Exploring the Prairie – Reconnecting with a Nearly Lost Habitat

July 28, 2014 by 2 Comments
Prairie Pause

Prairie Pause © 2014 Bo Mackison

There was a day when the wind blew free and strong off the Gulf of Mexico and onto the prairies.

These vast grasslands offered no trees or mountains to stop the breeze and it blew from what is now Texas northward for 2,000 miles to the Arctic forests of Alberta.

The wind whipped the mighty land of grass into undulating oceans of green.
It blew dust into the eyes of a million buffalo and grizzled hair of the antelope. It whistled and whirled through a thousand prairie dog towns and rocked meadowlarks on their slender perches.

From the lands of the Blackfoot, Hidatsa and Pawnee to the domain of the Cheyenne, Kiowa and Comanche, the wind blew and the sun shone above. This was the prairie.

Then the ocean breezes carried Europeans to this new land. A million square miles of grassland became a million square miles of checkerboard grain fields and grazing lands.

The wind erased the last trace of the wandering buffalo and the native Indian who followed it relentlessly.

Today, the fences of zoos confine the former denizens of the grassland, and paved highways pass through the sterile lands of Indian reservations.

The plants of the prairie today can be seen only in forgotten corners of grain fields, along unused roadsides, or in a tiny tract of a university arboretum.

What the prairie farmer could not plow he used for his cattle, which ate the tender stalks of the tall grass and allowed it to be replaced by weeds and dust.

The wind still blows free, but it finds a different land today. The prairies are gone.

~ Richard Nelson,  from The Prairie Primer by Stan Nichols, Lynn Entine and Evelyn Hines

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And so begins my prairie explorations. Photos are from Pope Farms Conservancy, one of the prairie restorations re-establishing a few parcels of prairie land. I am grateful for the mighty efforts of the dedicated Friends of Pope Farm Conservancy — through their efforts my imagination grasps a hint of the former grandeur of the prairie oceans, I am provided with a tantalizing taste of uninterrupted prairie — one for which I will forever yearn.

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April’s Photo-Heart Connection Photo – An Unusual Choice

May 4, 2012 by 19 Comments
Burlington Northern Train Cars Dwarfed by Kansas Grain Elevators

Burlington Northern © 2012 Bo Mackison

This photograph is about as different from my usual photographs as it can be, but in going through my photo catalogs from April, this is the one I kept returning to. I found myself studying its lines, its color, the subject matter, perhaps a hidden meaning, trying to decipher why this particular photograph caught my attention, and my heart, and so qualified as April’s photo-heart connection selection.

(Kat Sloma from Kat Eye Studio encourages photographers to pick a photo once a month for sharing — a photo taken in the prior month that best makes a photo-heart connection.)

Now to work my way through the feelings/thoughts attached to this photo:

  • The subject matter is less typical for me than many other genres. I shoot macro-botanicals with passion and abandon; I am ever fond of architectural photos; I’ll drive miles to explore a landscape – particularly those in the wilderness, in National Parks, often with no sign of human activity; and yet here is a rural scene, a scene that is agricultural in theme.
  • I take 95% of my photographs with my Canon DSLR and then spend extra time in post-processing. I am a tinkerer of the post-processing process. I love to use software to create new ways of seeing a routine subject. I will consider many options regarding a small aspect of a photograph, and then go on to another small aspect, and another, and another. When I photograph with my DSLR, I love to take my time, study possibilities, set up my tripod and try lots of options before going on to the next subject. I shot this photo with my iPhone using a Hipstamatic app preset. Sherpa and I were on the long drive home, and we stopped briefly on a country road for a truck to make a left turn. I opened the car window, grabbed my phone, and took a single photo before the car began to move.
  • I like bright colors and focused, close-up details. And my love for the colors associated with the US Southwest has deepened since I began living in Arizona part of the year. I see more color in my photographs – the bright cerulean skies, the turquoise and orange buildings, colors that make a strong statement. But in this photo, the colors are muted. There are a few patches of a rusty color and the remainder is in soft greens, whites, browns.
  • I love the play of light and shadow in photographs, and this photograph hasn’t much light nor shadow. It was taken mid day under a cloudy sky, not typically a good time for photography.

So why this photograph?

  • Well, I am attracted to the composition. It feels satisfying to me, the blocks of different colors, three almost equal rectangular spaces, plus the darker colors as contrast. I do not often take symmetrical photographs, and honestly, I would probably not have composed this photograph as it is if I had been taking a more deliberate photo. But the symmetry provided by the grain elevators, and the strong horizontal and vertical lines seem to emphasize the subject of farm work and transportation in the country’s Midwest.
  • I like that the train car is marked with the logo of the Burlington Northern line. I grew up in the Midwest not far from Burlington, Iowa – the train company’s namesake. And several of my relatives – a grandfather and two uncles — worked for the Burlington Northern. I remember bits of their stories, I sometimes saw them return home from night shift duty with coal stained coveralls, and I associated the smell of their smoky clothes with a night of hard work.

So, an atypical photograph can be a favorite. A photograph with the vaguest memories of family can add a strong sense of human connection to a seemingly straightforward scene. And perhaps there is special thrill about a photograph taken on the run, the knowledge that taking a photograph isn’t only about f-stops and sharp focus and the rules.

Maybe it is also the appreciation of timing, good instincts, and a little luck!

