Yearly Archives: 2019

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Mid-Week Monochrome #15 – Flowers

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I got inspired by Amy‘s response to Ryan Photography‘s mid-week photo challenge and converted some flower photos to monochrome. Bren Ryan’s photo is truly dramatic, which is hard to achieve with most flowers, especially pastels in bright light.  Here are my attempts:

“What have you learned, Dorothy?”
That we’re back in Kansas? And that dramatic lighting contrast, simple structure, and sharp focus are pretty essential for a good-looking monochrome flower. 

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Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Now for something completely DIFFERENT

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Tina at Travels & Trifles lives on the East Coast. For her, the desert in bloom is something very different from her usual vista. Her photo challenge for this week is Something Different. 

The photos I want to share this week represent a bit of an experiment in composition and lighting. These shots are a bit abstract, though not completely.

This kind of overhead view of towering redwoods was the stuff of colorful posters sold in record stores in California in the 1970s. I just wanted to see if I could make something similar. 

This skylight window in my son’s Oregon apartment caught my eye one morning. I wanted to see if I could approximate surrealistic art with my camera.

This is the pattern of light and sand and water on the floor of Lake Michigan in Green Bay, Wisconsin. This is Oregon: fog, forest, and sunlight. But it could be an approaching UFO. And this could be an alien…

…but it’s really a Jenny Haniver. “A Jenny Haniver is the carcass of a ray or a skate that has been modified by hand then dried, resulting in a mummified specimen intended to resemble a fanciful fictional creature, such as a demon or dragon.” — Wikipedia

And it lives at our house. Once my boyfriend left it in the microwave for my young adult children to find.

Yeah. We’re Something Different, all right. 

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It was 30 years ago today…

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Added two more years to his life…and a puppy. I’m proud of you, Josh!

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My smallest baby and only boy was born 30 years ago today, on a Sunday morning. We gave him a name to live up to: Joshua for lordliness and salvation, David for beloved (after a great grandfather and two uncles), and the Italian family surname that he could perpetuate into future generations. Quite a bundle to hoist onto a little guy! 

As he grew, he began to reveal what he had to give us: a happy and entertaining spirit, generous competence, and faithful companionship – qualities that echo his father…

…especially now in the years since Jim’s death. 

And today, he celebrates his 30th birthday. I am so proud of the man that he has become and the work that he is doing in his life, continually growing more helpful and loving.
I wish him a day of joy! The Birthday Boy:

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Lens-Artists Challenge: Hello, April!

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For this week’s challenge, Amy sends a colorful April “Hello” from Texas and quotes Rachel Carson:

“There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature–

the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.”

Here in Wisconsin, the temperatures are just starting to creep up into true Springtime levels. This morning, there was no frost on the ground, so the maple syrup season will start to taper off, and soon April will show off her new spring colors. Last year, we had a late snow storm that caused a major interruption in spring growth. The first brood of sandhill crane chicks on this property died, the deer ate all the tulip shoots, and my garden planting energy never really recovered. Here’s a contrasting shot of the last two years in the turkey mating season. 

I’m looking forward to seeing the forsythia bloom.

I am looking forward to seeing the first woodland wildflowers take their brief turn on the forest stage.

Snowdrops
Spring Beauty
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Trout lily
Anemones
Wood anemone
Round-lobed Hepatica

 

How this Spring will actually unfold, however, is uncertain. Instability in our global climate has resulted in unprecedented changes that manifest locally in more alarming ways each year. I am not sure who April will be when I meet her this year. However, I will surely observe and photograph her, and find her beautiful.

There is something infinitely healing, I believe, in accepting Nature in all her autonomy and taking responsibility for the ways we abuse her.  

 

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Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Weathered or Worn

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Ann-Christine shares a bit of the fascinating history of Swedish temperance and photos of an old distillery in her challenge post.

The passage of time lends a special beauty to objects of human craft. It puts us in our place – we are but a part of the march of evolution and the expansion and collapse of the Universe. What we create and what we are in this form will not last forever. And that’s a powerful reality. 

 

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Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: History

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When I saw that Patti’s challenge to us this week was History, I knew just where to look in my photo files — Old World Wisconsin. I was a historical interpreter for this 480-acre living history museum for three seasons. I interpreted 19th century life in Wisconsin dressed as an Irish immigrant, a German immigrant, and a church organist in a settler’s Village.

photo credit: Kim Schultz
Photo credit: Steve Wiencek
Photo credit: Carol Toepke
Photo credit: Jay Filter

When I was allowed to bring my 21st century camera on site, what I wanted to capture was the simplicity of that life and its harmony with nature.

