United

United, a photo by meagan.wedgewood on Flickr.

Last June, This American Life had a story on the situation here in Wisconsin, focusing mainly on the contentious state senator recalls. The reporter, Ben Calhoun, said something that I thought rang particularly true:

"Wisconsin is a big rural state, but it is not conservative; its politics are in the middle, leaning a little toward the left. Organized labor has a long history in the state, and Wisconsin has gone Democratic in every presidential election since Reagan. Bottom line - it's moderate - polite and civil and moderate. That right there is really the break that Scott Walker has made. His plan, whether you love it or you hate it, was a big move away from the middle. He's pulled a pretty moderate state dramatically toward an extreme, and done something they don't do in Wisconsin - he's picked a fight. And he's forced a lot of people who don't like to fight to choose sides anyway."

After my husband and I voted, heading up to the Capitol Square seemed like the natural thing to do as we were only a few blocks away. We reached it right as the polls were closing.

I haven't spent a lot of time at the Capitol during political events since I hung out with the protestors in February 2011. On that day, it felt like everyone was there for one purpose; though there were thousands of people in the Capitol, they were moving together as one unit, all part of the same vehicle using their momentum to head toward the same destination.

On Election Night, the scene was muddled, contradictory, like a cell without a nucleus. There were singers and people with signs, of course. I saw a lot of people I recognized as students and journalists. But there were others who looked and behaved like they were there from out of town, just there for the show. I saw contentious arguments. I watched as an angry Recall supporter jumped in front of a local news camera, interrupting the reporter who was probably on his 18th hour of being awake and just trying to do his job. It was a stark and shocking contrast from the feeling a year and a half ago, to say the least.

Most of all I could feel the moment when the crowd deflated, when it the air changed from hopeful optimism that the initial results were only from a few small rural precincts to the realization that this was happening. This was really happening. It was like air being let out of a balloon as people quieted down, peeled off, and drifted away.

 No matter how you feel about the political situation, hopefully there's some empathy with the people who were disappointed that night, people who had worked hard for change only to be brought solidly back to square one in just one day.

"What happens now?" I kept asking my husband on our walk home that night. I felt like I was standing on the edge of a steep cliff, knowing that as a population we were going to have to move forward somehow but not sure how or to where we were going. I felt proud of my state, of all the people, Democratic and Republican, who had worked hard and fought for what they believed in, no matter what that was. But at the same time, I felt sad for everyone, not just the "losers," but everyone, as Ben Calhoun pointed out, who had to pick a side, who had the comfortable grey area pulled out from under them. In the past year and a half, my Wisconsin has become unrecognizable with blistering letters to the editor, people screaming at each other, people dumping beer on lawmaker's heads or tearing up recall petitions. Wisconsin has been and has felt divided, and as much as I love this state, that's not the Wisconsin I want to live in.

The photo above is misleading. I love the image of the bright Capitol building in the background, the center of our state government, bright and shining like the City on the Hill. The Overpass Light Brigade set up on the lawn, their signs declaring "The People United." The photo is idyllic, hopeful. But I can't help but feel less united as a state than ever before.

More photos from Election Night can be seen over on my Flickr.

Vacancy

Vacancy, a photo by meagan.porter on Flickr.

Someone once told me that oil paint never dries, and though I'm not a fan of art, it's one of those weird facts that's always stuck with me. I saw a lot of Van Gogh when I lived in New York, and I was fascinated by the realization that his paintings are actually three dimensional, swoops and peaks and valleys of oil paint, all still drying, all in a state of flux for hundreds of years and for hundreds of years to come. I thought about that as I was working on this photo; the next time I see this sign, it will have decayed a little more, and a little more the next time; until someone removes and discards it or it finally crumbles into the banks of the Wisconsin River, it will always be a work in regress, slowly undoing itself.

