Essays

Reflecting on Refractions or How I Meet Myself At The Door

I’ve been cogitating, incubating, hatching, scrambling, meditating, and kicking my muse in the arse over his lack of inspiration. As all good researchers do these days I turned to Google for inspiration material.  All sources pointed to three necessary ways to create fractures. Water for submerging, or containers or vessels of water, colored paper, and flashlights. Macro photography of wee droplets of glycerine holding an exact copy of the image it sits near, actual or Photoshopped. One clever fellow used a terrific setup consisting of complex placement of objects, colored photo gels, and removing the lens from his camera. He obviously doesn’t live with a dog and three cats.

The following day I found among my kitchen odds and bits an old cut crystal bottle stopper. Ah ha, winked the idea bulb, just as my muse kicked me into high gear. Once again I pulled the drapes closed, got out the camera, tripod, colored papers, flashlights, water, towels (alright, I’m sloppy), and threw a cat off my husband’s desk. I ended with a collection of refracted white lights, ghostly white beams on colored papers. They looks sorta neat, if you love Halloween. I downloaded the pics, nope, apparitions or not, there was nothing of me in there.

I was getting tired of ways to reflect refractions and still coming up short. I wanted to try the droplets, but alas, no flowers and no glycerine. I also felt, damn, it was nice the first time I saw it, but frankly, it doesn’t spin my squirrel cage anymore. I still wondered if I could capture detail in a REAL droplet.

Day three dawned with a hard freeze and heavy fog. Perfect weather for refractions. I waited two hours for the sun to pop through, hit the frost edges in my prairie, and pop those sparks into mind-blowing highlights. I drank a cup of coffee and linked to the computer channel, waiting for Operation Migration, and the Whooping Crane chicks to finally leave Marquette County. Their Ultralight went up and came down, cancelled, too choppy, big sigh. I may love this county, but I can’t imagine their crew hanging here for two weeks.

I drank another cup of coffee, lollygagged through Facebook, looked out the window and the frost had melted without the sun coming through! Well burn my butt, that idea trickled down the hill with the rest of the morning dew. I risked madness anyway, heck, I’m already a full bubble off – grabbed my camera and went out to try to find some drops still clinging to the leaves. I say, I got soggy jammy pants laying on my stomach trying to capture light through frost still clinging to my ground-cover evergreens. Some nice photos of leaves in the wet grass and dew drops, more bokeh than refraction.

Day four, did I tell you there was a challenge in this challenge? Today it rained! It poured! Had the light and opportunity presented itself I might of had a chance to get some photos shot through a rain-slopped windshield. I had my pocket camera set up to shoot video of my horse today. She decide to inspect the camera. Got great footage of the camera rolling off the pallet and bouncing across the sand before landing lens down. Of course, it was the type with the shutter on the outside. Always hated that shutter.

Lucky me, I still have my DSLR. I was getting soaked when I got home, but I wrapped my real camera in a plastic bag and went out back looking for the puny fairy droplets that cling to trees. I finally found a few with real refractions. I’m sure to shame myself among the gifted photographers that actually do macro photography. One day, I will catch a BIG refraction, after reflecting long and hard on how it’s accomplished. Late October in Wisconsin is not a very good time for refractions. I figure I’ve done enough reflecting on this subject for now. I’m off to ponder another subject, a good days rest. Thanks for stopping by.

Weekly Photo Challenge/Refractions

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The Landscape Weaver

There dawns a day in mid-May, it arrives cloaked in a full flush of shimmering green, morning mist late in leaving fields, the air chiffon and clover. On this day, the weaver of landscapes will be dancing under cover, laying down his warp, deep in shadows, edged by flowing waters and threads of cirrus clouds. He’s busy in the fields replacing frayed edges of last year’s worn panoramas.

The weaver wefts his magic threads in June, twisting finer yarns into plump blue-green leaves, blue-budded lupines, yellow coreopsis, sharp-edged sedges, and rough textures in and through an early flush of grasses laid upon lowland hills and marshes.

The prairies and wetlands erupt into color about the same time as holiday fireworks explode in July. No longer content to remain quiet, yellows, maroons, purples, blues, hues and saturation pop and whistle, announcing their arrival ahead of a marching band of cicadas.

By late July our man of natural threads sits back and admires his nearly completed tapestry. It’s viewable for anyone slow enough to stop and look; hanging, dipping slightly in the humidity, like a sheet on a sagging clothes line. Summer’s fabric is nearly complete.

Walking through a fairgrounds after closing compares to visiting the lowlands the last week of August. The venerable artist has left the ground littered with weft of broken stems, bent grass, and empty seed heads. When the first cold breeze sneaks into the morning, entangling grasses like a fervid couple under the grandstand –  a hot flash followed by a quick chill; the blooms are gone, empty seed pods swinging from brittle stems remind me of a ferris wheel. The weaver moved off to the southern hemisphere, leaving his fraying work of art behind.