Tag Archives: wordpress photo challenge

Unknown's avatar

Weekly Photo Challenge: On Top

by

“Look wider still” was a slogan used by the Girl Scouts and Girl Guides in the 70s for their program curriculum.  My mother was a leader at that time and this phrase stuck with her.  She connected it to all sorts of insights and still does, even now when she is just about to become an octogenarian.  I’ve always thought of this phrase as it relates to the way I am  stimulated and entranced by a panoramic view.  As a very young girl, I loved looking at a spreading seascape or landscape.  I was born in Massachusetts, grew up in Illinois, vacationed in Michigan at a beach cottage, and then lived in California for 15 years.  My personal panoramas are waves on the horizon, infinite prairies and fields, and vast mountain ranges.  These always make me feel that there is a bigger picture.  My anxieties are founded in the smaller loops of stress and the claustrophobia that comes from forgetting to look up.  The best way to look wider, to look up, to get a healthier perspective, is to climb to the top of something.  James Taylor might suggest going up on a roof, but I prefer to be in a natural setting.  Up there, I feel calmer, more peaceful, like I belong to something bigger, more ancient and more durable. There my petty problems fade away, and I breathe easier.

The rooftops of Wauwatosa

© 2014, essay and photographs, Priscilla Galasso, All rights reserved

Unknown's avatar

Weekly Photo Challenge: Monument

by

This week’s prompt page from The Daily Post says this about monuments: “They insist on their own importance, but at the same time allow locals and tourists, pilgrims and accidental visitors, to share a moment and to get a taste of each other’s stories.”  The same can be said of the photographs we take and treasure and post.  They are monuments of our journey, where we’ve been, what we’ve seen, the stories we’ve told and heard.  So, I’d like to share some monuments from my journey on Friday.  Steve and I are trying to take a weekly field trip out into the more rural areas of Wisconsin.  We are researching a new life, a new home, a new way of embodying what we value: simple, honest work in a lifestyle that respects the planet and is less dependent on human systems.  We drove up into the North Country, beyond the oak savannas of southeastern Wisconsin, through the Driftless Area (unglaciated during the most recent glacial event) with its windswept sandstone outcroppings, and into the cranberry bogs and pine forests of Ho-Chunk land.  The monumental feeling of this expedition is built of adventure, re-connection with the Earth, the joy of being alive, and the peace of being open to whatever we encounter.

Unknown's avatar

Weekly Photo Challenge: Threshold

by

I’m tired and indecisive this evening, so you get two interpretations of this theme.   The first is this one:

Threshold

It’s my daughter, Rebecca, at her sister’s bridal shower.  A couple of months after this photo was taken, her boyfriend proposed, and now she’s poised to be the next bride in our family.  Perhaps she’ll be carried over a threshold shortly after that. (But that’s a pretty old custom; maybe no one does that any more.)  Here’s another go:

 

threshold 2This one’s probably a bit less literal, but maybe more poetic.  I like the ascent from darkness to light, from the cool, barren rock to the wall of mossy fecundity.  I like the passage littered with dead leaves that gives way to the vault of sunshine.  Steve and I have been talking about the joyous urgency of blooming.  He is in midlife, going to turn 50 in November, and he is eager to do something important with his life.  And soon!  So we are aware of this threshold and urging the “joy of change and movement” into our lives.  Not sure exactly how that will be manifest, but stay tuned!

Unknown's avatar

Weekly Photo Challenge: Street Life

by

street sceneThis is a story of urban development.  This picture was taken from the Milwaukee County Grounds about 2 years ago.  This land surrounds the abandoned Poor Farm and Insane Asylum that I wrote about in this post.  The area to the south and west of those abandoned buildings was identified as a migratory monarch butterfly trail and maintained by a local group who call themselves The Park People.  In the last 9 months, this area has been raked over by bulldozers, trees cut down, and the habitat reduced from 239 acres (in 2005) to just 11 acres…which may never recover from the disturbance and resemble this photo again.  The construction project was undertaken in order to create “Innovation Park”, UW Milwaukee’s research accelerator and business campus.  In addition to this construction, the freeway you see in the background has been re-routed and upgraded to accommodate more traffic.  Massive construction vehicles – earth movers, tree destroyers, and jack-hammers – can be heard around the clock from my bedroom window.  This had been the largest green space in the county for many years, and I counted myself lucky to be within walking distance from it.  But the life of the street, of urban expansion, has depleted the life of the wild and taken over its habitat.  In the words of a famous song, “We’ve paved Paradise and put up a parking lot.”  The metamorphosis on display now is not the caterpillar changing into a butterfly.  It’s Caterpillar Construction Company changing green space into concrete and steel.  Try telling that one to the school children when they start their first grade science class.

Unknown's avatar

Weekly Photo Challenge: Reflections

by

This week, in a post created specifically for this challenge, show us an image that says REFLECTION. 

It could be a person who helps you see things clearly, a place you go to collect your thoughts, or an object that reminds you of your achievements. You could also go for something more literal, like a reflection in water. Or something that demonstrates both interpretations of the word.