I've long been fascinated by anything falling into disrepair, the patinas of metal, the peeling of paint. I wonder about the backstory; for someone minorly obsessed with maintenance and "taking care of things," it is amazing to me when anything is neglected for so long, so long that it is actually showing its neglect, and how sometimes that neglect can produce beautiful results.

The morning I finally stopped to capture this, the fog was rolling off the Wisconsin River in an early March that hasn't quite yet figured out who it is or what it's doing with itself season-wise. The sign jutted out of the trees and fog, menacing, like a prop in a haunted house. And unlike the past three years I've passed by this sign, I stopped immediately, knowing it was now or never as soon that mess of trees would start to bud out with green. The first thing I noticed when I stepped out of my car was a much newer, much nicer "No Trespassing" sign that I made sure to stay on the right side of. And swarms, swarms of little black bugs circling each other.

Photos of signs are difficult to make interesting, especially when you have a sign that's interesting all by itself. I've taken quite a few of them and have my favorites, but every one is a new challenge. For this one in particular, I knew I couldn't take a straight-on photo from my five foot tall perspective and call it a day. I wanted to capture that fog, that desolation, some of the road in the background. And I knew I wanted the photo to be filled with that tree, like those brambles go on forever. It wasn't until I got closer that I realized the "NO" in "NO VACANCY" was scratched out, and that became my focus.

Those trees have started to bud out now with the warm weather and the photo above just wouldn't be the same. I had a small window of time until Mother Nature ruined my shot until October or so, and I'm glad I took it.

View of the Forevertron

View of the Forevertron, a photo by meagan.porter on Flickr.

And now for something completely different.

John's parents visited for a few days recently. Mary said to treat the both of them like tourists, as they hadn't spent any significant amount of time in the area since the 1970s. I appreciated the opportunity to share our home with them, our geographies, and the off-the-beaten-path Wisconsin that I love so much.

I'm not sure what Richard and Mary were expecting as we trekked from Madison to the Forevertron, just outside Sauk City. I had shown them Tom Every's biography and website, explained the Forevertron as the world's largest scrap metal sculpture, but how do you really adequately describe something so vast and intricate, beautiful and strange?

I can't remember how old I was the first time my family and I visited the Art Park, trespassing our way onto the property through the junkyard behind Delaney's Surplus. I was young enough that Delaney's seemed to stretch on forever, junk piled upon junk. We reached the back of the lot where a well-traveled footpath was cut through the brush, Secret Garden-esque. On the other side of the tall weeds loomed the Forevertron, unexpected but expected, like all of Delaney's junk had gotten sick of laying around and assembled itself in a way that sort of made sense. Despite being several stories tall, the Forevertron was completely hidden from the highway; we must have gone past it a hundred times and never knew it was there. We didn't know anything about "art" or "sculpture." But even as a child I had visions of a madman starting in one corner of his property and working his way toward the other, physically manifesting the heroes and monsters and creatures in his mind until they all were quiet. Isn't that what art is, anyway?

Thankfully the park was open the Friday we visited, as the man himself was there, Tom Every and his wife Eleanor. I was too intimidated to talk to him; having wondered about him for most of my life, I was paralyzed by inadequacy. But John's dad Richard had a long conversation with Every, who was pleased that he wasn't an engineer or social worker from Madison.

I ambled around purposelessly with my camera, not intending to take pictures of anything but knowing that I would kick myself if I saw something and didn't have any equipment. I took pictures at the Art Park last year, and The Camera Company Photographers group has been there at least once. I was skeptical that there was anything in the park that I hadn't seen or that I could see in a new way. But if there's anything I'm learning lately it's that photography is counterintuitive to my whole nature in that planning only gets you so far. There's a point where my conscious mind turns off, loses interest, stops trying. But that's when my subconscious mind takes over, quietly taking notes and making lists and once in awhile making me stop when it sees something particularly interesting. I've learned that it's better to have my camera around when that happens. Click.

