Tag Archives: Michigan

iPhoneography Monday Challenge: Nature

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Decisions, decisions. Which photo of the flowers do you like best? The original, the one with the paint filer, or the black and white?

I have profoundly mixed feelings about manipulating images with the click of a mouse. Is it true artistry or is it simply technical skill? Then again, in the darkroom, we did our share of manipulation–burning and dodging a part of the image, cropping it, and using different photo papers and solutions. Maybe I’m starting to sound like the artists at the turn of the century who deplored the advent of the film camera. They reasoned that photo technology could capture reality with such precision, that it would replace other forms of artistic expression like drawing and painting. As it turned out, photography became its own art form, just other new media.

So, coming back to my original question, which photo filter do you like? Or, do you prefer the original, minimally-altered image taken on my iPhone 4 with an Olloclip macro lens? I’d love to hear what you think!

Flower Burst--Original Shot


Flower Burst–Original Shot 

Flower Burst with Paint Filter

Flower Burst with Paint Filter

Flower Burst Black and White

Flower Burst Black and White

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iPhoneography Challenge: Architecture

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Wacker Drive Pano, taken with the Photosynth App

Wacker Drive Pano, taken with the Photosynth App

Thanks to Sally (
http://lensandpensbysally.wordpress.com/)
 for her weekly iPhoneography Challenge, which inspired me to post this shot taken on the corner of Wacker Drive and Michigan a few weeks ago.  As I stood there waiting for a light to change, I was struck by the vista.  The range and beauty of the architecture in Chicago is stunning.   This view of the skyline was breathtaking, so I shot a panorama with the Photosynth app.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Escape

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Don’t get me wrong. I love to escape to a new place and explore the food, the sights, and the culture of another land.

Wind Star

On this trip, we sailed from Rome to Barcelona on the Wind Star–a breathtakingly beautiful sailing ship with decks made of teak wood and gracious staff that wanted to indulge us–with food, drink, and creature comforts.

Jiuwn, Wind Star

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We explored glittery Monaco, climbing the steep, winding streets.  In Elba, we walked along the sandy beaches.

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And visited the mansion where Napoleon was exiled–
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But honestly, escape means more to me than travel.  In fact, this is not my preferred method of escape. I hear your cries of protest. “What? Are you crazy? This is the perfect escape!”  I must disagree.  For me, the ideal escape is into the world of imagination–

Walking into the movie theater and sinking into the velvet seats, watching a story unfold.  Or, devouring books, swallowing them whole, and in the process entering the minds and hearts of the characters. (For a while as a teenager, I only read books about the sailors, the sea and their superstitions–like the figure head at the prow.  It is not simply an ornament.  Its purpose is to  ward off evil and appease the fickle gods of the sea who apparently love voluptuous women.)

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Or, picking up a camera and capturing the essence of a moment, or a place, or a particular slant of light.  Or, listening to music, which triggers an emotional response in the brain and can link the present to a past memory or emotion.  What can be better than that?

Art is enduring.  It transcends the ordinary.  It can uplift our spirits and link us to the eternal.  It can mitigate pain and suffering and transport us to another place.  For all these reasons, it is the perfect escape.

This statue erected in the lobby of a municipal building in Amsterdam reminds us of that fact.

The musician-honoring the spirit of those Jewish artists who continued to create even within the prison camps during World War II

Honoring the creative spirit of Jewish artists who played even within the prison camps during World War II

It honors the Jewish artists who continued to play and create new works even within the walls of prison camps during World War II.  Their art endures, just as all art.  It was an escape from the harsh realities of prejudice and war, but it was also a testament to the power the creative human spirit.

Do you agree?

