Red Flower, Many Layers

Layers of Petals

Red Flower Wearing Her Layers © 2012

While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we can see with our open eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see. ~ Dorothea Lange

The simple zinnia provides an interesting study of the pattern of petals. It reminds me of a velvety red circular staircase. (Maybe a staircase to heaven?)

Oops, my mind headed in a different direction with the vision of  Stairway to Heaven. How can you ignore the strains of one of the best songs ever, Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin. (And yes, I saw them in concert in 1975, second from the top row in the Chicago Stadium, However the YouTube clip is from a concert at Madison Square Gardens!)  I love the Zep enough to conquer any fear of heights or claustrophobia I may have had, and sat mesmerized through their sets.

Any other Led Zep fans out there? Especially from years of youth in the 1970s?

Isn’t it amazing how a simple red flower can send you on a trip through your memories?

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC  .She went on a trip down memory lane, all because of a photograph of the petal structure of a zinnia.

In Glorious Detail

Allium - In Glorious Detail

Allium - In Glorious Detail © 2012 Bo Mackison

Nature is not a place to visit, it is home.  ~ Gary Snyder

I have reached a lull in flowers. How is that possible? The peonies are not quite in bloom yet, the lilacs are gone. My perennial garden is full of foliage, but not a single flower has shown its colors though it is early to expect anything to be blooming in mid-May. I’ve seen a few iris in bloom, but only on private property. And so I reach back into my photo catalogs and pull out another allium photograph.

(I finally have my external hard drives back from the computer magician and they are in working order – yay!)

Couldn’t result pulling out the detail in this single allium, especially since the top flowers and the two largest flowers in the center of the florets were in focus, and so remained natural. The other florets took on an outlined effect. I love the overall wispy effect.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. Bo enjoys her large catalog of allium photographs as she discovers new ways to post-process this simple flower.

A Re-invention of Giant Allium

Eighteen Giant Allium

The Re-Invention of Allium © 2012 Bo Mackison

Who would deduce the dragonfly from the larvae, the iris from the bud, the lawyer from the infant? . . . We are all shape-shifters and magical re-inventors. Life is really a plural noun, a caravan of selves.  ~ Diane Ackerman

Shape-shifters? Re-inventors? A caravan of selves?

We are not trapped inside one identity. One brand. We are always undergoing changes, some subtle, some life-altering. Sometimes we choose to change, though that seems to be a harder task. When I think of the many resolutions of change I have made and then discarded, I realize it is much easier to want the change than to live the change.

But I find it thrilling, addicting, fascinating to be a shape shifter, a re-inventor when it comes to photography. I focus on true to life landscape one day, then the next day I seem only able to create a garden of flowers seen only in my imagination until I shape shift them with the help of computer software. Perhaps tomorrow I will be discovering the macro world of a drop of water or the architectural intricacies of a barely standing centuries-old barn.

The garden filled with purple Allium that I photographed in the morning becomes a garden of pinks and yellows, drifting in the wind of change, in the afternoon, and the next morning these same Allium are just a whisper of their original selves, composed upon a background field of yellow and green stripes. I so love to examine a single type of flower, and then change it, following my whims and what-if’s, until the altered photograph appears and I know that is how it must look.

When I see a photograph, and I explode with a whoop of joy, then I know I am creating from deep within. Shape shifting. Re-inventing.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She creates with the camera and the computer.

Vintage Allium

Vintage Allium

Vintage Allium © 2012 Bo Mackison

Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray. ~ Rumi

Oh, this was fun! I took a stroll through the Experimental Gardens associated with the University of Wisconsin this morning. There were mostly empty beds awaiting flowers from the greenhouses, and bunches of day lily foliage , but no day lilies yet — too early. But there were quite a few stands of the Giant Allium.

Gotta love a flower whose name is Latin for Onion!

I did quite a bit of post processing on these flowers – purple in the garden, but after I was finished playing — well, you can see they are now a mixture of spring colors. I loved the bokeh and the background, and so I worked on the photo until the main flower was the focal point, but the background was as interesting. Hope you enjoy this one!

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is finally getting up to speed in her warm season home of Wisconsin, and greatly enjoying her explores into the blooming gardens with her camera gear in tow.

Ant, Conqueror of Peony

Ant Conquering the Peony World

Ant Conquering the Peony © 2012 Bo Mackison

There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than in reality. ~ Seneca

No, this is not my usual kind of photograph. But I sure had a lot of fun getting the ant just so, so that it looked as if it was crawling over the edge of the giant peony world!

I used the infrared filter from Nik Color Effex Pro 4 to change this pink and green garden photo into a sci-fi garden shot.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. Sometimes a girl (photog) just has to have fun! 🙂