The rusted out car was parked in overgrown weeds in the northeast corner of the park, seemingly forgotten. I crouched down next to it to get a better look at the inside and realized that I had a perfectly framed view of the Forevertron through the dingy driver's side window. The perspective reminded me of another photo I saw a few months ago (that I can't find despite all my Googling) in which the photographer was crouched behind a car, taking photos through the window of soldiers passing by. It had the same foreground in which one could see the interior of the car and the steering wheel, and the sense of the photographer's cowering position created so much tension that I couldn't take my eyes away from it. I tried to recreate that pose in the photo above. I'm not sure if I succeeded in this particular photo - I would have done better if not for the noon light shadowing the inside of the car and blowing out the background. But the car's state of neglect and the outline of the Forevertron through the window give the photo an apocalyptic feel. I'm pleased with the result, and maybe I'll try the same shot again sometime in better lighting.

More photos from Dr. Evermor's are on my Flickr.

Thoughts from a Plane Crash

Accident Scene, a photo by meagan.porter on Flickr.

At the scene of an accident, it's not a good sign when the frenetic pace slows, firefighters begin lifting off their helmets, paramedics draw farther away. The plane, bent in wrong directions like a broken bone, was laying where it had crumpled and came to rest against the side of a storage shed.

I was standing in tall grass between Jeff and a rusted out washing machine when a fireman approached us. "It just dropped out of the sky," he said with a combination of astonishment and exhaustion.

His voice dropped off. "They've passed," he said.

We don't respond to accident calls often. I don't know how to succinctly explain it - other papers like to publish accident photos from time to time, and it always gives me a bad taste in my mouth. It's just not nice.

The plane crash was different. There was no debating whether or not we were going to respond, no looking up addresses while questioning if it was worth our time to drive out there. A plane crash. I sprang up, haphazardly predicting what I needed to bring to the scene like gathering possessions to rescue from my burning home. Jeff was already out the door. Nate the intern trailed behind.

We drove like maniacs across town, and it seemed like everyone with a police scanner was headed in the same direction. I called my dad. "They're trapped," he said, relaying what he heard on the scanner. "They've started CPR."

We parked behind the VFW Hall and a man in a station wagon was telling a guy with a baby stroller that he had seen the whole thing. "Go talk to him!" I yelled to Nate, struggling to keep up with Jeff.

I felt blindly pulled like a magnet toward the accident scene, ignoring fences and driveways. Jeff led us the long way along the road, scolding me for trespassing. "That's private property," he yelled behind him.

As we approached the scene, a sheriff with a white handlebar mustache and brown uniform was pulling police tape across our path. My stomach dropped.

The sheriff looked up and saw us. "Did you get a good picture yet, Jeff?" he asked, lifting the police tape so we could go under. "I know you won't get in the way."

As we approached the scene, the reporter part of my brain started to take over, filing away facts and details, making lists. The red barn and red fire truck standing stark against that clear blue summer sky, calm and still. The plane, looking fake like a movie prop, wrong in the scene before us. Firemen swarming everywhere. The jaws of life.

Jeff, with a surprising knowledge of airplanes, relayed technical details to me as we stood several yards away. "That's an ultralight," he said of the plane in front of us. "You're more secure in a Ferris Wheel." We stood back, trying to decipher what was going on in the scene before us, trying to make sense of all the people and objects that had converged in this ordinary trucking yard. The only thing that was obvious, the thing that later played through my head over and over, was the moment when all of the emergency people gave up, slowed down, and stepped back.

Back at the office, my adrenaline still pumping, I flew into reporter overdrive. I got on the phone and called every person I could think of who would have information, an ultimately useless task as the tragedy was still new. No one knew anything, least of all me, and I had no idea what to do next.

I didn't go to journalism school, but I don't think there's standard procedure for handling a tragedy. I put off writing the front page article until a few days later, forcing myself to talk to those involved, forcing myself to go over the events one more time. As a reporter, I have always felt that my responsibility has been to make things make sense, and more than my grief over the event itself, more than my disbelief, more than the images playing over and over in my head, I think what bothers me more than anything right now is an overwhelming feeling of inadequacy. I can't make this make sense. I can give you the facts. I can describe what happened at the scene. I can provide photos. I can find things out. But I can't make them make sense. I just can't.

