No Fishing Today

No Fishing Today, a photo by meagan.porter on Flickr.

Taken at South Park in Reedsburg, Wisconsin, March 2011.

Having grown up in Reedsburg, I know that South Park can always be counted on for a good flood picture. It was the first place I headed following that epic storm in June 2008, when the Baraboo River jumped its banks and flooded a few neighborhoods in Reedsburg. Back then, two blue herons were basking on the other side of the road, which had just washed out. At the time I remember thinking that was the coolest shot I was going to get. Boy was I wrong.

Anyway, the access road into South Park was covered in a few inches of ice when I headed over there last week, making for a nail-biting and perilous drive into the park. The river was already butting up next to the road and my brain kept saying, "Just one slip. That's all it would take is just one slip." If I was smart, I would have parked by the Ballwegs' and just walked into the park, but another part of my brain kept saying, "I'm only going to be here a minute. I'll make it quick." Like nature cares.

I also don't think I've been back to South Park in at least a year, since I was smart enough to drive on the unplowed access road and got so stuck that my parents had to pull me out. Fantastic.

Anyway, there were no catastrophes on this trip in. I drove as far as I could on that ice slicked road just up to the point where it had washed out, which I was actually surprised to see. I have no idea how deep the water was but I wasn't about to find out. If I had rain boots on, maybe, but I was unprepared. The water had flowed across the road and into the pond across the street, which had also overflowed.

I took a few shots, focusing on the part I found most interesting, which was the water over the fishing pier. Normally there's at least a few feet between the pier and the river level. The road extends from the bottom right corner of the photo and out toward the center of the photo, where it is washed out. The pond was to the left and behind me, and some of the shallower water had frozen over. The water overflowing from the river was pushing against it, which is what created this neat effect.

When I was a kid, we never played here much as it's almost a mile from my parents' house. But whenever we found a critter in the road or backyard (mostly giant turtles), they were always released into the Baraboo River at this point. I'm not sure what originally designated this as our release point, but that's the way I'll always think of it - driving down the access road late one night, lights glowing on the Waste Water Treatment Plant over the hill, backseat filled with some giant turtle we rescued from the middle of the road. The last time this happened, I begged my brother to let him go instead of selling him, and we did. Jimmy had placed him gently on the muddy banks of the Baraboo River just to the side of the pier in the photo, half in and half out of the water. The turtle paused a moment as if to ask if the coast was clear, then propelled himself at a straight diagonal into the brown water, and disappeared.

Baraboo River Busts Out

Baraboo River Busts Out, a photo by meagan.porter on Flickr. Published in the Reedsburg Independent, March 31, 2011. Taken off South Webb Avenue in Reedsburg, Wisconsin, March 2011.

This photo was taken last week Thursday, when the Baraboo River in Reedsburg was much higher and people were starting to get antsy. The June 2008 floods are still fresh in everyone's minds and while I didn't see anyone filling up sandbags yet, I know several people were keeping a nervous eye on the rising river levels. In the photo at the right, the water had seeped over the banks of the river and into some marshy low-spots, typical of spring flooding. I wouldn't worry until it gets across the road to the city's substation.

With a few dry days, the water levels have since gone down, much to everyone's relief. The TV news was making it sound like we had another catastrophe on our hands, with all the snow we got over the winter and the rain now, and everything melting. Maybe in a couple of years everyone will be used to it and resume ignoring them again.

I was looking for a way to take an interesting high water photo when I happened to catch this scene out of the corner of my eye. I'm not a fan of photos of trees poking out of flood water; it's very difficult to make something like that interesting. My editor took a nice one of trees poking out of water that had frozen over, but the one I liked more wouldn't have reproduced well and we didn't have room in this week's paper anyway. My photo above made it in though.

Anyway, there was a high water scene I liked better but as I don't yet trust myself with night shots, I just didn't go for it, scared of the disappointment. I got home late after a school board meeting last night and the streetlights from Main Street and Lakeside Foods were reflecting off the water surrounding the trees and marsh in my parents' backyard, not something you normally see. It was a nice, eerie, golden-toned photo, but I knew I wasn't going to be able to reproduce what I saw, so I chickened out.

The scene above was something I saw a couple days later, driving down South Webb. I stopped anyway even though I knew we weren't going to have any room for the photo in the paper. There's no good spot to park on that street, so I left my car on the access road that goes around the city shop, in front of a sign that said something like "No Access" or "No Trespassing" or "Not a Through Road," something like that. The road was washed out a few feet in front of my car, so I didn't think anyone would mind. I hiked back to this spot and stood on the guard rail that goes across the bridge to get this shot. It was a little perilous but I was fine. It's due to situations like that, though, that I've started to consider keeping a ladder in my car. I'm only five feet tall, and I've been in several situations the last few weeks where that was just too short and I needed another foot or two to get the angle I wanted. Maybe if I can find a small one... anyway, the guard rail sufficed in this situation.

