Category Archives: Photography

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Nerd Love to All Mothers!

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Steve just happened to stumble upon this YouTube clip, and it is now my Favorite Mother’s Day Song! (click on the link below to listen and laugh)

Biologist’s Mothers’ Day Song

Celebrate the nature and nurture that brought you into this incredible world!  Have a great day, everyone!

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Forces of Nature

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In the Wisconsin woodlands, the force of Nature in Springtime is GROWTH!

growth piercing

Plants that have lain dormant for months have an incredible urge to surge and unfurl.  You can see greening in a matter of hours, really.  The wildflowers on the forest floor have a limited opportunity to pop up and take in the sunshine before the canopy leaves provide too much shade.  Early May is the best time to see woodland wildflowers in bloom.

trout lily

Trout lily
Anemones

A wildflower is an inspirational force of nature.  You may think they are delicate and fragile, and they are, being ephemerals.  But they are also survivors.  They are perennials uniquely adapted to their habitat.  They do not require any tending, care, watering, pruning, pampering or husbandry to blaze up every year with the desire to GROW.  I like to think of them as my ‘spirit flowers’.  I’ve been a widow and single mother of 4 for 7 years; I am a woman with a fierce desire to grow and sustain my life and my kids’ in the most natural way I can.  My kids are grown and living independently from me now, and we are each beautiful illustrations of the fragility and tenacity of life.  Yes, we are WILDFLOWERS in many ways.  

Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers and nurturers of life who recognize the force and the freedom of growth in themselves and in others!

Forces of Nature

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Weekly Photo Challenge: The Intricate Nature of Wilderness

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Usually, I reserve Friday mornings for Word Press and open the Daily Post promptly at 11:00 to see what the photo challenge is for the week.  Yesterday, however, I was camping in the Whisker Lake Wilderness area in northern Wisconsin.  I was up just before dawn, roused by a chorus of woodpeckers and swans, red-winged blackbirds and Canada geese.  The early ecophony (a great term Steve recently ran across in an environmental essay: a portmanteau of ecology and cacophony) was only slightly less raucous than the previous moonlit night’s melee of frog song.

intricate 2Have you ever wondered at the intricacy of co-habitation in an eco-system?  Around Perch Lake there were mammals, birds, amphibians, insects and reptiles all doing their interconnected dance with time and space in the most amazingly complex overlapping of rhythms.  The full moon, the night frost, the dawn mist, the swelling heat of day: the ebb of one activity and the flow of another as time marches forward spins a never-ending tapestry of living. 

On a single rock on the side of the hiking trail, I found another intricate web of life, a microcosm of mosses.

IntricateAnd in a single catkin about to burst into bloom, the green fire of life glows in a delicate pattern of possibility.

intricate 3The Earth is a multi-layered, intricate web of pattern, design, and interconnection.  How marvelous to look at even one tiny corner!

© 2015, essay and photographs, Priscilla Galasso, All rights reserved

Intricate

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Weekly Photo Challenge: The Motion of the Ocean

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Initially, this challenge had me stumped.  I primarily photograph nature in still life.  I’m a very calm person, not enthralled by activity and speed.  Movement is, however, the way of the Life…but I generally see it in a larger, slower context.   How does the Earth move?  In myriad ways at varying paces, constantly, glacially, and in the beat of a hummingbird’s wings.  How have I photographed movement in Nature?  In water – falling and surging, as well as frozen.  Last September, I had the opportunity to revisit the Pacific Ocean.  It is constantly in motion, yet can appear stationary in a landscape photograph when spread out to the horizon.  Its dynamic nature is more readily apparent at its edges, and that’s where I aimed my lens. 

I recently discovered some really dramatic ocean photography in the work of Ray Collins.  Visit his website here to be really swept up in the motion of the ocean!

Motion

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Morning Dove

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In praise unceremonious

birds sing to greet the morning.

In liberty they make their voices heard. 

Each separate tune a secret speech upon Creation’s ear,

an intimate awakening of love. What expression can I give you

to welcome your affection,

to place myself within your waiting arms?

The murmur of my scattered dreams,

the sigh of lonely longing,

a wish for lasting closeness on my lips. 

Hear in my stuttering, open heart, 

Oh, lover and companion,

the grateful, private music of the dawn.

 

Happy Earth Day (one day late) and Happy Poetry Month!  I am also happy to report that I am now employed in my first environmental job – as the office manager for the Cedar Lakes Conservation Foundation.  I feel very fortunate to be able to use my time and energy toward preserving habitat, safe-guarding watersheds from pollution, and halting development and building in Washington County, Wisconsin.  It was Wisconsin senator Gaylord Nelson who founded Earth Day 45 years ago; the natural beauty of this state has been an inspiration to a number of prominent environmentalists: Aldo Leopold, John Muir and Sigurd Olson, to name just a few.  I celebrate the spirit of the land and the people who love it, and I invite you to join in!  Write me a comment and let me know how you spent Earth Day!