Additional photos from the scene are linked from my Flickr earlier in this blog. A full write-up of the story will be available in this week's Reedsburg Independent, on newsstands Wednesday and in subscriber mailboxes on Thursday.

Caz

Cazenovia Parade, a photo by meagan.porter on Flickr.

Sunday was the start of an extreme heat wave here in Wisconsin, and John and I ventured from Madison to Cazenovia to catch the annual Caz Celebration parade. It was about an hour and a half drive north that took us through Reedsburg; as John commented, "There's no road that goes straight there." We followed 12 then 33 then 58 from LaValle to Caz, which has to be one of the prettiest roads around, through the bluffs of the driftless area in central Wisconsin.

Caz is a very small town with a very big spirit. Despite the heat, Sunday's parade was no different. With temperatures stretching into the 90s, I was afraid that the parade would be cancelled, but the people of Caz, and John and I, soldiered on. But I've never seen so much candy thrown in a parade and so few kids willing to run for it.

We parked in a field by the American Legion, trooped up to the main street running through town, past the gorgeous Lee Lake (picturesque doesn't even begin to cover it). We met some nice older ladies willing to share a shady bench with us ("As long as you understand that any M&Ms thrown this way are mine," one sternly told us) and the parade commenced.

Working for the paper, my role now is more documenting the parade than chasing after candy, and you never know what kind of images you're going to wind up with. It's impossible to set up something you know will look good. You can anticipate what you think might be in the parade, and there are a few default shots you know you can count on just in case something goes wrong. I generally have no game plan, and that's both exhilarating and terrifying. What if I don't get a good shot? What if I've spent all this time and I wind up with nothing? I guess you could have those anxieties about any photo you take, but I feel like with parades (and similar events) the stakes are higher - it takes nearly the whole day and there are no do-overs. And with my job, I know a photo from the day will go into the paper that week. Better make it a good one.

Pretty much the only variable you can control is where you stand, and I typically run up and down the street the whole time. I get anxious and have trouble staying in one place, but most of all I want to make sure that I'm not in anyone's way. On Sunday, I lost myself and forgot about everything except taking photos, which was nice to be immersed and focused, but not so nice if you are running back and forth in the middle of an intersection in 90+ degree heat with your back to the sun. The parade lasted about a half hour or 45 minutes, and at the end, I was beat.

At one point, I did snap out of it long enough to realize that someone had thrown a bag of M&Ms at my feet. I promptly delivered it to John's benchmate, who was tickled pink. "Life is good!" she exclaimed, and I agreed.

Wisconsin parades are pretty much the only parades I've ever known, except for the ones I've seen on TV, and I still get excited for them. How many parades feature all of the fire trucks and tractors in town? The Caz parade wasn't as long as the Butterfest parade, but they are still the same kind of deal - floats, people walking, tractors and vehicles, candy and Super Soakers. It's an amazing thing that from a city as big as Reedsburg to a village as small as Caz, the parade serves as a showcase to the many groups and businesses that call that town home and the community coming together to recognize them. It was a celebration in the true sense of the word.

In the photo above, I was trying to get a creative photo of the Caz firetrucks; we typically don't put the parade firetrucks in the paper because it's hard to get something other than an angle shot of the whole truck. And while I knew I took a close-up photo of the driver, I didn't realize how perfectly the shot was set up until later. The photo above captures that day exactly - you've got the fire truck at the right with the gold "Cazenovia Fire Department" lettering, driver with a handlebar mustache and pink fuzzy dice in the window. Behind him you can see an Old Style sign from one of the many bars that line the main street of Caz. As your eye travels to the left, I love the bright flags popping out against that hot blue sky, the tractors continuing the parade into the distance. Far off in the distance you can see one of the gorgeous bluffs I was talking about earlier. I would love to take credit for this image, but I think in this case, it was just pure luck.