“A person who helps you see things clearly…” 

What would you say about someone who meets you in your greatest grief, who doesn’t turn away but faces the tough questions with you, offering presence, not answers?  Someone who challenges you to pursue those questions and discover the emotions they evoke, the hopes, the fears, the identity that emerges from within…and who then asks you to decide who you want to be?  Someone who promises simply to be aware and who asks simply for your awareness? 

Steve met me 8 months after my husband of 24 years died.  I was in a state of profound transition, the fabric and framework of my homespun in complete collapse.  On our first date, we hiked around glacial terrain, enjoying the fall colors and talking.  Beside Nippersink Creek, I stopped.  I became silent.  I no longer wanted to fill the space between us with words and thoughts.  I was finally unafraid to be aware that I was with him, in a new place, with a new person, as a new life was beginning.  He sat beside me, quiet and reflective as well.  What I saw clearly was that Life is beautiful and that death does not diminish that one bit. 

Unknown's avatar

Weekly Photo Challenge: Perspective

by

Sand structureDribble castles, only inches tall

“Photos aren’t objective – they show what we want them to show.”  Concepts aren’t objective: they reflect our thinking.  Delusions aren’t objective.  Our thinking is only our thinking.  It is never the whole Truth.  Like castles in the sand, permanence is delusion, size is delusion.  Shifting perspective is the dance of the cosmos. (see this illustration of the Scale of the Universe)  “Solid stone is just sand and water, baby/sand and water and a million years gone by.” (Beth Nielson Chapman – in a song she wrote for her late husband; click here to listen)  Listening now, I wonder: what is ‘alone’? What is ‘death’?  Listening beyond the end of the song, I hear a cardinal singing outside.  I am not alone, and life is all around.  That’s what I really want to show.

Unknown's avatar

Weekly Photo Challenge: Threes

by

This week’s photo challenge is about a grouping of perspectives: the big picture, a relationship, and a detail.  I like the idea of shifting points of focus because awareness and depth probably can’t be captured at first glance in any circumstance.  Perhaps the way you approach a scene can tell you a lot about yourself.  When you go to a party and walk in the door, what grabs your attention first?  Do you look at the big picture – how the place is laid out, how crowded it is, what music is playing, what food fragrances are in the air – and get a feeling about it all at once?  Do you look for people you know and zero in on them?  Are you drawn to particular objects and familiar or quirky things about the decor?  If you find yourself spending time exclusively on one aspect, do you want to challenge yourself to turn to the others to see what you might be missing?  It might be an exercise in awareness worth looking into.  Here is a grouping of shots from my second year hosting the Wiencek family Thanksgiving:

Unknown's avatar

Weekly Photo Challenge: Selfie

by

My sister’s 365-day photo project for her 50th year was all about the selfie.  She has a remote device on her camera to make that easier. Her project inspired me to blog, but I am far too shy to face images of myself every day.  I do, however, have a couple:

Touch

It seems I can’t really justify a selfie, unless I’m in costume, with another person, or in the shot by accident.  Then there’s that other one: I’m hiking, facing the sun, and really happy being myself.  I took a picture to remind myself that I like me, which is not something I allow myself very often.  Befriending myself for an entire year is something I have yet to work up to. Maybe next birthday…

Unknown's avatar

Weekly Photo Challenge: Object

by

I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes, – and the stars through his soul. – Victor Hugo

Never criticize a man until you’ve walked a mile in his moccasins.  – Native American proverb

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases. –Carl Jung

What spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot recognize the fact that the foot is more noble than the shoe, and skin more beautiful than the garment with which it is clothed? – Michelangelo Buonaroti

Back in the days when I was keeping up a profile on OK Cupid, I was prompted to write about my favorite pair of shoes.  I imagine the flirtatious fetishists out there were just salivating at the possibilities.  I didn’t have to contemplate long before I realized that the footwear that best housed my feet and characterized my soul was my 30 year-old, steel-toed, suede waffle stompers.  They had outlasted even my husband by that time.  I got them in High School and wore them in on a trip with the Sierra Club.  I still have them.  They still fit, although I don’t wear them any more.  I purchased new hiking boots a couple of years ago, before I went on a 4 week road trip with Steve.  They are lighter and more comfortable even then my venerable pair.  For a person who hates shopping for clothes or shoes or anything else besides food, the thrill of buying them was unexpected.  I’d finally had a Female Consumer Moment! 

(I don’t plan to have any more…please stop sending advertisements.)

Unknown's avatar

Weekly Photo Challenge: Juxtaposition

by

I love this word: Juxtaposition.  I remember that my sister had an art book by this title when we were in High School.  It held a special intrigue (maybe also because it contained nudity?).  Contrasts are not the same as conflicts.  There is a certain harmony or peace about them, like the yin/yang.  I like that.

The “veil-ociraptor” on the wedding cake topper represents my daughter Susan, who is celebrating her 29th birthday today.  Appropriately, The Bardo Group posted an essay of mine on the subject of “Joy” today as well.  I invite you to read it here.  Joy in the midst of suffering is the juxtaposition of real lives, I think.