in-hand, I enter a place of surrender and acceptance. Never controlling or contriving or manipulating a situation to suit my imaginary needs. This is what ‘is’. Today. This moment will never happen in quite the same way ever again.  Simply observing and capturing ‘it’ as ‘it’ presents itself before me, is what it is all about for me.

It’s a ‘practice’ that is – at times – as much about looking inwards as it is about looking out at the world. It passes through me. It’s not something that is tangible or teachable or easy to explain. It’s something that is felt somewhere deep within and beneath my core. It’s at the moment of perfect synchronicity – that I cock and click my shutter’s lens. That instant I’ve then captured and recorded for all of eternity and longer than that.

Photography challenges me. It pushes me to change and grow…to adapt…to learn new computer languages and skills…to keep on top of this ever evolving world of technology. It provides me an opportunity to play..to go out in the world and have fun with my camera. To create humor in a humorless situation…or to ‘render’ my world differently from the one in which I live. By shifting my perspective and changing my point-of-view..I can transform a scene from one to another.

There are all sorts of other reasons to have chosen to embrace this ‘craft’..and not some other. These – that I’ve mentioned –  are just a few.

Thank-you for asking…for joining me here in my answer. This too has been one other exercise in exploring what photography is all about.

For me.

Marcie Scudder lives and photographs (mostly) in the Boston area. She publishes a daily photograph on her website Daily Practice.

‘Golden Shadow’

'Golden Shadow' © 2010 Bo Mackison

I took this photograph of a most unusual plant a few weeks ago at the Olbrich Botanical Gardens. I took it before we had had our first frost. I took it when we’d had an abundance of rain. I took it when the mosquitoes were each the size of a dive-bombing hornet, and each mosquito had targeted me as dinner. Therefore, I grabbed a quick look at the tag on the plant, and noted its name was ‘Golden Shadow.’ And I took cover in the car in an attempt to escape the mosquitoes.

Weeks later, I wanted to find out a little more about these lovely golden shadow leaves and so I started Googling “Golen Shadow’.  I found a dogwood with the name of ‘Golden Shadow’ – no resemblance. Then I found a Paper Mulberry ‘Golden Shadow’, but it looked nothing like this plant either.

So though I love the unusual look of this plant, and it has the most wonderful deep butterscotch color, and the texture was a velvety nub, I have no identity for it other than “Golden Shadow’.

Seeing in Frames – A Guest Post by Robin Simmons

Nayad © 2010 Robin Simmons

This is the second in a series of guest posts. I asked blog visitors to answer the question “How has photography had a positive impact on your life?”  and Robin wrote this response. (Thanks Robin.) This is a question I’ve been exploring in my recent series “Why Photography?”

Seeing in Frames by Robin Simmons

A few weeks ago someone wanting to learn how to take better photographs asked me the question, “How do you decide what goes into your pictures?”  Without thinking, I answered, “I just see things in frames.”

Having considered it since then, I realize that my answer was vague and lacking in details such as how to compose a shot, the best lighting, and other technical information.  There are books and websites and classes to help you learn how to frame and/or compose a shot, and they can do a better job than I can of explaining composition, lighting, shutter speeds, and the like, as I am not formally educated in photography and prefer to work intuitively rather than by the rules.  For me, photography is play, a time to experiment with settings and framing, to lie on the ground and point up or turn the world upside down or sideways.

My answer, “I just see things in frames,” was a straightforward response.  I do see things in frames.  I wear glasses and have worn glasses since I was 7 years old.  Everything is framed to some degree by my glasses, and photography is, in some ways, an extension of that.  Photography is a medium which allows me to share with others the way I view the world and the things in the world which catch my eyes through the frames that I wear by bringing the viewer into those frames and my focus.

Through the lens of the camera I am able to see some of the details of the world, small and large, that I might otherwise miss.  When I take a photo of a tiger lily I see the flower, the tiger lily. When I put that photo on the bigger screen or a print, I see the details of the tiger lily that the camera captured, details my eyes could not see. I also see things that my eyes didn’t catch when I captured the tiger lily such as a bee buzzing around the flower like a little fairy, an ant crawling up the stem, a dot of pollen perched on the edge of a petal.  The camera, like my eyes and prescription glasses, also has its limitations.  Light and colors, fog and haze, dust motes and seeds floating in sunlight don’t always translate well in photography.  Learning post-processing techniques with Photoshop has helped me expand my vision so the photo better represents what I was seeing as I captured the scene or moment.

Photography has brought an awareness to my life and to my surroundings I don’t believe I would have without it.  It brings me into the moment, eyes and mind wide open as I hike or walk, sit or stand, connecting me to where I am right now, in this moment.  Carrying the camera makes me hyper-aware of the environment — spotting a small flower in the midst of some weeds or a colorful mushroom growing under a bush or any number of other things I might have otherwise passed on by without a glance much less a good look.

Above all, photography has taught me patience.  I cannot capture a butterfly, a dragonfly, or one of my young granddaughters without learning to be still as they dart around in their dance of life and play.  In that stillness I have learned to wait until I sense I am on the verge of the right moment and even then I may have to wait before moving slowly and cautiously to get within range of what I am trying to capture, watching the patterns that emerge, patterns I would not be able to discern without practicing stillness and patience.

Robin is a photographer living in the secondary snow-belt of northeast Ohio.  Her photography interests include nature and the outdoors as well as travel.  Her blog, Life in the Bogs, chronicles her daily life in Ohio as well as her travels.