Seeded Earth - Bo Mackison » macro

Hanging Around

Bo Mackison — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:35:14 +0000

Sometimes it is the simplest things that can bring joy. I was watching several acacia seedpods dangling from a young tree at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum a few days ago. My camera, set on a tripod, was set up next to me. Two boys, maybe 8 and 5, came bounding towards me. They stopped at my side and looked at the tree.

“What are you looking at?” the older boy asked me. He had a small camera dangling from his wrist and began twirling it in circles. Perhaps it was his pre-photograph warm-up exercise.

“Oh, I’m watching these acacia seeds. They are moving in the breeze. I was thinking about the photograph I want to take.”

The older boy stared at the seeds a moment, obviously confused. But the younger boy appeared to understand. He pulled at his brother’s shirt, dragging him towards the women waiting for them. “C’mon, Jay,” he said, giving me a backwards glance. “She’s just hanging around.”

Yep. Me and the acacia seedpods. We’re just hanging around.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. Sometimes Bo hangs around, and sometimes she takes photographs, too.

Nature’s Abstract

Bo Mackison — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:41:59 +0000

A photographer sees the world through a filter. Not the interchangeable filters for lenses, but the filter in the photographer’s mind through which an unfolding scene is seen as a photograph. ~ Bo Mackison

Pincushion cacti are rather small cacti. Globular, lots of protruding, sharply hewn spines. Almost easy to pass by in the search for the giant saguaro, the prickly pear with its oval sculptural pads, the ocotillo waving green branches with the tips turning red with flowers.

Then I saw these little groups of pincushions. I liked how they were bunched together in little pods of three or five, and since my camera was ready on my tripod, I took a few photos.

Later in the studio, I enlarged the photo — and wow, it was no longer a simple little cactus. I’m studying the desert, letting in the immensity of the place while still focusing on and absorbing the tiny spaces. There were sure some tiny spaces in between the spines of this not-a-friend-of seamstresses pincushion. I sure loved it, though.

Spaces — this is an entangled pattern of tiny spaces, tiny bits of shadow and light from the cactus spines.

How do I look at these spaces? Seeking? Searching?

Turn the spaces into words through metaphor? Struggle with the concept of spaces with danger or limitations? Give thanks for the infinite variety of spaces and places? Celebrate life and the wholeness of the world, place by place, and tiny space by tiny space?

Do you examine spaces? What thoughts come to mind when you observe the many complexities of tiny spaces such as these cacti?

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is exploring the Sonoran Desert and examining the smallest of spaces while allowing in big thoughts.

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Ocotillo Sunset

Bo Mackison — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 03:21:56 +0000

“Something has happened
To my understanding of existence
That now makes my heart always full of wonder…”

~ Hafiz, The Gift

I have desert dreams. They are not as tidy as I would like, but perhaps they are tidier than one would imagine. My desert is a tidy place with a tidy habit. No dense, tangled tropical paradise. In the desert there is room to move. Space for movement. But even more important to me, there is space to see.

Vision is not blocked by billboard or building. When I look, I can see afar. It is not unusual to look across the desert and see a mountain thirty or forty miles away. There is space to form thoughts, to search for answers. My desert dream affords me a polite habitat, nothing to tangle my feet and make me fall, no hidden roots to trip me, no overgrowth to hide my path.

There is room for all to grow, for me to grow.

In my dreaming desert, I do not cut myself on the spines of the cacti, the thorns on the shrubs and trees. I do not step upon desert earth that has rotted from beneath the surface, that gives way with the weight of my step, and sucks my leg into a gaping hole in the desert floor. The desert in my dreams has been sanitized for my night time journeys.

Awake, the desert is wild and streaming a series of ever more deeply saturated color. There is the silhouette of the ocotillo and its thorns, long and sharp. I watch the sun disappear, it drops below the horizon, and the layers of red, orange, purple linger until night’s arrival blackens the sky.

The sun sets. I breathe in tempo with the still warm desert. I inhale, the desert earth inhales. I exhale, the desert earth exhales. Heat stored in the desert’s earth meets the night’s cooling air, and the desert pulsates with energy.

Desert rhythms. I stand and watch, supporting myself with my walking stick while gripping tightly to my world.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is in the Sonoran desert.

Digital Dahlia

Bo Mackison — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 19:05:42 +0000

Art washes away from the soul the dust of every day life. ~ Picasso

I took a break from packing and organizing to use Nik Pro Efex and transform a photo of a dahlia I took two springs ago into a softer, more subtle version. Since it looks like Narnia outside I went through my older photos to find something cheerful. I needed a cheerful photograph to appreciate on my get-ready-to-go day.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. Tomorrow. A car ride to the airport + flight from Madison to Dallas + second flight from Dallas to Tucson + a drive to Quail Condo = the beginning of Bo’s Desert Explore II.

Slide Show – Autumn Seed Heads

Bo Mackison — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 12:59:14 +0000

I love taking photos of seed heads, but how many seeds does anyone really want to see? So I combined all my photos in one short slide show and you can catch a quick look.