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?
Category Archives: Photography
Weekly Photo Challenge: Local
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
Weekly Photo Challenge: Water, Water, Everywhere
“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…
…to sharp-angled crystals…
…it will eventually dissolve and transform even rock, paper, or scissors.
Water is life, practically the very definition of it. What would we “dew” without it?
It may threaten to destroy us; at the same time, we can’t live without it.
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.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Nostalgia
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.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Quest
At this point in my life, I am Over the Hill for sure. The sun is setting – how rapidly is anyone’s guess. Anticipating the unknown sounds like an exercise in futility. Any build-up is likely to increase anxiety. I think what is more important is simply practicing being the character I want to be. I am not on a quest to challenge my mortality, but to be at peace. I am looking forward to moving to a more rural part of the state in a month, on 56 acres of restored prairie that’s owned by the Conservation Foundation where I work. My quest will allow me to spend more time in Nature and more quiet time writing. We’ll see how rapidly that sunset arrives. I’m not looking to jump on any fast trains to get there.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Edgy
Ben Huberman talks about using a frame to “anchor” our compositions with something. Here’s my son holding down the Chicago skyline:
But he seems to be bobbing in the water. What if I anchor him as well?
Maybe that’s a bit unfair to put that on my kid’s shoulders. He’s not even as tall as I am. How about I anchor the skyline with some serious construction? Like Lake Shore Drive…
I like that. And the monochrome treatment makes it even stronger. Thanks, Ben, for the tip!
Weekly Photo Challenge: Mirror Question
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, I have a question:
Reflecting on life and love…
Reflecting on family…
Reflecting on Nature…
Aren’t these all just exercises to help us make sense of our selves? Or perhaps to discover that our selves are happier when senses don’t need to make sense?
Weekly Photo Challenge: Change Frames
The south window of my tree-house bedroom is where my eyes gaze whenever I look up from my computer. My bed is my home office. 
This has been my home base for 5 years now, in all seasons…
…and through various moods.
But time brings evolution. Things change. I’m anticipating a move this fall, away from this framework and towards my life work. I will get a chance to live outside this particular box.
This frame has served me well. Very well, and I’m grateful. But it’s time to change frames and let the picture advance.
Onward and Upward!
Weekly Photo Challenge: Precious Few
“After a ten-fold drop in the population of the eastern monarch butterfly population over the last decade, a 2016 study predicted an 11%–57% probability that this population will go quasi-extinct over the next 20 years.” Wikipedia
Monarch butterflies used to be so plentiful. I would see them as a child living in the Midwest and study the way they emerge from their chrysalis in school. The Fall breeze was always full of milkweed seeds floating by. Their habitat was ubiquitous – all that open field land hosted several species of milkweed, the Butterfly Plant. When we moved to California where I went to High School, I would see Monarchs by the thousands at Natural Bridges State Beach in Santa Cruz hanging in great clusters on the eucalyptus trees. Then I moved back to the Midwest and noticed how quickly all that open field land, the prairies, was being developed into shopping malls, parking lots and subdivisions. Here in Milwaukee, we had a Monarch Trail on the County Grounds where there was about 350 acres of open land. Then the city decided to put in a “research park” – meaning technical buildings and apartments – and reduced the Monarch habitat to 11 acres adjacent to the interstate that’s been under construction for 2 years…so far. Once a common insect, the Monarch Butterfly is becoming increasingly rare on the landscape. The life of this wonder includes the amazing feat of migration, which is also being threatened by climate change.
The age of Kings is just about over, as the modern world encroaches more and more on his kingdom. I found this one at George W. Mead State Wildlife Area during the weekend of Independence Day.
I wish you a long life and numerous progeny, Little Prince.
Weekly Photo Challenge: FUN! and Booty Shaking
I gotta admit, I am a more (ahem!) serious photographer. Nature close-ups, landscapes and the like are hardly the stuff of Booty Shaking shots. And when I’m in the midst of having fun, I usually don’t have my camera out. It’s a relatively big one, a piece of equipment that represents an uncharacteristic birthday splurge for me. So, it’s not like I’m popping shots from the hip while out clubbing. However… my kids came to my birthday party and danced in the living room once.
And then there was that New Year’s Eve we opened some Christmas Crackers…
My brother’s wedding reception was a great dance party!
scillagrace 