Seeded Earth - Bo Mackison » Wisconsin

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.

Beginnings

Bo Mackison — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:37:07 +0000

Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully he can learn even more. ~ George Washington Carver

The snow predictions were right on target. Yesterday morning at this time it had just begun to snow. Now there are six inches of snow covering the ground. I went out early yesterday, about an hour after the storm whipped into Madison. In the thick of this hardwood grove, there was the silence of nature. Nothing much to hear, unless I stopped and stood still. And listened. And waited.

The snow pelted the ground without sound, but vibrated the pile of oak leaves still attached to their branch. I heard what sounded like the breath of the wind blowing gently, the tremble of a leaf as the snow fell heavier. A single snowflake would not disturb a single oak leaf, but a swirl of snowflakes makes the branch of leaves dance.

The birds were silent. The wild turkeys, always a noisy crew, were strutting through another part of the park. No coyotes were out, not in mid-day. I hear them mostly at night, a siren-mimicking whine that always make me listen twice. Am I listening to the warning of a siren or the wailing of the coyotes? Even the squirrels had deserted this area.

My world is often silenced by the fall of snow, it blots out the sounds of man, and requires me to listen carefully to the sounds of the natural world around me.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. Bo is exploring winter – close up and quietly.

A Crack in Everything

Bo Mackison — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 02:15:34 +0000

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

~ Anthem by Leonard Cohen

The link is to the song on YouTube. Interesting, thought-provoking lyrics, interesting talk-sing voice. I love the line “forget your perfect offering.” I don’t usually post a lot of quotes on one post, but I kept finding quotes about imperfection that I wanted to remember, and this seemed like a good place for this compilation. It is a good thing to remember — no one is perfect. Imperfect is human, humans are imperfect.

Both our senses and our passions are a supply to the imperfection of our nature; thus they show that we are such sort of creatures as to stand in need of those helps which higher orders of creatures do not. ~ Joseph Butler

If you look closely at a tree you’ll notice it’s knots and dead branches, just like our bodies. What we learn is that beauty and imperfection go together wonderfully. ~ Matthew Fox

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Imperfection clings to a person, and if they wait till they are brushed off entirely, they would spin for ever on their axis, advancing nowhere. ~ Thomas Carlyle

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Persuade thyself that imperfection and inconvenience are the natural lot of mortals, and there will be no room for discontent, neither for despair. ~ Ieyasu Tokugawa

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The fastest way to break the cycle of perfectionism and become a fearless mother is to give up the idea of doing it perfectly – indeed to embrace uncertainty and imperfection. ~ Arianna Huffington

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There is a kind of beauty in imperfection. ~ Conrad Hall

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Bo Mackison is a photogrpaher and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.

Autumn Reflections

Bo Mackison — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 13:19:53 +0000

“Beauty is a primeval phenomenon, which itself never makes its appearance, but the reflection of which is visible in a thousand different utterances of the creative mind, and is as various as nature herself.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

On a calm, misty morning, these autumn colors were reflected in Indian Lake. Photographed at Indian Lake County Park in Dane County, Wisconsin as the sun peeked over the hill. October 20, 2007

The Non-Conformist

Bo Mackison — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 06:01:13 +0000

Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity. ~Christopher Morley

Photo taken at Devil’s Lake State Park near Baraboo, Wisconsin on a perfect late October day

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit http://feverishthoughts.com/garden/2006/06/23/green-thumb-sunday for more information.