Other Interpretations of this week’s theme:

Word Press Weekly Photo Challenge: Pattern

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After twenty days in a hotel, we returned home to our highrise this week.  The vestiges of the flood lingered in the garage, which smelled of fish and salt.  The walkway by the river was filled with sand, swept ashore and piled into drifts.   Thankfully, our apartment was far from the flood waters.  But still, I spent hours on Wednesday evening, cleaning the refrigerator, washing the floors, vacuuming.  It was my way of creating order from the chaos of evacuation.  As I put shoes back in closets and dusted bookshelves, I was recreating my little corner of comfort and predictability.

That’s what patterns do for us.  The repetition creates a visual rhythm.  Even if there is no message intended in the sequence of lines, circles, squares, we look for one and find comfort in the predictability and orderliness.    That’s what I was searching for this week.

The photos I selected are full of patterns–all created by human hands.  They decorate a bus shelter in Chicago, a window display along Michigan Street, also in Chicago, a foyer in the Brooklyn Museum, and and a herring truck, parked on Zandvordt Beach at the fringe of the North Sea in the Netherlands.

Do you like any of these patterns?  Which one?

Great posts on this week’s theme:

Weekly Photo Challenge: From Above

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One afternoon a few years ago, my son and I took an elevator to a balcony above Grand Central Station.  Peering out over the main terminal, we caught a glimpse of a conductor, walking leisurely, while passengers dashed around him.

Looking down at the conductor at Grand Central Station, New York

Looking down at the conductor above the main terminal, Grand Central Station, New York

I love the view from above.  It calms me and brings clarity to my unruly thoughts.  It also brings  order to events that seem chaotic at ground level.   When I was a restless teenager, I took flying lessons with the Civil Air Patrol.  I  loved hovering above the waves of Long Island Sound, looking down at my diminutive city, miniature cars and roads.  It reminded me that the world was much larger than my little suburban house and my family–with all its strife.  It also confirmed that I had the power to rise above, create my own orbit in a very different path.

To succeed it is necessary to accept the world as it is and rise above it.
Michael Korda

These days, I get that same perspective from looking out the windows of our apartment on the 27th floor.  I gaze at the city sprawling below or the river rushing past.  I miss that view, now that we’re displaced from our home because of the floods two weeks ago.  Yesterday, I climbed back upstairs to get a few things and immediately soaked in the light and airiness of our space–as if we were in a plane coming down for a landing.  We’ll be back in a few more days and I promise myself not to take that view or perspective for granted.

How do you rise above?

To see other interpretations of this week’s theme, click:

Weekly Photo Challenge: (Michigan) Culture

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So the Midwest nourishes us (…) and presents us with the spectacle of a land and a people completed and certain.  And so we run to our bedrooms and read in a fever; and love the hardwood trees growing outside the window and the terrible Midwest summers and the terrible Midwest winters (…) And so we leave it sorrowfully, having grown strong and restless by opposing with all our will and mind and muscle its simple, loving, single will for us:  that we stay and find a place among its familiar possibilities.  Mother knew we would go;  she encouraged us.”

― Annie Dillard, An American Childhood

This quote captures my impressions of the Midwest.  It is a very strong culture that is confident and sure.  It celebrates its traditions, its history.  It remembers the past.  The Dutch Americans in Holland, Michigan still teach their children clog dancing and celebrate their ties to the Netherlands in their annual tulip festival.  Families still pause to bow their heads and pray over a meal even if they are eating in a Bob Evans restaurant.  Church-going is the norm;  so is conservative politics.  The image of Richard Nixon as a villain would hardly get a second glance in New York, but here it is unusual.  Patriotism and football are the cornerstones of the society.  So is a love of the local heroes, Gerald and Betty Ford.  When Betty died a year ago, people wrote notes and bought flowers, and left them by the Gerald R. Ford Museum wall.

This same certainty of religion, family, tradition, and country rankles some–especially the young, who chafe against it.  And so, the 20-somethings leave when they graduate college, but they never forget home and family and Michigan.  Above all, they are loyal, coming back to marry, to have children.  The tug to return is strong, so strong that over and over we hear, “I came back because I want to raise my children here.”   The rebels who stay must carve out their own identities–separate from the norm, like the banjo player who drives around in his vintage VW bus–singing Bob Dylan ballads.