I like the photo above because I managed to get the "Baraboo River" sign (right), the "Got Cheese?" sign (yellow, behind the Baraboo River sign), and the Reedsburg water tower (center, slightly left) all in one shot. You might have to enlarge the photo to see the water tower but I thought it was neat they all kind of lined up like that.

We had to lighten the photo quite a bit for the paper (printed on yellowish paper instead of white), but the photo above is the original before it was edited for print.

Downtown Dells

Downtown Dells, a photo by meagan.porter on Flickr.

Taken in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, 2010.

I have always been fascinated with the view from the lookout point on the Wisconsin River, just off the strip in the Wisconsin Dells. It's a Riverwalk the city obviously spent a lot of money to build. It runs between the Wisconsin River and a public parking lot.

I think that few people appreciate the significance of the view from that point. From one single point, you see so many facets of the Dells' past, present and future. You see the river itself, the foundation of the entire Dells itself, the natural area and what made it so appealing to early settlers. Then you see the railroad bridge and beyond that, the dam, the modern technologies of the 1800s that allowed the Dells to grow and flourish. They brought industry, people, electricity to the Dells. To the lower left you can see the Dells' boat docks where scenery tour ships launch to bring people closer to the natural beauty of the Wisconsin Dells. Then from the same point you can see rollercoasters jutting out over the treeline, the symbol of the Dells in the last 30 years and the prosperity that has come from them. If you turn slightly to the left, you can see the downtown strip lined with tacky souvenir shops and tourist traps, what John Steinbeck called "the litter of our times."

And the future? Who knows.

The above photo was shot directly into the setting sun to maximize the silhouette of the "Riverwalk" sign.

Looking Down on You

Ever get this look from your cat?

Fiona has become very protective of the slim and fleeting ray of early spring sunlight streaming in from our skylight in the mid-morning. She follows it around the room, perching wherever it may land. In this particular photo, she had (obviously) grown tired of my excitement over the dramatic lighting on her white fur and pink ears and was giving me that classic "if you know what's good for you" cat look.

She's been without that ray of sunlight since last fall. I don't blame her one bit.

Take Me To Your Leader

Monona Terrace, October 2010.


I love the wacky architecture and unexpectedness of Monona Terrace in Madison. I've taken photos there before, striving to be different than the stereotypical touristy looking photos. The photo above captures that, I think.

It was taken after a particularly gluttonous trip to the Great Dane for dinner when John and I attempted to consume a turtle sundae for dessert. Big mistake. It was huge! I joked that we were going to have to be rolled down the hill toward home. Instead we waddled over to Monona Terrace, trying to walk off all that ice cream.

I barely remember taking this photo but I'm quite proud of it, as I haven't quite figured out how to take effective night shots. I have also been struggling to find a way to make those light fixtures look interesting; it has been difficult for me to capture the angles I can clearly see in person but have been unable to recreate on camera. The photo above does both nicely.

Wisconsin State Capitol Stairs

Wisconsin State Capitol Stairs, 2011.


John and I visited the State Capitol a few months ago to check out the Assembly Chambers as a possible wedding ceremony site. I hadn't been in any of the Capitol rooms since grade school field trips and barely remembered what they looked like. I'd read online that couples could use rooms in the Capitol for their ceremonies, and I knew at once that was where we'd get married.

I remember hearing once when I was younger and just starting to drive in the big, scary world on my own that all roads in Madison lead to the Capitol. It's sort of true; Madison is a concentrically designed city, with the Capitol as the center point and all major roads branching out from it like spokes on a wheel.

But since I moved downtown, I've started to think about that phrase more and more in a philosophical sense. We are always around the Capitol - going out at night, restaurants, Farmers' Markets, getting from here to there. Even when we're not near it, it's a beacon on the skyline, and I always get a little shiver when it unexpectedly pops into view, towering brightly over everything else.

So it was only fitting that it was where John proposed, and it would be the location where we would hold our wedding ceremony, in the grandness of the Assembly Chambers.

A month or so after John and I woke up early on a Wednesday to visit the Capitol during business hours, the building was flooded with protestors, the drama unfolding on the national stage. Suddenly everyone, everyone was talking about the Madison Capitol building, the Assembly, the protests. A building that was virtually empty less than a month before was overflowing, bursting with people and noise and heat. After a frantic call from the Sergeant at Arms, we finally secured our date a month after we originally intended, which is fine. "I've worked here for 14 years," he told me on the phone, "and I've never seen anything like this."

I assured him I was fine with it, that we didn't have our hearts set on the date but we were not willing to compromise on the location.

The photo above was taken on our first visit to the Assembly Chambers, long before Scott Walker made his announcement, long before the protestors came in droves. I was attracted to the scrollwork on the stairs, the lines and framing, the attention to detail.

