My four favorite shots of the morning:
Milkweed
Mushroom or toadstool?
Sandhill cranes
Sky over Lapham Peak
Loving My New Camera!!
Tag Archives: photography
Photo Contest “Best in Show”
Old World Wisconsin Foundation hosts a photography contest every year, and this year’s Best of Show picture included ME, the Church Lady! I remember meeting the photographer soon after we opened for the day. The heat had let up a bit, there were puffy cumulus clouds playing with the light; it was a brilliant, inspirational sky, and I couldn’t help looking up at its constantly changing aspect. He took several pictures and showed me with his viewer how the shadow of the window panes appeared and disappeared in various shots. I told him that I was planning to buy myself a new camera for my birthday. It was a very pleasant visit. How exciting to learn this week that the picture had taken First Place in the Historic Structures category and also won Best in Show! I saw the winning shot yesterday, framed and hanging in Harmony Hall. I got the photographer’s name and e-mailed him a congratulatory note and asked if I could post the photo on my blog. He graciously provided the jpeg and agreed. So, drum roll, please! Ladies and Gentlemen, Jay Filter’s award-winning photo of St. Peter’s Church and the “church lady” (me!):
Photo by Jay Filter
You can see more of Jay’s amazing work by visiting his website here. I love seeing his dazzling images scroll by and exclaiming, “I’ve been there!” Holy Hill, Lake Michigan, Old World Wisconsin, Devil’s Lake…and various sandstone formations that I think I recognize, but can’t remember where I was. My next goal is to enter the contest as a photographer, not a subject!
Canon Practice 2
Still learning basics on my new Canon Rebel T3i. Yesterday, I went out for a walk. Here are some things I found:
This last photo I’ve titled “Up and to the right”. Like the graph of increasing complication showing that line going “up and to the right”. Speaking of which, I am now using Canon’s EOS photo processing software…a whole lotta new tools to learn how to use. Sometimes, I just want to rebel and go back to stick drawings in the dirt. Maybe my Rebel will remind me of that. Makes me think of one of my favorite movies: The Gods Must Be Crazy. Seriously, how did we get so incredibly technical in our tools and so dull at human interaction? Grocery store clerk yesterday seemed to look right through me as she asked me if I wanted help bagging up my purchases. For contrast: I found a privately owned gas station in my town where the owner hopped out of the office to pump my gas for me. “Stop by again; I’ll take good care of you,” he said. Price was 4 cents less per gallon than the Mobil station 2 blocks down. Let’s not turn into robots, even if computers can take good pictures.
Canon Practice
Last night I went to my first ever photography class to learn the basics of using my new Rebel T3i. I find myself wanting to figure out how to approximate the feeling I had when I took pictures with my AE-1 film camera, so I’ve been experimenting with disabling automatic, computer-generated options. It doesn’t always yield the best results, but I’m still learning. I don’t want everything lighted evenly, nor do I want everything in sharp focus. So, I’m learning how to tweak the white balance thingie and the depth of field. It’s interesting that the viewfinder will not show you what the picture will look like, and the instructors knew that there was some way to view it, but they discouraged that, saying that the Canon representative hadn’t showed them how. Well, I think I found something in Manual setting with Live View that approximates the final result. But, hey, no film wasted, right? Click and review. So I’ve been fiddling around with it, using some of my favorite subjects. Allow me to introduce them:
From my elephant collection
This guy was helpful with the monochrome, but he kept falling over on the bedspread. He was an experiment in Manual Focus.
So I replaced him with a littler guy and worked on depth of field.
Then I pushed the ISO way up to see what kind of noise they’d make.
But this little guy just looks so special in his own portrait, all decked out like a museum jewel.
Anyway, I’m having a great time with my new toy. The class was OK, but I didn’t appreciate the first 20 minutes where they tried to sell us on another truckload of accessories. There is still so much I have to learn about the gizmos on the main piece of equipment! I hope you all have a wonderful weekend following your own bliss! And honestly, don’t think you have to spend a nickel to do that. At the end of a photo session, I put down my camera and marvel at the eyes I got for free.
I Did It!
I finally went and bought my new camera! I bought it Thursday evening, and it’s still in the box. But today is my day off, and I will open up my birthday present and spend some time getting acquainted. This Thursday, I go to a 3 hour class to learn the basics of using it (part of a package deal on the purchase). I have wanted to take a photography class ever since I was in High School. Better late than never! I got the Canon Rebel T3i with EF-S 18-55mm lens. Wish me luck and happy snapping!
Maybe I should give my son the old camera until he gets his Nikon fixed?
“Chainsaw Diabetes in the Face!”