Reflected

Reedsburg's Veterans Memorial, a photo by meagan.porter on Flickr.

Maybe I'm getting a little sentimental in my old age, but I'll admit to tearing up a bit last Monday at the dedication of the new Veterans Memorial in Reedsburg.

It really seems like not so long ago that Jeff and I went to the groundbreaking. It was one of only a handful of events we've ever covered together, and I was only an intern at the time. The speakers then focused on a grand vision for that tiny corner of Nishan Park, and I had a hard time picturing it. As they stood there with their ceremonial shovels, posing for photos, the completion seemed so far off in the future, still a someday, still a dream. Three years later on July 4, the Memorial was finished.

I've visited my future in-laws in Washington D.C. a few times now and have hit up most of the touristy monument stops in the area. But I have never been moved the way I was last Monday, viewing the Reedsburg Memorial in its finished state for the first time. The glossy black granite panels display scenes from the US's past and current conflicts and fittingly, they also reflect the viewer. I went back early on Tuesday morning to get some shots of just the Memorial, including the photo above that I put on the front page later that day. Sitting on the warm cement in the exact center of the site, the environment was calm, quiet, meditative, the Memorial and flagpoles looming above me, stretching into the sky.

I grew up in Reedsburg, and I constantly marvel at how working for the Indy gives me a totally different perspective on my humble hometown. In the last three years, we've covered every fundraising effort for this Memorial, every Vet Fest, every raffle, every donation, and the Packer Tailgate that came to town last year just to name a few (of many) off the top of my head. Had I been just a citizen, I might have been too wrapped up in my own life to notice what was going on in that corner of Nishan Park, and how the citizens of Reedsburg were tirelessly working to make that dream a reality.

I've had very few profound moments in life, where everything seems to move slowly, where time stops, as though the world is in a vacuum and centers on that one moment. The last time was the June 2008 flood, walking away from Pineview Elementary, clutching my flood clean-up kit. This time the experience was positive. On Monday, a few hundred people came together to welcome this Memorial into the community, listening to speakers, exploring the grounds, celebrating the hard work and dedication of so many people. On Tuesday, I was fortunate to be able to spend some time with the Memorial, taking it in, observing and photographing and experiencing the stillness of the place. It was a privilege to cover this story over the past three years and to see the Memorial come to fruition.

More photos on my Flickr.

Beneath a Hayfield

Intern Nate, a photo by meagan.porter on Flickr.

I know I love my job but once in awhile, I have the opportunity to cover a story that reminds me exactly why. Last week was one of those opportunities. The photo above isn't me, by the way. It's a candid of the Reedsburg Independent's intern, Nate, who had the distinction of being the last person to stand in this hole before it and the equipment inside were sealed for two years. But more on that later.

Leon's enthusiasm was infectious the first time he called to tell me about the EarthScope project, an ambitious endeavor to bury seismometers every 60 kilometers across the United States in order to create a 3-D model of the Earth's mantle. They had just poured concrete beneath his hayfield outside Loganville, Wisconsin, and they were set to bury the equipment in four weeks or so. Leon called again last week and said, weather permitting, they were all set to finish the project.

I could go on and on about the project itself, but I did that at length in my article for the Indy this week. What I aim to document on this blog is the experience of takin' pictures, what I did, how it felt, what I learned and what I can do better. The behind-the-scenes kind of stuff, which is why I chose the photo above. In it, Nate looks how I felt that day - absorbed in a project, on the scene and in the moment.

Despite having done a few hours research, looking at charts and mission statements, I had no idea what to expect that day when we headed out there. I had little clue how to prepare myself or my intern for it; as we drove out to the farm on hilly and windy country roads, all I was able to tell him was, "This is going to be so cool. No, really, this is so cool."