Annie touches on the weather-the terrible summers and winters.  I beg to differ.  She obviously hasn’t lived in New Hampshire where the winter begins in November and ends on Memorial Day!  For us, the spring was the hardest month.  The floods of the past week sent my husband and I and thousands of others fleeing from our homes.

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But still, this place has its beauty and joys.  It startles us with the unexpected–the stunningly beautiful Meyer May House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and lovingly restored by Steelcase, Inc;  the magnificent Lake Michigan beaches, and the annual Art Prize Festival which brings thousands of creatives from all over the world to Grand Rapids in for a week-long celebration of the visual arts.

What are your impressions of the Midwest?

See other Interpretations of this week’s theme:

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One Minute and 12 Seconds of Local Fame–Oh My!

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After the flood waters from the Grand River filled the basement of our high rise in Grand Rapids, and the heat and power went out, we were evacuated.  A local reporter climbed up the stairs to our apartment on the 27th floor and interviewed us as we packed some clothes and prepared to leave the building for a few weeks.   This includes our moment of thanks because in comparison to the tragedy this week in Boston, we are lucky.

Video Interview

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After Days of Rain…

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View out my apartment window tonight

View out my apartment window tonight

This was our reward tonight after days of torrential rain, flooding, and thunderstorms.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Change

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Sometimes I feel like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, overwhelmed by a tornado of change.  I want to stay in my bed, clinging to my mattress, while my house whirls high above the ground.  But it’s a fact of life that change is the norm. Stasis is an illusion.

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“There is nothing permanent except change.”    Heraclitus 

Many of us try to escape change.  My country friends claim there is too much chaos in the city;  they contend that nature is calming and tranquil.  But I beg to differ.  For a year, I drove to work to Fremont, Michigan past farms and barns, dodging trees that crashed to the ground in severe wind storms.  In the winter, I drove home in wild snowstorms that humbled powerful trucks and SUVs and left them sprawled in ditches.  Even the supposedly serene landscape changed on a daily basis.  One day the corn stalks were just stubble in the fields, barely pushing through the dirt, and then almost overnight, they were several feet high, dwarfing the tractors.

Even the subtle shifts of light and shadow at sunset are driven by the huge engine of the earth, which is ever turning, ever spinning, and always evolving in an expanding universe.

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I find comfort in the fact that physicists like Mitchell Feigenbaum of the Los Alamos National Laboratory say there is order even in chaos.  The trick then is to find it!  Like all humans, who crave order and stability, I find comfort in the constants.  Some people find it in prayer, others in meditation, yoga, or music.  I find it in the arts with pen or camera in hand.  Or in the kitchen, stirring a pot of soup.  Or, in the love of those who are dear to my heart.  How do you find it?

For other interpretations of this week’s theme, click on:

Weekly Photo Challenge: Color

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Color is startling, bringing us back into the present moment, jarring us from our worries and preoccupations.  I still remember the moment when I turned the corner in Monterroso and saw this door, which reminded me of spring grass.

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And, this in turn, reminds me of a quote from John Calvin, the fiery preacher, who started the Protestant Reformation.  The history books never hint about the fact that he paused to smell the proverbial “rose” and yet, he’s quoted as saying:

There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.–John Calvin

He reminds us that opening ourselves to the beauty in nature can bring us great happiness.

The photos I selected this week have vivid, surprising splashes of color–from a butterfly that just emerged from its cocoon, a field of Alpine lupins in Bethlehem, NH, multicolored tulips blooming during the Tulip Festival in Holland, Michigan, and a cottage wall near the beach in Malibu.

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For me, color is energetic and emotionally charged.  I hope these photos remind you that a flash of color is an invitation to pause, to take a deep breath, and get lost in the moment.  Enjoy!

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