Contemplate the Beauty

Orange Poppy

Orange Poppy © 2012 Bo Mackison

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. ~ Rachel Carson

I am heading into a stretch of days that will be a test of my endurance. As I was looking through my notebooks of quotes, looking for a quotation to pair with this cheerful poppy, I came across the above quote by Rachel Carson.

Contemplate the beauty of the earth. There will be found reserves of strength that will endure.

Contemplate the beauty of the earth.

Contemplate the beauty.

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

Peony in Stillness

Abstract Peony

Peony © 2012 Bo Mackison

The need to listen carefully creates its own stillness. ~ Toni Packer

Quiet. Solitude. Stillness.

When I am out in my garden with my camera, I wait for stillness, for the wind to quiet enough so that my photograph, or at least the portion of the photograph that I want in focus, is in focus.

On a calm day, it is easy to take photographs outside. But on a breezy day, I decide if I want to add some extra work into the photography equation. From which direction is the wind blowing? Is it gusty? Can I block the wind with a building or a fence or the clear acrylic panels I built into a wind shield?

Some of the time, I choose to out wait the wind if it isn’t blowing steadily. And while standing or kneeling or even lying on the grass, motionless, that is when I begin to hear all of the sounds of minutiae. (Can I use the word minutiae in that way? . . . Well, I just did.)

First, I notice how incredibly loud the wind is, especially when I want it to die down so the swaying peony will stop its dance and hold still so I can take its portrait. But wind can be really loud. And of course all of the bushes and leafy branches are twirling about. Even the grasses I am resting upon are brushing against each other and sound like the swishing on a snare drum. Then I start to listen closely – do I hear the wind itself or only that which is tossed about by the wind’s movement?

And while I am listening so carefully, I notice all the other noises that I prefer to consciously block. The low hum of a neighbor’s lawn mower, a car engine revving as it passes on a side street, the loud thrumming of a descending airplane heading to a nearby airstrip.

Suddenly I am thankful for the winds’ blustery sounds, glad that its whooshes and whispers let me focus on the sounds in nature.

Eventually I get my photographs, one way or another, or change my plans. There is never a dearth of subjects for me and my camera.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She has discovered that when carrying a camera outdoors, she discovers much that hasn’t a lot to do with photography.

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.

Monarch Butterfly on Lilac Bush

Monarch and Lilac Flowers

Monarch and Lilac Flowers © 2012 Bo Mackison

Every man takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

As I was working in my new office set-up – my screened in porch off the back of my house, plus a Bistro table that I can either sit at or stand at while using my computer or writing – I looked up and saw several Monarchs fluttering around the Lilac bush only a few feet from where I was working. I had earlier been enjoying the fragrance of the Lilac, a French hybrid, deep purple Lilac that Sherpa and I planted on our 25th wedding anniversary in 2001. I stopped my work, readied my camera, and went out a took a few dozen photos.

But when I opened my computer to fetch the files I had downloaded this morning, the photos were nowhere to be found. I’ve been having problems with some of my storage drives, and I have my main external hard drive at the computer magician’s place at this very moment. He just moments ago informed me that most of my files are intact and retrievable. I’m missing 9 Gigabytes of data, and I’m not sure what those specific files were yet. But since the computer magician recovered nearly 300 Gigabytes of photo files, I am more than happy. (I do have another back-up, but it is inconveniently in Arizona at this moment. Poor planning on my part.)

Now back to the lovely purple lilac photo. Well, the above photo is not of my Lilac. This photo is of a bush I photographed at the Allen Centennial Gardens on the University of Wisconsin’s main campus a few days ago. It will have to stand in for the other photograph for now.

Once the thunderstorm that is directly above my house moves east, I’ll see if I can take another photograph of another Monarch on my Lilac.

Maybe, maybe not…

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