The weather was gorgeous that afternoon on the Statz's farm, a bit overcast, the bluffs sprawling as far as the eye could see. Everything was green and growing, reaching toward a blue sky and early summer sunlight. The EarthScope equipment was alien in the middle of that hayfield, a deep hole with tools strewn within arms reach of the man standing inside. Adjacent to that was a solar panel, metal and glass but like the scenery around it, also stretching toward the sky.

We absorbed the scene, all of us - friends, family, and neighbors of the Statzs, my intern and I. Nate and I circled around, taking pictures, taking notes. We were there about two hours and on the way back, we agreed that there was no way it could have been that long. Four kids were running around, peering into the hole, asking dozens of questions. I envied them; I have always been intimidated talking to expert-y people, afraid I'm going to annoy them with my ordinary, non-genius person questions. But those kids held nothing back, making my job infinitely easier.

It is rare and exciting to meet people so engaged in their work. The two field engineers who showed up that day spend two months on the road, almost every day in a different place, two weeks at home or what counts for home, then back on the road. Bob told us that he had maintained that routine for most of his life. But you could tell that, standing in a hole in the middle of a hayfield in Wisconsin, there was nowhere else he'd rather be. I felt the same way.

It's been over a week since we were on site. I finished my article and edited photos that same day, accidently losing track of time and staying late to get it done. It was easy then to report back on the story, but I am still finding it difficult to put into words what I felt that day. Maybe no words suffice, but it was one of my favorite experiences I've had as a reporter, and I feel privileged to have been asked to cover it.

Head to my Flickr for more photos from this story.

Talking it Over

Talking it Over, a photo by meagan.porter on Flickr.

These ducks were seriously hesitant about whether or not to jump in Monona Bay. John and I walked through Brittingham Park this evening on our way to dinner on Park Street. Even though we've lived in this neighborhood for nearly a year, we hadn't yet visited the beautiful park only a block from our house. It was cool and breezy, more April weather than June, a far cry from the over 90 degrees it was yesterday. We walked along the bike path and came across this rickety dock holding its own against the choppy waves. I think there were six ducks relaxing on it when we walked up; two jumped in right away and four seriously thought it over before plunging into the cold water.

I love the photo above because it looks like the duck all the way on the left is trying to convince the other three, "Hey guys, come on. It's not going to be that bad." And the Hipstamatic makes everything look epic.

Storybook Burn

Storybook Burn, a photo by meagan.porter on Flickr.

Taken at Storybook Gardens, Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, May 2011.

This may be one of the last photos ever taken of this place. I read last week that it was not going to reopen this summer after nearly 60 years in business. I read today that the owners actually plan to burn it down as part of a practice exercise for the Delton Fire Department.

I visited last Monday after a short meeting. I figured I had about 20 minutes or so between getting gas, driving to the Dells, and sunset. I consider myself lucky to have gotten one good shot in that short time of this doomed place, boat boarded up, grass overgrown. There were several of these signs in front of the former entrance, warning rubberneckers to "keep out." The parking lot was deserted when I pulled up, not a soul in sight.

In the article I linked to above, Jason Fields explains that kids don't know about the storybook characters anymore, and I can understand that point of view. Storybook Gardens is part of the old Dells, the rollercoasterless Dells absent of waterparks and upside-down White Houses. I know we visited Storybook Gardens when I was little, although I only have vague memories of the place. I was more saddened to hear that Riverview Park was being torn down to make way for the Timbavati wildlife park. The phrase "aging waterpark" reminds me of the "litter of our times" Steinbeck was talking about, all that cheap and forgotten plastic.

However, when I read that the owners and the DFD planned to burn down the ship at Storybook Gardens, something didn't sit right with me. The mental image of flames licking the blue sky from that faded fake boat, boarded up and overgrown, making way for more cheap and plastic "zorbing," whatever that is. The comments in the article above rue the demise of the place, but they must know that in the whole history of the Dells, nothing has been sacred there for over 150 years. Attractions are burned down, people are shipped in and out, and the city sprawls and sprawls, those strange and artificial landscapes leeching into newer territories.

