A Re-invention of Giant Allium

May 17, 2012 by 6 Comments
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.

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Pinkest Petals

May 13, 2012 by 8 Comments
Petals

Pinkest Petals © 2012 Bo Mackison

Nature can be trusted to work her own miracle in the heart of any man whose daily task keeps him alone among her sights, sounds, and silences. ~ Gene Stratton Porter

Sunrise beckoned today. Sunlight woke me early. We went for a country drive to see what we could see.

The air was fresh, pungent with spring – lilacs in bloom, farmers turning the earth, the clean scent of the foaming Wisconsin River rushing towards the Mississippi.

Birds chattered, as they chatter each morning outside my window. I try to pay close attention, for in the rush of early morning it is possible to not hear them. I am finally distinguishing one from another. Today I saw several oak trees in an oak savannah filled with male Baltimore Orioles. I have never seen so many orioles at one time.

In late afternoon I went out to the garden where the last of the tulips were in bloom. In a few days their petals will only be scattered on the earth. By then the columbines and peonies will have started blooming. There is always something to see outside.

On this Sunday in mid-May, here is one of the tulips I photographed a few days ago. Its color was so striking, I chose to take an extreme close-up, and concentrate only on a little of its shape and its brilliant pink.

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

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Purple Tulip Showcase

May 11, 2012 by 6 Comments
Two Purple Tulips

Two Purple Tulips © 2012 Bo Mackison

I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order. ~ John Burroughs

I been visiting gardens, the forests, the lake shores — putting my senses back in order. The colors of spring in Wisconsin are surely meant to awaken all of one’s senses!

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

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Beginnings

January 13, 2012 by 5 Comments
Owen Park

Beginning of a Snowstorm © 2012 Bo Mackison

Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully he can learn even more. ~ George Washington Carver

The snow predictions were right on target. Yesterday morning at this time it had just begun to snow. Now there are six inches of snow covering the ground. I went out early yesterday, about an hour after the storm whipped into Madison. In the thick of this hardwood  grove, there was the silence of nature. Nothing much to hear, unless I stopped and stood still. And listened. And waited.

The snow pelted the ground without sound, but vibrated the pile of oak leaves still attached to their branch. I heard what sounded like the breath of the wind blowing gently, the tremble of a leaf as the snow fell heavier. A single snowflake would not disturb a single oak leaf, but  a swirl of snowflakes makes the branch of leaves dance.

The birds were silent. The wild turkeys, always a noisy crew, were strutting through another part of the park. No coyotes were out, not in mid-day. I hear them mostly at night, a siren-mimicking whine that always make me listen twice. Am I listening to the warning of a siren or the wailing of the coyotes? Even the squirrels had deserted this area.

My world is often silenced by the fall of snow, it blots out the sounds of man, and requires me to listen carefully to the sounds of the natural world around me.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. Bo is exploring winter – close up and quietly.

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Snowstorm in the Woods

January 12, 2012 by 1 Comment
Owen Park

Before the Storm © 2012 Bo Mackison

Each moment of the year has its own beauty. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

This morning when I began my day it was still night. Not quite. It looked like night, but it was early morning and the sun’s rising time has not yet caught up with my internal wake-up alarm.

The house was also awake. Pipes were humming-moaning-rumbling with flowing water and reminded me of the sounds of a storm which reminded me that there were predictions for a snowstorm today in our area. I peered outside into the almost dark. The remains of the perennial garden — stalks and seed heads — stood in silhouette against the open field beyond out land.

Bare ground, absent of snow from blizzards or ice storms or even ordinary snow storms, looked out of place in the middle weeks of January. The storm which was to have begun in the middle of the night had not yet appeared. I checked the Doppler radar, and smiled as I remembered waiting for weather forecasts on the radio as a teen.

“Five til the hour and five til the half hour” the jingle went, announcing times for the weather forecasts. It seemed an awkward way to give the schedule.

Now there is hardly any wait at all. The computer screen opens to a weather website and a United States map. It shows a eastward moving swath of royal blue the width of the state of Iowa. Royal blue is weather code for “big snow”. The storm is only twenty miles from Madison.

By the time I leave the house, snow is coming down in a blinding fury. By the time I’ve run a couple of errands and picked up extra milk, visibility is poor and the ground is covered with several inches of snow. I take a detour to Owen Park and then to Strickers Pond to take some winter photographs.

I fly to Tucson next week, so this may be my one of my only chances to tromp around in the snow and take pictures of the white stuff. Good thing I keep my extras of my winter outerwear in the car!

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She’s now admiring the snowstorm from inside her home, and she’s glad she doesn’t have to go back out and drive on the slippery streets.

 

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