A Day With the Protesters in Madison

The following is my column this week from the Reedsburg Independent regarding my experiences at the protests in Madison on February 17:

On a normal day, I wake up at 6 a.m. to drive from Madison to the Reedsburg Independent. Last Thursday, the news from Reedsburg came to me. There had been rumblings all week of protests at the Capitol Square, and though I live less than a mile from it, I had avoided the area up until then.

Despite my minor obsession with 10 p.m. news broadcasts, I didn’t really have a grasp of what was going on up there; I had watched but not really paid attention to it, because it seemed farther off like TV news can’t help but seem. Last Thursday, I woke up, grabbed a cup of coffee and headed up the hill to see what I could see. 

It was a damp, cloudy spring day, the kind of wet cold that sticks to you. I was traveling light - small camera bag slung over my shoulder with only the necessities - notepad, pen, lens cleaner, one credit card and my camera on a hand strap.

I bounced up steep West Washington, fidgeting with the nervous, frenetic energy of not knowing what to expect. The Capitol building loomed ahead, and not many people had gathered outside yet. I was told specifically to look for Reedsburg teachers, having no idea how I would spot them in the reported crowd of 30,000. I wandered around outside for awhile, out of habit walking counter-clockwise around the Capitol, the same direction in which car traffic and Farmers’ Market foot traffic flows. There was litter everywhere, and I found out later that the police weren’t allowing sticks in the Capitol, so many people were breaking them off their signs and leaving them by the entrance.

The inside of the Capitol building always has an orange hue to it, relying on dim sconces and daylight coming through the skylights. I  had visited only a few weeks before on Super Bowl Sunday; my fiance and I seemed to be the only people in the entire massive and intimidating building. Last Thursday, the Capitol was surging with people, that orange hue bouncing off thousands of red T-shirts, voices and drums echoing off the marble and high ceilings. “It sounds like a gym in there,” I heard someone remark.

And it was hot. Hot in the way that relatives’ small houses get hot during the holidays with all the people talking and moving around. At my aunt’s house, someone always has to crack open the sliding patio door and let the freezing winter air in. But at the Capitol, there was nowhere for that stifling, stagnant air to go, and it made the whole building feel smaller, the walls closer together.

I have heard reports of tens of thousands of people filling the Capitol during these protests, and I don’t know how they come up with those numbers. But it was two hours before I saw someone  I recognized, when I finally and completely by dumb luck ran into Dave Moon and his family outside with their protest signs. I was so relieved that I nearly hyperventilated. Dave pointed me in the direction of more Reedsburg teachers and if it were not for his help, I don’t know how I would have found them. They were mainly stationed on the third floor above the Assembly room that morning, and I had been by there at least twice before that and not seen any of them.

The third floor (which is really the fourth level of the Capitol) was crowded by that time. But as someone who has lived in New York and experienced rush hour crush on the subway, and as someone who joined 215,000 of my closest friends at the Rally to Restore Sanity in Washington DC last year, I have to stress that even though it was hot and hard to get around, the people gathered in the Capitol last week were some of the nicest and most cordial people I have ever met. I never had a problem asking someone for their spot so I could briefly snap a photo, and there were people handing out more signs and bottles of water. Though people there are upset with Governor Walker and his proposed bill, they are polite and even kind to each other, and any news report that says differently is greatly exaggerating.

It was difficult to know what was happening with the people who were making the decisions that day. There was a TV with a live broadcast, but I couldn’t see it or hear it. Without my Twitter feed on my iPhone and people constantly tweeting updates about #wiunion, I would have had no idea what was going on. I never saw another Reedsburg teacher after I took a group shot that morning.

I left for lunch around 12:30, wandered down to a less crowded coffee shop a block from the Capitol square. When it came time to pay for my coffee and cookie, I had to peel my camera out of my right hand; my fingers had been clenched around it like a claw, and I had been pulling the hand strap so tightly that it had made red indents on the back of my hand.

After lunch, I headed back up to the square. More people had gathered outside - ironworkers, children, a drum circle, and Bucky Badger. I saw at least two different people dressed as Captain America and another one in a gorilla suit. I ducked into the Walgreens on the square for an energy drink and the store was crowded with people buying posterboard, cardboard boxes and markers.

I hiked around the inside until I got too warm and then did a few laps outside until I had cooled down, taking photos the whole time. People outside and inside were chanting, “Kill the bill,” and “This is what democracy looks like.” They were energized but uncertain, passionate but pessimistic. Somehow four more hours passed and looking back on it now, it feels like I had highway hypnosis, when your subconscious is focused on the task at hand while your conscious mind wanders and you arrive at your destination, wondering how you had gotten there.

As a reporter, I’ve grown comfortable observing and reporting, secure in not having an opinion and just relaying facts. And having spent a day with the protesters, taking their photos, watching them on the news, I still have no idea how I actually feel about the issues. So many thousands of people have converged on the Capitol to express their opinons for and against, and I am in awe of all of them.
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The rest of my protest photos can be seen on my Flickr.