The ideas of “progress” and “technology” were quite different in the day. I used to ask school children if they saw any technology being used, and they always said, “No.” What I quickly pointed out was that there was plenty of technology, just a different kind – mechanical or hand tools instead of electronic ones.

It’s important never to neglect or abandon the simpler items in our tool kit. It’s quite possible that we may depend on them again. In fact, the U.S. military sent a division to the museum to learn how to use 19th century farm equipment so that they could assist in re-development projects in Afghanistan. Watching them walk down the dirt roads of the Village dressed in their desert camouflage uniforms was mind-boggling.

The lesson of history is that wisdom takes a long view.

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Lens-Artists Challenge: Around the Neighborhood

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Tina’s photo challenge post showcases the birds that live on the barrier islands of South Carolina. The birds in my neighborhood include sandhill cranes…

These majestic migratory birds mate for life, returning to the wetland area behind my house to nest and raise their young each year. Last weekend, I sighted a pair in the sky just south of the Wisconsin border. I wait with anticipation the sound of their raspy bugle cry over my neighborhood. There is snow still on the ground, but today, the temperature is finally above freezing and a light rain is falling. I hope for the joyful return of the mating couple. I hope that they will not lose any chicks to a late snowfall like last year. I hope that I don’t see another colt hit by a car before he learns to fly. And I hope to see at least three begin the long flight to Florida when the leaves lose green and turn to gold, red, and brown.

Wild turkeys are also neighborhood residents.

They stick around all year. In early spring, Tom comes into the yard with his fully fanned out tail, herding hens like some slow moving Zamboni back and forth on the melting ice. When the grass is a nice spring green, broods of up to a dozen little brown chicks scurry through the tall shoots, barely visible around their mamma’s legs. By the time the greens turn brown, there are flocks bustling about all day, roosting in low branches in the evening.

I love these feathered neighbors. Their antics are always fascinating, and I’m so lucky to share this place with them. 

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Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Architecture

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I’m so impressed with Amy’s beautiful challenge post of the architecture of Machu Picchu with the accompanying audio that I’m going to have to go in a completely different direction for my post so as not to invite comparison.
After the sublime…the ridiculous.

And the humble.

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Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Close-Up

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Thanks to Ann-Christine for this week’s challenge, and for including those of us who don’t have a macro lens. I love close-up shots and have longed for a macro lens, but just haven’t spent the money…yet.

Getting a closer look proves a few things:

1) There’s endless fascination in the world of detail — pattern and form emerge in astonishing places.

2) A change of perspective is eye-opening and stimulates the imagination.

3) You can never exhaust the discovery of something, even something that you think is commonplace and familiar.

Getting close up invites us into a world of enhanced appreciation. There’s so much to enjoy with our vision…even without fancy gadgets. 

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Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Nature

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“Measured against the agenda of human survival, how might we rethink education? Let me suggest six principles.

First, all education is environmental education.” — David Orr, What Is Education For?

 

I actually met and spoke to David Orr at a conference near the Aldo Leopold Foundation Center in Baraboo, Wisconsin a few years ago. He is a fascinating speaker, a person who has clearly thought a great deal about how humans fit into the natural world.

Yesterday, I spent the morning volunteering in a homeschool class at a Nature Center. The children, aged 6-8, shared their journal entries during snack time. They each had spent time in a “Secret Place”, observing the natural world around them, drawing pictures, writing sentences using vocabulary words, and playing. I was so pleased to see this, and told them that they were following in the footsteps of Aldo Leopold, Henry David Thoreau, Beatrix Potter and many, many others — very important thinkers and learners.

What do we need to learn from Nature? So much. I have a page on this blog called “Spiritual Lessons from Nature”. Click on the link just under the header if you’re curious about them.

Some things I’ve learned about Nature: it’s powerful and deserving of respect. 

It’s complex and autonomous.

It’s vast and largely incomprehensible.

It’s older than anyone can imagine. 

It’s more detailed than anyone can see. 

Humans are just one small leaf on the great Tree of Life.  That’s always good to remember. 

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Thanks to Patti for hosting this challenge and for sharing stunning photos of Fiji.