Kind of an over-the-top battle cry, but that’s the level of absurdity to which you sometimes have to rise when taking on an epic task. Yes, Team Galasso stepped out to Stop Diabetes on Sunday…perhaps we should simply have made it a swim-a-thon. So much moisture in the air! Thank you to all of our sponsors and supporters! We had a pre-walk huddle to remember Jim and other friends and family who have experienced the disease first-hand and dedicated our efforts to them. Here are some photos:
Team Galasso/Seleen/Wiencek/Floeter-Bush/Griessler
…why spell checkers were invented…
Have a great week, folks! Don’t be afraid to tackle something big; just be sure to come up with a matching pep slogan!
You Can’t Dia-Beat-Us!
Team Galasso will be stepping out at a walkathon on Sunday to raise money for the American Diabetes Association, funding programs and research aimed at relieving the suffering of 26 million Americans with the disease. This is the fourth year that we have done this as a family, and this year, the event falls on the birthday of my husband, Jim, who died of diabetes-related coronary artery disease in 2008. This event gives us an opportunity to do something positive in the search for a cure as well as the occasion to gather as family and celebrate Jim’s birthday (and mine, last Tuesday!) and his life. I will be heading out to Madison after work tomorrow, bustle dress in the back seat, eager to meet up with the rest of the Midwest Galasso Women. My son, unfortunately, won’t be able to make it. If you would like to support us in this effort, please click here to make a donation.
Here are some photos of last year’s walk:
We’re heading out to a full-on Italian lunch after the walk. Happy Birthday to Jim!
Outside of the Box
System, structure, dogma, convention, party line, category, pigeon-hole. There are all kinds of ways to get living beings corralled into something that some authority will find manageable. And then there are those of us who defy this kind of tidy dismissal. Here are two examples that I photographed on my walk yesterday:
Here’s to all you defiant ones! Thank you for teaching me a thing or two…
Couple-ness
Steve and I have been together just shy of 4 years, now. Lately, I’ve been noticing how my thinking about ‘Us’ has evolved. I keep my late husband’s last name, always, to retain that common bond with my children. I have internalized Jim in many ways, as my sister pointed out in a recent comment. I am adding a sense of past, present and future with Steve. I wrote last about celebrating birthdays with his sister and brother-in-law. I do feel like I’ve joined his family throughout a year’s worth of life events now: holiday dinners, post-surgery visits, weekly breakfasts, etc. Now I’m feeling the reflected perspective of work colleagues who met us as a couple. We’ve been invited to our first party! Totally un-family, totally unofficial (although with friends from work), like a real social engagement based on what we do as partners. That’s a new thing for us.
A visitor to the museum met us while my daughter was touring the facility for the first time. I took Emily into the wagon shop to surprise Steve (neither of us knew she was coming). The visitor thought we made such a happy little family reuniting, that she asked if she could take photos. After her visit, she sent this photo to the Historic Society and asked if they’d forward it to us. She included some very nice comments about how delightful and kind we were. I look at it and think of Emily behind her, making me crack up.
photo credit: Carol Toepke
We are eager to go off on our next adventure – a 3-week road trip to “Metaphorical Montreal & Maine”. Where we actually end up is immaterial. The adventure is continuing to forge our partnership, responding to new situations like dancers in tango. We are becoming more graceful, more complementary, even though we have many more decisions to make.
At Table
My mother quoted something to me over the phone this morning: “At table, we never grow old,” I think it goes. I am savoring this idea, thinking of birthdays and family members, extended in geography and generation. Steve’s sister had a birthday wish in April to dine at a French restaurant here in Wauwatosa. That finally was accomplished last Saturday night, but as her husband’s 50th and my 50th are coming up next week, we decided that we were also celebrating our birthdays…and then we included Steve’s so he wouldn’t feel left out, even though his is 3 months away. We spent over 3 hours at a table in the front window of the restaurant, sampling cheeses, drinking French wine, dining on lamb and pheasant and dissolving chocolate pastries on our eager tongues. We laughed a lot. We talked about philosophy and aging and Mars and mold allergies. I was welcomed into this threesome who have been best friends for 30-47 years as a 10%-er…meaning I’ve only known them for 3. But they like me! They really like me! That feels good. My mother will be hosting my siblings and niece for dinner on Sunday. My brother’s birthday is Saturday. My brother-in-law’s birthday is the following Saturday. I’m sure they will be dining for a good three hours or more, too, talking about philosophy and music and zoology and whatnot. I wish I could be there in body and tastebuds, but I will be there simply in spirit.
When a bottle is poured and glasses are raised, when family gathers in the same place year after year, when we face each other in candle light, Time in its immaterial essence becomes irrelevant as well. Am I 10, learning to sip a drink and taste its fragrance for the first time? Am I 20, listening to my beloved ask my father for my hand? Am I 30, looking at my four children settling in next to their grandparents? Am I 40, appreciating my parents through my own experience as a parent? Am I 50, holding my husband and father in a deep, inward place as I use my hands, my voice, my mind to embody all of us? I am all of these ages, and others besides, when I sit at table and nourish myself, body and soul, in this banquet of love.
scillagrace 