playing with photography

Playing with Photography, Part VI – The Vineyards

September 11, 2014 by Bo Mackison 1 Comment

We ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season
without thinking of the grapes it has borne.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Atlantic breezes cool Channing Daughters Vineyards and create a climate hospitable to a wide array of grape varieties.

The Vineyards are on a beautiful plot of land in Bridgehampton on the North Fork of eastern Long Island. Twenty-five acres of vines, a small winery and a bustling tasting room.

Owner/Sculptor Walter Channing’s works are present in the vineyards, tasting room, and almost anywhere you look around the estate.

Channing's Daughters Vineyards, Long Island

Sculptures emerge unexpectedly the end posts of vineyard rows and less subtly in the form of towering inverted trees against the horizon.

We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy,
even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry. ~ E.B. White

Filed Under: Photography Tagged With: Bridgehampton, Channing Daughters Vineyard, eastern Long Island, Hipstamatic app, New York, North Fork, playing with photography, sculptures, vineyards, wine

Experimenting – or Playing – with Photography. Part V, Flowers, Flowers, Everywhere

September 10, 2014 by Bo Mackison 2 Comments

“I must have flowers, always, and always.” ~ Claude Monet

While I was visiting New York City and Long Island over the extended Labor Day weekend, our timing was perfect. The flowers put on a tremendous show for us. Everywhere we walked there were planters, gardens, even flowers floating with such grace and beauty in fountains.

I was with beloved family who I only see once or perhaps twice a year, and didn’t want me and my camera interrupting the flow. (Once my big camera is in my hands, this mysterious force takes over and I see photo ops constantly – not such a good plan with a group of four, including one pregnant daughter!) So I continued to “play” with photography while I was visiting family on Long Island. And yes, the cell phone camera can be a distraction, too! But not quite as bad, I’m told.

“A flower blossoms for its own joy.” ~ Oscar Wilde

Hydrangea must be THE flower of eastern Long Island. They’re everywhere! They’re everywhere!

“Without darkness, nothing comes to birth, As without light, nothing flowers.” ~ May Sarton

Never underestimate the power of a flower! I stopped to admire two planters of green-eyed Susans flanking the door of a jewelry shop I had no intention of visiting. Then a too fancy opal ring in the front window caught my eye. I had lost my wedding ring several months ago, and I’d been casually looking at opal rings (I’d decided to go with an opal my birthstone, not another diamond).

On the spur of the moment, we entered this very formal jewelry store. Not even my kind of store, I thought. But my daughter – shopper extraordinaire – found a black opal way in a back case, on sale, end of season, etc., etc. and the pieces fell into place.

So I thank this charming bunch of bright flowers, for I now have a replacement ring. Deeply grateful!

“Nobody sees a flower – really – it is so small it takes time – we haven’t time – and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe

More Hydrangea, with a different color treatment…an unusual combination inspired from a shake of my camera and the serendipity of the Hipstamatic app…

“A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in–what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.” ~ Victor Hugo

And Hydrangea in blue. Don’t they have just the most luscious colors – that pale blue with lavender and yellow highlight?

Tomorrow, this atypical tour of my New York visit takes us to the vineyards of Long Island – what a feast for the senses, there…

Filed Under: Creativity, Photography, Travel Tagged With: flowers, gardens, green eyed Susans, Hipstamatic app, hydrangea, Long Island, New York, playing with photography

Experimenting – Actually, Mostly Playing – From an Airplane Window — Part IV, Approaching New York City

September 9, 2014 by Bo Mackison 1 Comment

Aerial of Williamsburg Bridge and East Harbor

“Chapter 1.
He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion…no, make that: he – he romanticized it all out of proportion. Yes. To him, no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin.’

Uh, no let me start this over.

‘Chapter 1.
He was too romantic about Manhattan, as he was about everything else. He thrived on the hustle bustle of the crowds and the traffic. To him, New York meant beautiful women and street-smart guys who seemed to know all the angles…’.

Ah, corny, too corny for my taste. Can we … can we try and make it more profound?

