The Golden Hour

June 28, 2012 by 2 Comments
Stricker's Pond - Trees Lit by the Setting Sun

Trees in the Golden Hour ©2012 Bo Mackison

Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Spending this week with family and friends, but I still wish to share a photo a day with you of my walk around Stricker’s Pond. I walked in the evening a few days ago, and the tree trunks caught the light from the setting sun.

This time of day is the golden hour in photography parlance — easy to understand why!

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is balancing wedding plans and photography this week while enjoying both.

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Seeing the Great Blue Heron, Unexpectedly

June 25, 2012 by 6 Comments
Blue Heron at Stricker's Pond

Great Blue Heron at Stricker’s Pond ©2012 Bo Mackison

. . . when I am out searching, I never have a set idea of what it is I’m looking for. I simply seek, and occasionally I find  exactly what it is I wasn’t searching for. ~ Jeff T. Alu

I’ve never considered myself much of a birdwatcher, and I had little interest in taking photos of birds in the first years I explored with a camera. I always enjoyed watched a shorebird circle the pond, the rhythm of its wing stroke powerful yet graceful. I enjoyed the sandhill cranes, especially when they were quite a novelty. The resurgence of their numbers makes the sandhills a more common occurrence, but still provides a moment of joy, seeing them healthy and often with their chicks by their sides. And I have always loved listening to the sounds of the forest and prairie song birds, their music varied and always a surprise because I seldom can make a strong connection between song and specific bird.

And now on my morning walks I see a variety of birds from the heron family —  great blue herons, white egrets, and the little green heron. I returned on a late afternoon, alone, just me and my camera, to see what I might see. The lake was eerily quiet — only a few wood ducks and their babies were swimming along one shore. It had been a hot day and so I speculated the birds were keeping themselves cool in a shady spot.

While walking through the oak forest, I chanced to look up into the trees in an open space in the woods. The outlined branches of a dead tree against the deep blue sky caught my eye, and I was evaluating the textures and shapes, the lighting. Suddenly my eye caught a movement in the branches. This great blue heron stretched her s – shaped neck, twisted it, and then snuggled back into her roosting position. I was mesmerized.

I didn’t have the lens I would have preferred, but I made do with my 50 mm prime. Many shots later, after I had amassed a healthy number of bird-roosting-on-branch shots, I watched as the heron stretched its neck again, made a slight dip with her body, similar to the movement of a human diver on a spring-board, and then she flung herself into the air in an explosion of feathers and flapping wings. What a marvelous sight.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is falling in love with the beautiful herons she sees as she walks in her neighborhood!

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Rejoicing with the Wood Lilies

June 23, 2012 by 14 Comments
Wood Lily

Wood Lilies @2012 Bo Mackison

If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has the power to move you, if the simple things in nature have a message you understand, rejoice for your soul is alive. ~ Elenore Duse

I consider myself to be fortunate as a nature lover.

I do not live on the edge of Yosemite’s majestic landscape nor near the expansive red mazes of Canyonlands National Park, although living near those parks would be a thrill. I do not live near the coastal craggy rocks of Maine nor the sandy beaches of North Carolina, although a bit of time spent gazing at the relentless waves of the Atlantic is on my to-do list. The redwood forests near the Pacific coast have long been a soul-attraction for me, and when I walked under their canopies, I felt as close to a spiritual awakening as I ever have. I have traveled the United States from north to south and east to west, and I’ve fallen in love with so many varied places.

And I am truly blessed. I have a home in a valley near Tucson. When I drive a few miles to the east, I reach the top of a Sky Island in the Santa Rita Mountain Range. I can see the surrounding desert from an altitude of nearly 10,000 feet. When I drive a few miles towards the west, I am in the Sonoran Desert, a landscape that speaks directly to me and provides me with a hard-to-describe centering experience. That is half of my great fortune, and one I appreciate deeply in the winter and early spring.

Now I’m focusing on the other half of my fortune, experiencing the land I’ve lived in and enjoyed for nearly thirty years, but with which I’d never deeply bonded. This summer I am discovering, through the simple act of a daily walk in the early morning, that the beauty of nature can be found everywhere and anywhere. All I had to do was look around me and appreciate the simple things in nature.

I am truly fortunate to live only a few minutes walking distance from a pond formed in the last glacial era which ended nearly 12,000 years ago, and was  coincidentally called the Wisconsin Glacier Era. Stricker’s Pond is a kettle pond, a pond formed when a chunk of ice settled in a pocket during the last glacier, and then melted and became a shallow pond when the climate warmed.

On my mile walk around the pond I see Little Green Herons, Blue Herons, Mallards, Canada Geese, Wood Ducks, and many other species of birds, amphibians and small animals. There are aquatic plants in the pond, shore plants along the edges, and a recovering mesic prairie stretching north, filled with compass plants, purple coneflowers, Queen Anne’s Lace, chicory, common mullein, purple lupine, and a half-dozen grasses.

Part of my walk takes me through an ancient stand of oaks where I catch glimpses of critters scurrying through the lush green undergrowth, and find patches of wood lilies and sunflowers fringing the woods’ edge, flowers that lift my heart in gladness.

What a feast for the senses, and all within walking distance of my backyard. Wow!

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. Yes, wow!

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So You Walk

June 2, 2012 by 3 Comments
Forest Path

The Path © 2012 Bo Mackison

How can you explain that you need to know that the trees are still there, and the hills and the sky? 

Anyone knows they are. 

How can you say it is time your pulse responded to another rhythm,

the rhythm of the day and the season instead of the hour and the minute? 

No, you cannot explain. 

So you walk. 

~ Author unknown, from New York Times editorial, “The Walk,” 25 October 1965

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  Since Bo is in the big city at an art fair, she is visualizing this lovely walk int he woods.

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