MacGyvering

Let’s talk about MacGyver. No, I didn’t have a crush on Richard Dean Anderson in my 20’s. (The only celebrity crush I ever had was Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones–no judging.) I am talking about making STILL blog photos and the low-budget studio setups I sometimes have to create. Many of my photos require a certain amount of MacGyvering. I get a ridiculous amount of satisfaction from these mini-challenges. Sometimes I hang branches from the ceiling using fishing line, sometimes I darken the white tips of feathers with ash so they don’t disappear on a white background, sometimes I create seamless white backgrounds with poster paper propped up against a stack of books. Today, when I placed this great horned owl feather on white paper all the barbule details got lost when I lightened the image to bright white. So I put the feather on my diffuser in front of a window, and there was a nice soft backlight, which kept all the feather details, but my lens picked up the fabric texture of the diffuser. If I lowered the depth of field to avoid picking up the background texture I lost many of the feather details again. So, in the end I MacGyvered the photo by attaching the feather to the window, and then placing the diffuser behind the subject, outside, so it was several inches away from the feather. Only then did I have enough light and enough depth of field to properly pick up all the delicate details in this image.

juvenile great horned owl feather

who are you?

strange suite of thoughts for the day. i looked at this and first thought it looked like a pine cone. then i thought it looked like the pineapple plants we used to see in polynesia. then (i can’t tell you why it just occurred to me now) i remembered that when we are in france, they call pine cones “pommes de pin” or “pine apples.”  and so i have to believe that pineapples in english get their name by way of french, based on their resemblance to pine cones. i’m just giddy enough with this chain of thought that i don’t want to look up the actual derivations, because i’m afraid they will be much more boring. by the way, i still don’t know what this pine-apple-cone plant is. any help accepted gladly.

unidentified seed cone

carousel

i thought this narcissus flower looked like one of those swing seat rides at the state fair that spin people around a pole from a rotating hub, like helicopter blades. in the process of trying to find a name for this kind of ride, i found out that such rides date back to byzantium. who knew that a spring bulb in a pot in my window would lead me so persistently back into the ancient world. narcissus and byzantium in one afternoon. all i know is that, historical significance or not, you will never get me on a swing carousel. even one as pretty as a paper white flower head.

spent paperwhite bloom

pressed

i placed these into my leaf press a few years ago, and today i pressed them again–into service as a STILL blog image. i woke up to -27 F temps and it never got above the negative-teens all day. my dog went outside for a few minutes, and I watched him negotiate some snow drifts, shake his paws, which were surely getting numb, try to push through some more snow, and then just sort of give up, as if he thought that it was maybe more pleasurable to just sort of float off onto his ice floe, rather than fight the cold and snow any further. that was the extent of the dog walking that happened around here today. and this image is the extent of STILL blog image making. by the way for any of you smart alecks, those leaves are not toothy enough. that is not cannabis sativa, but pachira aquatica.

pressed money tree leaves (pachira aquatica)

boredom

i have tried to cultivate boredom in my children. that sounds funny, but i mean it. i like to hear occasionally that they are bored. in fact, i fear that one of the most destructive current childhood trends is the disappearance of any opportunity for boredom. boredom is the manured and tilled ground from which creativity often sprouts, and a childhood without boredom is a childhood, too often, of easy and passive entertainment. let me say that i feel i am losing the battle, not just society-wide but in my own household. today was a wonderful exception, as i collaborated with my bored son on a rock tower assemblage.

beach rocks (mostly lake superior and the mediterranean)