‘Chapter 1.
He adored New York City. For him, it was a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture. The same lack of individual integrity that caused so many people to take the easy way out was rapidly turning the town of his dreams in…’

No, that’s a little bit too preachy. I mean, you know, let’s face it, I want to sell some books here.

Chapter 1.
He adored New York City, although to him it was a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture. How hard it was to exist in a society desensitized by drugs, loud music, television, crime, garbage…’

Too angry, I don’t want to be angry.

‘Chapter 1.
He was as tough and romantic as the city he loved. Behind his black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat.’

I love this.

X Marks the Spot – NYC © 21014 Bo Mackison

‘New York was his town, and it always would be.”

~ Woody Allen from Manhattan

Filed Under: Creativity, Photography Tagged With: aerial views of New York City, from an airplane window, Hipstamatic app, Manhattan, New York City, playing with photography

Experimenting – Actually, Mostly Playing – from an Airplane Window: Part II, Clouds, Clouds, Clouds

September 7, 2014 by Bo Mackison 1 Comment

“Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?
Is it for such I agitate my heart?”
~ Sylvia Plath, from Ariel

“The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn’t it be?–it is the same the angels breathe.”
~ Mark Twain, from Roughing It

“We pledge to fight ‘blue-sky’ thinking wherever we find it. Life would be dull if we had to look up at cloudless monotony day after day.”
~ Gavin Pretor-Pinney, from The Cloud-spotter’s Guide

Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place. Every bit of you has been replaced many times over… The point is that you are like a cloud: something that persists over long periods, whilst simultaneously being in flux. Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made.”
~ Steve Grand

“Clouds suit my mood just fine.”
~ Marie Lu, from Champion

“There was a star riding through clouds one night, & I said to the star, ‘Consume me’.”
~ Virginia Woolf, from The Waves

“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.”
~ Rabindranath Tagore, from Stray Birds

Filed Under: Creativity, Photography Tagged With: airplane, cloud formations, clouds, flight, flying, Hipstamatic app, playing with photography, Travel

Experimenting – Actually, Mostly Playing – from an Airplane Window, Part I, At the Airport

September 6, 2014 by Bo Mackison 1 Comment

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
~ Terry Pratchett from A Hat Full of Sky

Typically, I am a slow photographer.

I sit and absorb the feel of a place. I connect with the space. I may wait for a certain cloud formation to float into a certain location, or a shadow to darken a rock. I take in the feel of the space, the mood of the landscape, the energy of the street scene.

Sometimes, I am a photographer who wants to play and just see what happens.

I grab my iPhone, shake the camera, start shooting.

My favorite techniques for giving myself full permission to enjoy the process – PLAY – I refer to as my “shake and take” technique.

I open the Hipstamatic app on my iPhone and take a photo.

Then I shake the phone. The app randomly changes lenses and film. During my recent flight from Madison Wisconsin to New York City, I took a photo, shook, took the next photo. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Sometimes I simply must put serious aside and just play. On this flight, that is exactly what I did, and I loved the crazy, sometimes totally great, sometimes totally crazy results.

Sharing. Because sharing is part of the fun and play!

“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson from Emerson’s Essays

“It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression, ‘As pretty as an airport.”
~ Douglas Adams from The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.”
~ Anaïs Nin

I did something similar earlier this year, documented in the post A Series of Photographs – Exploring the Creative Process.

In that series I shot only one subject from the same perspective – a palo verde tree – using the “shake and take” method.

In this flight series, I explore a cross-country flight and then exploring bits of NYC using the same method.

Part one begins at the Madison airport, Part Two and Three are sky and (crazy) clouds and tiny landscapes, Part Four is rather amazing views of New York City on a clear day while descending into La Guardia. Parts Five, Six, and Seven include Long Island vineyards and wineries, the town of Greenport, and a funky restaurant in NYC. And then beyond…the return.

Enjoy. Then go play!

Filed Under: Photography, Travel Tagged With: airplanes, airport, Dane County Regional Airport, flying, Hipstamatic app, in the friendly skies, Madison to New York, playing with photography, Travel