Mallory's Milieu

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Chrip

"...Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise..."

~the Beatles

Happy Easter 2011!

BethEaster2011 003, a photo by Mal Dog on Flickr.

Orange is the new pink!
Check out all my new macro tulip pictures,
visit my photostream on Flickr.

Photophillia

Since I set up a Flickr account to use to help me teach Photography to three students by independent-study, I've been uploading all my pictures there and ignoring this blog. I decided that I should put at least a few of them here once in a while. I don't know why I don't shoot in black and white more, I really love it. I could've used a bit more density and contrast in this one, but I still like it. Rosaio here is in Advanced (independent-study) Ceramics. She's be creating some fantastic sculptures. This one is s praying angel. It makes me miss teaching at a Lutheran High so I can talk with kids more openly and more often about their faiths.

Yesterday after a doctor's appointment, I didn't want to go home right away, and by the time I'd get back to school, the day would be over, so I went for a walk around the pond out at Yellowsmoke park East of Denison. Because of the time of day (and maybe the reflection/refraction off of the frozen pond) I definitely got a blue cast to most of my pictures on this walk. Ironic that it was in the low 60's 2-3pm but the colors appear so cold- whereas if I'd been out here around 6, during the "golden hour" I'd have gotten a warmer palette, but I'd have froze my butt off.

I was hoping to find some color on my walk, but came up mostly with browns and beiges. Fortunately, I came upon some color left over from autumn that made it through the winter.

The other day, I needed to take pictures of student's faces for a project where I have them draw themselves. A few of them asked me to take close-up pictures of their eyes too, so I obliged. This was one of the better ones.
Now I've finally posted pictures on this blog again. Who knows, eventually I may even post some writing here again too. Meanwhile, If you'd like to see more (tons more) of my photos, artworks, cartoons, or graphic designs, you can visit me on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/tmallory/collections

POEM: The color of snow

Some people complain about how the landscape never changes all winter

perhaps they find it anticlimactic after Fall's finale

but I think these are the same people that gripe about Fall's epilogue of beige after the harvest is out and the leaves have been raked

they're the same people who fail to recognize how many different greens there are in the depths of summer,

or how much they change from May to September

But my friend Monet has taught me to see and to savor the colors of snow

he showed me the blues and turquoise, the creams, golds, ambers, lavender and rose

No two months in winter, no two weeks, days or even hours are the same, the rainbow is constantly, quietly, gradually fading in and out,

like waves of hue on one of those fiber optic lamps,  ebbing and flowing washes of light

Some days you feel like you're indoors because there is no line on the horizon, the white of the ground, identical to the sky.

Other days the blue of the sky is is tight and sharp and crisp and refreshing

simultaneously it is never more contrasted to the ground and yet how could so much of such pure, clean blue not be reflected in the snow

In the city it goes from off-white to grays and sooty indigos, leaving some gutters iridescent

By March, plenty of snow in the country will be full of browns and ochers and ash with mud and soup

Some of the most magical mornings are when the freezing fog have left a flocking on the trees

Spruces and pines look like they've been sprayed with paint for sale on the Christmas tree lot

While the branches of elms and oaks seem to have fancy white feathers

I like it when it's not just a visual experience, but an auditory one too

Big FAT flakes visiting the Earth like manna, not falling, but gracing us with their advent,

muffling all sound, silencing the cacophony of everyday life.

What I really like is when it's the frigid cold that silences everything,

but the crunch and the squeak of my feet walking on dry powder compacted into ice.

This Christmas, it came down in heavenly flakes of mica, peeled from the layers of stones in New Jerusalem,

spinning and shimmering as the descend

Amazingly there were drifts and hills of ground diamond powder

it was enough to make you believe in angels and cherubim

and miracles and singing

Feliz Navidad

 took the camera to some poinsettias today and unleashed some macro!

What I did on my lunch break

A veritable potpourri of pictures. Very therapeutic.

Dirt Road

Dirt Road

This image of a dirt road in Monona County is actually a composite of 5 snap shots. I'm not the best at this, so it's pretty easy to tell- but it was still fun to try.

Christmas Cactus

I should really paint in watercolor more often. I just introduced my Painting class to the media today. I'm not all that great at it, but boy it's pleasantly therapeutic.

My morning commute

Corn Time

More color

Aloe in color

Aloe there

First Snow

This is the kind of stuff that inspires poetry, but I'm a little brain dead this weekend, so I'll let it inspire it in other people.

Visit my garden!

The road home

I love living in Iowa This is the view on my daily commute. The above picture was taken through a pair of UV sunglasses, it pretty well worked like a polarizing photo filter. It's September afternoons like this that inspire poetry, but instead, I tried to capture the feelings in an image.