Softly Seen, A Heart in Shadow © 2010 Bo Mackison
I don’t photograph roses very often. Maybe because I’ve had entire years of gardening consumed with frustrating rose care. In out first home — a zillion and a half years ago and before children — I thought it would be lovely to plant some of the roses my grandfather had grown. I frequently gardened with him during my childhood, but I must have missed the parts of rose care that were the hard work.
I remember the good scents part. He would call, “Hey, Bo. Take a sniff of this yeller one. What do ya think? Ain’t she a grand one!”
I remember being allowed to carefully cut long stemmed roses with very sharp cutters. I brought them to my grandmother on the special days her Garden Club ladies visited our home. She would arrange them in exquisite bouquets of welcome for the admiring rose lovers.
I don’t, however, remember the clumpy, thick white clouds of rose dust or the aphids and black spot the rose dust was supposed to eradicate. And I certainly didn’t remember winter care. My grandfather’s roses grew in Zone 7. I planted my roses in Zone 4 which meant they required pruning and mulching and wrapping and covering. And even then, there was always winter kill that took a part of each plant.
I struggled with those roses the 7 years we lived in our first home, and when we moved I swore I would have no more roses.
So I have a rather tenuous relationship with roses. I love them; I hate them.
But then we were visiting Milwaukee today and stopped at the Boerner Botanical Gardens. While we were there, I decided to take a walk through their rose gardens. (The last time I walked those rose garden paths, I held the hand of our oldest child, while Sherpa pushed our middle child, a tiny infant, in a stroller.)
I took a few photographs before the mosquitoes won and I had to retreat to the safety of the car. I didn’t record the name of this rose. I was too busy slapping at biting insects and wondering what useful purpose mosquitoes have on this earth.
But I like this rose — its soft curves, the shadows playing with the lights, and the rose’s heart. A hidden heart.
A Different Take © 2010 Bo Mackison
For almost all of my photography practice, I have tried to stay true to what I photographed. Now I find myself wanting to see what will happen if I increase the clarity a little, decrease the saturation. I use LightRoom exclusively. I never did purchase Photoshop, not because I did’t want to try it, but because I never managed to save my pile of money earmarked for Photoshop. I always seemed to find another photography related thing I wanted more. Eventually I want to see what Photoshop does at my own hands, but that will be awhile.
Until then I am exclusively using Adobe Lightroom. Haven’t upgraded to LR 3 yet, because I haven’t quite finished figuring out the basic workings of Lightroom 2.5. I like to putter when I’m working on a photograph. I know there are a multitude of Ligthroom Actions out there — press a button and the software changes your photo in an exactly prescribed way. I haven’t tried those yet — still in basic training, right? — but I imagine I will give the free ones a look eventually. It seems a shame to reject so much progress in a tidy package. Need to at least take a look.
But at this stage in my photography, I’m rather like a tinkerer. “How does it look if I take a bit more red out? What happens if I push that green a little more? And bleed the color from the background and most of the flower?
I experimented with the composition here, too. Let those bulky lily buds play in the front, obscuring the main flower a bit, but I like the feel of seeing the longer branch with multiple lilies as a change. Usually I focus on a single flower.
Any comments about my wanderings in Lightroom? Do you like the different, less textbook look or less macro look? Do you miss the true colors?
And to the photogs out there, if you use Photoshop, do you find it invaluable? And if you do, why? Do you use presets (hear they are the ultimate time saver) or do you prefer to tinker with your photo, bit by bit?
For me, I’m moving slowly on my journey, exploring things as I come to them. Happy with some new attempts, not so happy with others. But, for sure, I never dreamed how far a camera and a dream can take a person.
I have already traveled far, amazingly far, and I’m eager to keep on taking the walk, step by step. So much to see, to consider, to learn, to share.
Water Lilies © 2010 Bo Mackison
There is a new article in my series, Memoir Space, now up on The Calm Space, an online magazine published by Karen Wallace.
In the article, I share an excerpt of a letter I wrote to a special woman in my life, and show how easy it is to write a bit of your life story. It’s as easy as writing a letter – yes, a handwritten letter! – and including it in a special occasion card. Go ahead. Take a minute and read Spreading Happiness by Sharing Memories.
The water lilies were photographed at Chicago Botanic Garden. I’ve been working with desaturated photographs, and in this photo, I left only a hint of the original color, while keeping the emphasis on the two sunlit lilies.
Hope you enjoy both the article and the lilies.
Tiny Fountain © 2010 Bo Mackison
This fountain is in a very long straight line, but the individual water spouts are very short – only a few inches high.
Did you see the fountain in the photograph when you first glanced? As you looked for the fountain, did that encourage you to look deeper into the photograph?
That is what photography – the actual act of taking a photograph – does for me. It makes me take a longer look, a deeper look. It allows me take the time to make meaning from what I see.
Photographed at Chicago Botanic Garden.
Two Roses © 2010 Bo Mackison
Still wading through many photograph files, pulling out special ones from my recent trip to Seattle, Vancouver and the Olympic Peninsula. There are so many photographs that I would love to share — why take photographs if you don’t share, right?
While we were on the Pacific coast, my younger daughter and I visited our 47th (Washington) and 48th (Oregon) states. Sherpa and I always believed that we should introduce our three children to the wonders of their own country first. Then they could take on the world when they were ready to explore further. When our youngest child turned 5, we started going on three week summer vacations, pulling a pop up tent everywhere we traveled.
We concentrated on the sites in the National Park System, but we balanced our trips with visits to some of the major US cities, too. (A few of our favorite National Parks — Yellowstone, Craters of the Moon, Acadia, Padre Islands, Glacier. A few of our favorite cities — New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Chicago.)
