Category Archives: Photography

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Here’s Waldo

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From Essay IX: The Over-Soul — “The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the present, and the only prophet of that which must be, is that great nature in which we rest, as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, that Over-soul, within which every man’s particular being is contained and made one with all other; that common heart, of which all sincere conversation is the worship, to which all right action is submission; that overpowering reality which confutes our tricks and talents, and constrains every one to pass for what he is, and to speak from his character, and not from his tongue, and which evermore tends to pass into our thought and hand, and become wisdom, and virtue, and power, and beauty.”

Steve and Waldo

Steve and Emerson (the golden book in his hand) on the Ice Age Trail

From Nature — “Nature is a language and every new fact one learns is a new word; but it is not a language taken to pieces and dead in the dictionary, but the language put together into a most significant and universal sense. I wish to learn this language, not that I may know a new grammar, but that I may read the great book that is written in that tongue.” 

© 2015 photographs by Priscilla Galasso, All rights reserved

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Vivid Wings

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The picture of the Sydney Opera House reminds me of this photo I took this week on a walk through the Fox Hill Nature Preserve, one of the properties owned by my new employer, Cedar Lakes Conservation Foundation. 

VividElectric lights don’t seem to hold a candle to a day of sunshine on the first of June when the air temperature is a cool 55 degrees Fahrenheit.  Even in mid-day, every color seemed to pop with vibrancy and life!

Vivid

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Signs Along the Way

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Today’s challenge is to photograph scenes that are not your destination, but are the ‘mundane moments’ in between.  This is a bit tricky, as I try very hard not to see any moment as mundane and not to focus on a destination and forget that the journey and process are very important.  I have lots of photos of the flowers along the way as well.  So, I thought I’d do something a bit different.  I’m going to show you wayside signs.  This first one is one of my favorites, located just beyond the security checkpoint at the Milwaukee airport:

RecombobIt makes you consider: what is recombobulation?  How discombobulated do you feel when you have relinquished your shoes, purse, backpack, laptop and phone and had your body scanned by electronic devices?  How about this one:

poisonHow considerate to warn cars passing on the highway that poisonous gas has leaked from these oil refineries!  But once you are passing, how do you heed the ‘Do Not Enter’ warning?  Do not enter what?  The surrounding airspace? Then there’s this:

handling batsI wonder at the necessity of this sign.  Who would manhandle a bat if they happened to come upon one in a cave?  I hate to think.  If not afraid, I would hope they’d be respectful.  And finally, consider this proposition:picnicHow would you set the table in this picnic area?  I hope you brought plenty of duct tape and napkins!

On the Way

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Broken is not Finished

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This week’s challenge is perfect for the photos I took yesterday at Hippie Tom’s Serendipity Farm – an antique/junque pickers’ and gleaners’ mecca in Southeastern Wisconsin.  Steve and I were out for a ramble through a wildlife area and stumbled upon the road signs advertizing his sale.  The parking area was bustling, TV cameras were rolling, and Hippie Tom was in full swing for Spring.  It seems that his farm is only open twice a year for the public to browse and discover treasure in his vast complex of old out-buildings.  It’s a jungle of old and semi-new, broken and mostly intact, recyclable and re-purposeable stuff.  And we do create a lot of stuff, us humans.  It makes no sense to simply throw it on a trash heap, polluting the land with it.  Reduce, reuse, recycle, refuse.  Broken is not finished.  There is purpose and life even during brokenness.  If there weren’t, I wouldn’t be able to type with my left pinkie right now.  (Broke it in high school.  It’s distinctly crooked, but usable.  Yup, I play keyboards and sometimes guitar with it…not expertly, but ‘proficiently’.)


Broken

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Weekly Photo Challenge: The Enveloped, Please!

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What does “enveloped” mean to you?  Signed, sealed, delivered, secure, safe, covered.  A wonderful environment for inner growth; a wonderful place from which to emerge.  Staying enveloped indefinitely is not my idea of living, though.  The thrill of ripping open that seal and discovering the treasure inside is life revealed and reveled in!


Enveloped

 

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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