Category Archives: Photography

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Weekly Photo Challenge: New Horizons

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A New Day dawning…

magic-mist

…in a new place. Since the first of November, I’ve been living on land owned by the Conservation Foundation where I work. However, at the end of the month, my boss tendered his resignation. What direction will the Foundation take going forward? I’m not quite sure. As the only employee there now, I have a lot of work to do. It will be an uphill slog along an obscured path, maybe more like this photo:  horizonSo, “we’re not out of the woods yet”, but frankly, the woods is where I want to be. That is where new life is pushing up from under the decay. growth piercingAnd that’s pretty exciting! So, my resolution: keep practicing conservation of resources and doing no harm, no matter what others around you may be practicing. Live with integrity and love with generosity. 

warm-rose

Happy Horizons to all!

New Horizon

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Weekly Photo Challenge: RELAX

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I can’t help being reminded of a T-shirt my late husband wore. It was commissioned by his barbershop quartet; they wore them together on a barbershop weekend retreat for practicing, hanging around the lake house, and just “chilling” (in Palm Springs). The shirt simply said: RELAX.  A lot of the people near and dear to me have been experiencing heightened anxiety – myself included.

November has been a difficult month. To cap it all off, my boss resigned on the last day. My boss and I are the ONLY employees of the Conservation Foundation where I work. And I just moved onto conservation land at the beginning of the month. I have a lot of questions about my local future to add to the bigger questions I have about a global and universal future.  

*sigh* So…what do I do to relax? I go outside. I walk. I watch the trees, the sky, the animals, the sun doing what they do without anxiety, on a larger scale, and with the simple grace of the present moment. It never ceases to be helpful to my mood. So, pull up a bench…and relax with me. 

benchLook closely at the beauty all around, and wonder in silence.

moss

Now, don’t you feel more relaxed? I do. 

Relax

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Weekly Photo Challenge: The Magic of Light

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Light is magic. I’m enjoying watching the light, from sun up to sun down, at my new home in the country. Foggy dawn changes…magic-mist…to afternoon gold…

afternoon-gold

…to evening moonrise.

moonrise

Then there are the more nuanced fluctuations of light dancing off cold and warm surfaces and reflective crystals.

frosty-leaf

warm-rose

Isn’t that what photography is all about? The Magic of Light!

Magic

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Tiny

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ladybug

Having recently discovered my camera’s close-up setting, I am having a great time photographing tiny details.

dropletI still find that my camera doesn’t quite depict the way that I see the world — the awareness of the juxtaposition of what’s outside the frame with what’s inside, for example.  

birch-barkAnd the colors and scope of a sunset and simultaneous moonrise.

sunset-moonriseWhere is the camera that can take in all that my eyes and brain and heart envelope? Non-existent. And that’s good because I’d hate to think humanity could be replaced by technology. 

snow
Tiny

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Chaos

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Sometimes I think WordPress has a surveillance camera on my life! How else would they know that my world is entirely chaos at the moment while I, in my natural state, am an extremely organized person? It so happens that I’ve just moved home and home business 35 miles away into a new rental. A normal move is somewhat chaotic. Add to that the fact that our home business is an online used book (and music and whatnot) store called Scholar and Poet Books. (Find us on Facebook or Ebay!) In our inventory and in our rental home, we have AT LEAST 25,000 books. Being quite the ambitious, self-sufficient types, we thought we could move those ourselves over a two-month period. We’re also over 50, both of us. And most of those books were in the attic, 3 flights of stairs up from the curb. Long story short, we had to hire professionals to help us pack up and move the last 285 boxes of books, each weighing roughly 50 lbs. Now all of that is in our new home, and we’re unpacking and organizing. Another yuuuuge task. *sigh* But our new place is gorgeous, a ranch-style house with only one flight of stairs (down to the basement), on land owned by the Conservation Foundation for which I work. I am not complaining! I’m just sharing what a bit of chaos is like — interesting, challenging, exhausting, stimulating.  Here’s a gallery of our old place:


Chaos
Chaos

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Shine!

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My daughters sparkle and shine far more brightly than their surroundings…but maybe that’s only from my perspective.  Here are some shiny photos of them. I can’t decide which I like better: the color or the monochrome. What do you think? 

female sparkle
em sil

P1100993 - Copy

P1040432
Shine

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Local

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What a coincidence! Here I am packing up my home and home business and getting ready to move to the place where I have a part-time job with a Conservation Foundation. Why? So that I can live locally with the land that I’m working to conserve. And this week’s word is LOCAL. 

Living where you work, working where you live, eating what grows on the land where you live, using your energy to shape your life — not extravagantly, not wastefully, but sustainably — is important to me.  I think it makes good, common sense. So, here’s a gallery of my office, my new home, and the surrounding area that’s in the land trust. 

The Office
Office Parking lot
Prairie and kame
Ski Fox Hill Kame
My driveway
My new garage

Local

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Water, Water, Everywhere

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“Death Valley is all about water.” So we were told by Jay Snow, the National Park Service ranger, an Okie character with an over-the-top presentation.  It’s the lowest point in the country, parts of it falling below sea-level. It would make sense that gravity would bring a lot of water to that place. And it does. It’s just below the surface of the salt flat. Fascinating! Water does not behave in ways we often assume it will. It remains mysterious, a shape-shifter.  It goes from warm color droplets…

droplet

…to sharp-angled crystals…

snow

…it will eventually dissolve and transform even rock, paper, or scissors.

time cave

Water is life, practically the very definition of it. What would we “dew” without it?

maple drops

droplets

It may threaten to destroy us; at the same time, we can’t live without it. 

mystery 5

For all of these reasons, H2O commands awe, wonder, reverence. We ought to treat it with a great deal of respect and not tamper with it in its natural state unadvisedly or lightly. 

intricate 2

 
H2O

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Nostalgia

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Back in 1997, I self-published a book of poetry called The King’s Gift: Poems and Parables. It contained this one that I titled “Change”:

In autumn, the trees start to sing once again
of the bittersweet mystery of change.
Is it beauty or pain
now attached to my soul?
Is it grief…
          …or relief…
                …or nostalgia?
In the scarlet and gold,
the blood-red of life’s hold on my heart
and the warmth of its love
mingles memories and years
into afternoon tears
falling softly
          …as leaves…
                    …to the ground. 

I feel this way every fall. The change in light makes everything seem altered and thrown back into the past — until my eyes adjust and my brain catches up. Then the brilliance of the season kicks in. I really love Fall for its ability to draw out a range of emotion and hold it, fully aware and unashamed, in its transient environment. 

 

Text and photographs © 2016, Priscilla Galasso. Poetry © 1997, Priscilla Galasso. All rights reserved.

Nostalgia