Ladders

Ladders, a photo by meagan.porter on Flickr.

I set out on Monday to get a photo of this construction site on Main Street in Reedsburg. Jeff suggested standing against the dry cleaners with my back to the sun, as it was mid-morning by that time. Good tip.

I am five feet tall exactly, and I've been considering more and more lately getting a small step stool and keeping it in my car, just in case. It would only need to give me another foot or so in height, but there's been at least three times in the last few months where I could have used one. On one of those occasions I actually pulled my car into the spot I wanted and stood on the hood to get the shot. I would have done the same in this situation had I not been on Main Street in a skirt and heels in the middle of a weekday. One more foot or so and I would have been able to shoot over this fence instead of through it.

I've shot through a fence before and it hasn't been a big deal. But in this situation, the straight fence shot gave me too much shadow from the building next to me, and the diagonally-placed fence piece gave me the shot I wanted - except I kept catching the fence through it. I climbed a small cement stoop and was able to shoot over the fence... but through a spindly little tree. I was so frustrated; it was a simple assignment, to take a photo of a construction site, and I was having more trouble than necessary in making it work.

I took the above photo as a joke. My assignment was to, "Get a picture of all the equipment in that big hole" (Jeff). As I looked over the construction site, considering my shot, I noticed the ladders perched against the cement walls of the underground parking garage. It reminded me of movies set in the Middle Ages when people stormed castles and got shot at by burning arrows. I imagined someone storming the construction site, giggled and took my shot.

I took a few other photos once I figured out what I was doing. This turned out to be the one Jeff liked the most but not for the same reasons - he pointed out that there was a nice color contrast between the two red pieces of equipment in the photo, and he pointed out that it wasn't something people can see just driving past. I agreed, and we printed it in this week's Indy as an inside color photo.

My new telephoto lens is scheduled to be delivered today, and I am ridiculously excited. I have a new case sitting on my dining room table just waiting for it. I bought it because there were three or four times in the last couple months or so that I needed one, and looking forward to this summer, I don't want to take Butterfest and Demo Derby photos without one. I also look forward to using it for my personal project. I always swore I would never buy new equipment (editing software included) until I felt like it was holding me back, and the telephoto started to be that way. Maybe a stepladder will be my next purchase.  :)

Grede

Grede, a photo by meagan.porter on Flickr.

Scene from Grede Foundry, Reedsburg, Wisconsin. Taken today, May 9, 2011.

How do you explain something you've done a million times? I found myself struggling for words today  trying to explain how to use a dSLR - something I once had to learn as well but has, in the last three years, become second nature to me. I ended up taking crappy photos of crappy scenes that I immediately knew I wasn't happy with. It was that kind of day - tired, rainy.

I was aimlessly driving around town later when I stumbled on the scene above. I've always been fascinated by Grede Foundry; it stood out on the backdrop of my childhood, smoke stacks rising in the distance. There is a yard next to it that must be some kind of metal yard; through the fence you can catch glimpses of metal mountains glinting in the sun. And I've always wondered, why blue?

My uncle was at work at Grede that day in 2003 when a boiler exploded at Foremost Farms nextdoor, sending tremors through the whole area. He later said when the Foremost boiler exploded, Grede shook, and he looked up and watched the dust come unsettled and waft down like ashen snow. When I remember the chaos of that December morning, picturing that scene calms me. I'm not sure why.

I was driving by earlier for no reason, that dull blue metal blending in with the steely, dull blue sky, when those boxes caught my eye. I pulled over and thought for awhile about what to do; I wanted a photo of those boxes, but I didn't want to get too close to them. I planned the shot in my head, left the keys in the ignition, ran up, took four photos, and ran back. The photo above was the first one I took.

I need to learn to trust myself. Maybe I know more than I think I know.

Playland

Kiddie Playland, a photo by meagan.porter on Flickr.

Taken at Riverview Park and Waterworld, Wisconsin Dells, May 2011. