Walking with the Trees

Bare Branches

Bare Branches ©2012 Bo Mackison

“Today I have grown taller from walking with the trees.”
–   Karle Wilson Baker

I think if I ever decided to limit myself to only a few subjects to photograph, I would choose first the tree.

When I photograph a tree, I capture the structure of the tree, and its beauty, its strength. But it seems the tree portraits become self-portraits in a sense, as they often capture my mood and state of being, too.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. During this month of endings and beginnings, of many journeys and quite a bit of upheaval, I will be posting iPhonography.

Endings and Beginnings

End of the Season

End of the Season ©2012 Bo Mackison

Life is not so much about beginnings and endings as it is about going on and on and on. It is about muddling through the middle.  ~ Anna Quindlen

Life is about muddling through the middle. November is about endings and beginnings. The ending of autumn’s high season and the beginning of autumn’s low season.

Autumn, three months long, loses much of its easily seen glory after the first month. Autumn conjures scenes of flaming trees, crisp fall mornings which glide into warm sunny days, apple picking, pumpkin patching, harvest gathering. That is high season autumn, autumn in its glory.

Then the low season of autumn arrives. The generosity of the year’s gardens dwindles. Anything worth saving from the coming cold is saved.

The first hard frost crisps the hardiest plants, the cold holds them in icy suspension for a few hours, and their leaves droop, as if in a state of exhaustion. Plants crinkle, dry out.

The planters are emptied, plants pulled from their summer containers and dropped on the compost pile; gardens are trimmed – a few perennials are cut short and banked with mulch in preparation for the soon to fly snow. The taller ones, their seed heads dried and bountiful, remain standing, crowded one upon another for support.

For now, the garden is quiet, an empty space. Wait until autumn is in her last days. The seed heads of the cone flowers and sunflowers will be the birds’ favorite in late December when other feeders are empty and the ground is hidden in drifts of snow.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. In this month of many ending and as many beginnings, I will post iPhonography processed with the Snapseed application.

 

Under The Bean

Under the Bean

Under the Bean ©2012 Bo Mackison

The artist can truly understand surface forms only by knowing their underlying structures; their form and behavior under tension, stress, and activity. In a sense, the why of what is. – Ian Mack

This quote seems to be written for this wonderful piece of sculpture, Cloud Gate by Anish Kapoor. This is an amazing piece of sculpture, and one where the design required not only knowledge of the internal tensions and stresses of the structure and its form.

I keep imagining that there are just as many behaviors under tension, stress and activity in the exterior space surrounding The Bean.

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

She recently returned from a week at the Filter Photo Festival in Chicago. A week filled with workshops, lectures, gallery walks, portfolio reviews, and a photo-walk to Millennium Park to say hello to The Bean.

The Whole Bean AKA Cloud Gate

The Whole Bean

The Whole Bean ©2012 Bo Mackison

Cloud Gate

Cloud Gate, a public sculpture by artist Anish Kapoor, is the centerpiece of the AT&T Plaza in Millennium Park. The sculpture is constructed using hundreds of sheets of stainless steel, but the exterior has no visible seams. As seen in the photo, it is a wildly popular attraction for visitors – Chicagoan and tourist – all with some form of camera for this super-fun photo-op.

I saw DSLRs, point and shoots, even a couple of iPads as camera, but most plentiful were the phone cameras held aloft by almost everyone.

I walked around the sculpture, and I had to take the requisite number of photos, including ones with the city backdrop of skyscrapers as the sun was setting, ones with the skyscrapers reflected on The Bean’s surface, a few more when the city streetlights popped on, and a couple with a tiny crescent moon in the background.

But I forgot to bring my evening dress including date in white evening coat, or my sixteen member bridal party, or my teeny-tiny Halloween costume. I’ll have to be satisfied with my photo in faded jeans and a Packers tee-shirt.

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

She recently returned from a week at the Filter Photo Festival in Chicago. A week filled with workshops, lectures, gallery walks, portfolio reviews, and a photo-walk to Millennium Park to say hello to The Bean.

The Bliss of Falling Leaves

Falling Leaves

Falling Leaves ©2012 Bo Mackison

Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering to the ground. ~ Emily Bronte

Falling Leaves

This has been a wonderfully bright and colorful autumn. The trees held tightly to their leaves longer than usual, giving me plenty of opportunity and  time to photograph autumn color before all of the falling leaves left only bare branches.

I have always had a special affinity with autumn, loving the trees and their layers of colors, loving the crisp, cool evenings in fall after a summer of sticky, humid nights, even loving the annual raking event we always had on a weekend in late October.

Blog Anniversary Winner

I celebrated the 5th anniversary of Seeded Earth Studio’s blog a few days ago, and offered a give away, a photograph, to one of my blog visitors who left a comment on the blog birthday post.  I said I would pick and announce the winner on my birthday, and so the day has come. There were 20 comments. I used a random number generator from the internet to choose a number.

And that number is: #10.

Counting the comments, the winner is #10 — ta-da — Susan Vial.

Congratulations, Susan. I’ll be contacting you very soon, as soon as I return from my Chicago Adventure! Sweet!

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  She is attending the Filter Photo Festival in Chicago the week of October 15.  Bo will be blogging about her conference experience – workshops, lecture series, gallery walks, portfolio reviews, and much more. 🙂