© 2015, poem and photographs, Priscilla Galasso, All rights reserved

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Early Bird Curiosity Eclipsing Fear

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There is something in me that craves a sunrise.  I’ve known this for a long time.  It’s an exhilarating feeling, a feeling of adventure, of anticipation, of freedom.   Perhaps it’s because getting up early means you have a special mission…to board a plane or set off on a journey or explore a new day.  I think I first experienced this adventurous feeling when my sister and I set off cross-country on a road trip when she was 20 and I was 16.  She was going back to college in Ohio in her newly purchased car.  We set off from our home in California, and I was along for company.  Unfortunately, we never made it to Ohio because we crashed in Nebraska and she was killed.  That rather put a damper on my adventurous spirit for quite a while.  But I recently discovered that I still love a road trip even though I can never put disaster completely out of my mind.  Learning to embrace that perceived conflict, that life is exciting and wonderful and not entirely safe all at the same time, has been a great journey in itself.

Sunrise in Kansas on my most recent road trip

Sunrise in Kansas on my most recent road trip

It’s like the feeling I get when I’m camping ‘far from civilization’.  The nights seem very dark and very long as I lie awake in a tent with howling winds or other unidentified sounds surrounding me.  I feel aware and a bit afraid and very alive.  When the sun begins to rise, I feel eager to rush outside and see the light dawn on all those things that felt so mysterious and vaguely threatening.  I realize then that a sense of curiosity is eclipsing my fear.  That is what I want to develop more and more.  Perhaps that’s a return to childhood; perhaps that’s what maturity is.

Early morning frost on the tent in New Mexico - same trip

Early morning frost on the tent in New Mexico – same trip

Early Bird

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Afloat, temporarily

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Afloat: borne on the water, free of difficulties. 

glass 4Not exactly the same as ‘adrift’.  You can be anxious, being adrift, afraid you’ve lost your bearings, veered off course, or abandoned your purpose.  Afloat is the feeling of being supported gently, effortlessly.  It’s a kind of dreamy state, I think.  Last year, the day after my birthday, I treated myself to a sail on the Denis Sullivan, a facsimile of a 19th century lake vessel owned by the museum where I worked at the time.  The day was completely calm and foggy. 

dreamy denisThere was a very quiet, gentleness to the water.  It was very relaxing.  The crew still went through the activities of raising the sails, and we helped (a little), but mostly hung around idle.

It’s nice to be afloat, but I wouldn’t want to do it every day.  I like being engaged in a stimulating effort to take responsibility for myself in my life.  I don’t want to expect an easy ride, and I don’t want to complain or blame some other entity for not supporting me.  I appreciate resources, but I don’t feel entitled to them, and I’m very willing to go without a lot of things.  I think this attitude is very simple and useful.

connect 2

© 2015, essay and photographs, Priscilla Galasso, All rights reserved

Afloat

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Weekly Photo Challenge: A Merciful Blur

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“It’s all a merciful blur…” is one of my mother’s signature responses.  (from a description of 10 Silly Sayings that characterize her 80-year-old personality, from THIS POST)  Blurring can be a good coping skill.  It can be a result of too little sleep, too much crying, too much alcohol, or too much fantasy.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, now and again.  Softening edges can be useful when you’re feeling scraped and bruised.  But it’s only temporary, for me.  I really want to live my life in clear focus, as aware as I can be, facing reality.  Consequently, I doubt I’ve kept many blurry photos.  Here’s one I took yesterday…

blurry gate

…and here’s one I took from the passenger’s seat on I-94.  I was trying to imitate Karen McRae from “draw and shoot”.  Her art is superb (which explains why she’s got almost 15,000 followers!).

winter blurWhat I mostly get are blurry photos of people who don’t stay still…

picnic blur…or places that are poorly lit.

cave blurIt is a challenge to develop the appropriately artistic “merciful blur”, to be used in scary situations (like on the Jersey turnpike?).  Still working on it…spider blur

Blur

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Folly

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“Just when you think you’ve got a ‘fool-proof’ solution…..they build a better fool.”

“They say happiness is the folly of fools; pity poor me, one of the fools.” – from Scrooge the musical

Have you got any pictures of foolishness?

And did you notice that foolishness is man-made?  Nothing in my Nature Photo file fits this category.  Think about it….

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Ephemeral

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Spring is host to many different kinds of ephemerals: ponds, wildflowers and insects, to name a few broad categories.  Nature is ever-changing; habitats and inhabitants come and go.  Yet humans often like to think of themselves as permanent and solid (‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’).  This is a great irony, given our surroundings.  To live in the moment, to appreciate your own presence and transience in the same breath — there is the key to living gracefully!  To realize life is as beautiful and fleeting as frost on my window,…

frost script

as powerful and swift as a rush of laughter.

mirth 3

It flickers like a candle flame: mesmerizing, warm and ultimately fragile….

new fire

 …while surrounded by mighty forces which shape its destiny.

refractionYes, my life is ephemeral, but LIFE is an ongoing flow that fills the aeons. 

moving waterTreat it well and tread lightly, my friends.

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 Ephemeral