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. After three months in the Southwest, Bo is back home in the Midwest. And just in time — her first art show of the summer season is tomorrow — Madison’s Audubon Art Fair at Warner Park on Madison’s east side. Seeded Earth Studio’s booth will be inside in the glassed-in annex. Hours are 9:30 am to 4:30 pm.

 

Filed Under: Photography, Travel Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Traveling East, A Spring Greening

May 1, 2012 by 12 Comments

The greening of the trees in spring rain,
see-through trees like a lacy negligee, the nesting bird
watches from the half-leafed trees.

Traveling in the Rain

Rain Travel © 2012 Bo Mackison

Calves balancing on gentle hills rub their noses in the wet grasses.
One stands wobbly, leans against its mother.
Others watch their mothers watching them, nibble a bit, suckle,
wander about the remains of last fall’s tattered harvest.

Darkest brown, Iowa’s earth, earth that dips
and dances. We’ve driven past the Kansas grasslands,
and not yet reached the prairie flat of Illinois.

See the family plot tucked tightly between
the edge of the woods and the tilled field;
Splintered posts and strands of wire mark its boundary.
Roughly hewed stones, two rows of three, the mossy inscriptions illegible.
Though one, a mother’s marker, is split in half – part upright,
part broken off and tipped into the rain-soaked grass.
The roughened quarry block, now a rest stop for crows,
splats of white the only sign of life.

Clouds hang gray, so low I yearn to stand
and push them high into the skies, high enough to punch an opening into the dim blueness
that is Midwestern sky, give sunlight to the earth.
Yet fog lingers, sky primed in deep grays.

We pass a highway sign, What Cheer, population 142. Twenty miles south.
I wish to see a town worthy of this name, but we’re on the fourth morning of steady travel.
There is no will to detour.
Tonight we sleep in the familiar ridges and valleys of our familiar bed.

First I will say hello to the house I left a hundred days ago,
walk through the rooms I know by memory, peer out the back window at the apple tree.
I’m told no blossoms remain.

Oklahoma, Gray Skies, and a White Truck

White Truck © 2012 Bo Mackison

I bought a primitive statue of a woman last summer from a stone sculptor the next booth over.
She toppled in a winter storm. My husband mentions this
as he pulls into the Save-n-Go in Dubuque for gas and coffee.

Tomorrow morning I’ll push her upright so we can watch the garden together.
We will meet, eye to eye, and reflect on the greenness of Midwest spring.

———————-

Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. After four days of cross-country travel, Bo is back home in the Midwest.

Filed Under: Photography, Travel, Writing Practices Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

(One Too Many) Adventures at the Chicago Botanic Gardens Art Festival

July 4, 2011 by 5 Comments
Chicago Botanic Gardens Art Festival

Strolling at the Chicago Botanic Gardens Art Fair

Sherpa and I spent the weekend in Chicago. I exhibited my Seeded Earth Photography at the Chicago Botanic Gardens Art Festival. It was a rather crazy, mixed up weekend.

First we had to keep switching schedules to adapt to work schedules and show timetables. When Sherpa had a conflict on Thursday which was set-up day, my son agreed to drive me, the trailer and the art set up to Chicago on Wednesday evening. That worked out well. We had an entire evening to catch up on a few years worth of conversations.

Thursday set up went well. We set up the booth, strolled a bit through the Botanic Gardens, had a quick lunch, and Jeff was back on his way to Madison by 3 in the afternoon. Sherpa arrived later that evening to take over the assistant’s duties.

Friday again started off well. It was warm and humid, but there was no rain in the forecast until later in the evening so we were looking forward to a dry, uneventful first day of the three-day show – maybe a bit sweaty, but not rainy! The day stayed dry, but not uneventful.

We had a couple of hours of set up to do before the show began. As Sherpa and I were getting the awnings of the booth unrolled, I stepped backwards, tripped over another artist’s gear, and hit my head hard on a ladder laying in the grass. I’ll sum up the next 24 hours quickly–ambulance, ER, CAT scan, hospital admission for 24 hours’ observation for post-concussion syndrome.

Sherpa went back to the festival where employees of Amdur Productions and so many wonderful artists near my booth pitched in and set up my photography display and helped Sherpa when he needed a second pair of hands. When I was discharged from the hospital at noon on Saturday, complication-free, I went to the show and found everything in good shape. And so the rest of the show proceeded smoothly.

I want to note that I started out on this art show path with little idea of how things were going to work out. There were lots of unanswered questions, lots of risk taking, and a few sleepless nights. Sherpa and I are both lucky, because we discovered we love doing art shows. But the best benefit of being on the art fair circuit was one I had not expected.

It was meeting and becoming friends with the amazing artists at the various shows. It was getting to know the people who capably run the shows and handle emergencies in stride.

To all of you, thank you. I am so very proud to be a show circuit artist associated with such fine and caring people.

———————–

Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. This weekend she very briefly considered whether the life of an artist was the life for her. She answered with a resounding YES – what other life could be so fulfilling and meaningful.

Filed Under: Photography, Solopreneurship Tagged With: , , , ,

Iowa

October 26, 2010 by 9 Comments
Hayfields on Central Iowa Farm

Iowa © 2010 Bo Mackison

I am taking a break from travel photography from the western National Parks to bring you a photograph from the last day of our trip — nearly home.

We detoured off the interstate for a break and came upon evidence of the rural American Midwest. Farm fields, mostly harvested. Silage wrapped neatly in the fields. Putting things to rest, getting ready for winter.

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