When we stopped our travels – yep, the kids grew up and moved away and got jobs and took on other commitments — we had all visited (not just flown over, but visited) 46 of the 50 United States. Well, for the sake of full disclosure, Sherpa was at 47 because of a quick business trip to Seattle, but the rest of us had yet to see Washington, Oregon, Alaska or Hawaii.
When I offered my daughter an after-graduation-before-starting-big-job trip, she immediately proposed a vacation to the Pacific Northwest to capture States #47 and 48. And so the trip we just completed was planned.
I’ve posted photographs from Washington state – we traveled over 1,000 miles in Washington — but nothing from Oregon.
Nothing against Oregon, really! But we only had 10 days and we couldn’t see everything. Especially after we added a few spontaneous stops to our original itinerary. In order to visit our 48th state, we crossed the bridge from Longview, Washington to Rainier, Oregon on the last day we were there. (We had intended to go to Portland, but that was still miles away and we had a plane to catch in Seattle later that night.)
To make the state “count” according to family rules, we had to eat something while there and we had to do an activity, preferably something unusual.
We stopped at a little place not far from the bridge and ordered ice cream cones. I had blueberry cheesecake ice cream, delicious, one of the biggest single dip cones I’ve ever had, real blueberries, of course. We were in Oregon, right? Manda had pumpkin, a solid choice, too. Then we bought a lottery ticket and played lotto. (It was only the second lottery ticket I’ve ever purchased, and Manda’s first, so it counted as something unusual.)
Then we checked off #48, turned around and headed for Sea-Tac.
Peony in Pinks © 2010 Bo Mackison
This particular peony is from a peony plant I received for Mother’s Day from a very proud 6 year old, my first born, who saved her allowance and a bit of birthday money in order to buy her ‘Mommy’ the “prettiest pink flower in the world.” ( See why it’s good to keep journals. I read that passage not too many months ago, and made a note to myself – use Jeanne’s quote in a blog post when her peony blooms.)
This 23 year old peony has a life lesson to share. When Jeanne gave me the plant, we duly found a lovely place of honor in which to plant it. It was near the window, center of the back yard garden, and Jeanne was proud that her Mother’s Day gift was so highly visible. But we never took into consideration which spot would best suit the peony, and we planted it next to a rather towering fir tree which blocked it from most of the sunlight. Deep shade would be the precise description.
The saying “Bloom where you are planted” doesn’t seem applicable to peonies, or at least to this particular peony. Though it did bloom, it did so with much hesitation. Year after year, it would put forth 3 or 4 blooms – if we were lucky. Though it grew and it was green, it simply was not thriving.
It took us way too long to figure out its dilemma, and then another few years before we actually were motivated enough to uproot the peony bush and transplant it to the sunny side of the house. Now, the sunny side of the house is also the quiet side of the yard – a space between our garage and our neighbor’s garage, and it doesn’t have much foot traffic. Not too many people see the peony in bloom unless they make an effort and walk around the house to see it. But the space is large and sunny and the peony likes the quiet garden.
So now we have a really happy peony. This year I quit counting blossoms once I reached fifty. The peony doesn’t care if it’s in a place of honor where everyone can admire its beauty. The peony does care that it gets its basic requirements for healthy survival – a bit of rain and a lot of sun. When its basic needs are met, it does its best to put on a spectacular show of flowering.
Just like people. When their basic needs are met, they reward you with a good effort. But like the peony, it’s hard to be a spectacular bloomer when you are a sun lover and you’ve been planted in the shade.
Tiny Blossoms © 2010 Bo Mackison
Flowers from a patch of chives.
When I was a young child, I lived in a house full of grandparents — grandmother and grandfather and my grandmother’s mother. My great-grandmother’s name was Prudie and I remember her most vividly when I was about 7 or 8 and she was in her 80s. I was an only child for much of my childhood, and lived in an apartment building where there were no other children, so Prudie was my best friend.
In the “flowering” months – usually March through November – my grandfather, Prudie’s son-in-law, would spend many hours every day in his gardens. Every morning he picked a single fresh flower and brought it to Prudie’s second floor bedroom. Knocked on her door, exchanged “good mornings” and he’d give her a flower.
Prudie had two cut glass vases – one large, one small. Some mornings she would receive a flower fit for the larger vase – a luscious ‘Everlasting’ red rose or a frilly white peony. But often she would get a tiny token from the yard – a deep purple pansy, a stalk of lily of the valley, sometimes an inauspicious white clover or a blossom from the purple chives.
These chive blossoms, desaturated to remove much of the color, remind me of the single chive flower I would occasionally see in my grandmother’s room. She kept the room quite dark to help stave off the heat and protect her weakened eyes from bright lights, and the brown shades, when pulled nearly closed, lit the room in tones rather like those seen in the photograph.
One Phlox and Many © 2010 Bo Mackison
One bright eyed magenta phlox stands out amidst all the other striped flowers.
Ever feel like you’re not fitting in with the crowd? That you see things a bit differently, and that you think that’s a good thing?
Perhaps this is another one of those metaphorical self portraits…
Self Portrait?
Another self portrait in metaphor.
Not quite in balance.
Need a bit of freshening, but an hour’s work would take care of those smudges, straighten the tangled cords of the window blind.
And a bit of sanding and a fresh coat of paint would hide those worn areas.
Like I mentioned before–metaphor.
A Light and Curvature
I’ve been told I take photographs of odd things. That’s true. While I was enthusiastically photographing this light, quite thrilled with the two color tones of wall behind it, the graceful curve of the wrought iron, the textures – metal, fluted glass, adobe, wood – I had three different people approach with cameras in their hands. They stopped, peered at what I was photographing, probably asked themselves “What IS she photographing?” and then walked on. They just didn’t get it.
But I got it. The picture I imagined in my head was captured with one of my photographs. How sweet that is!
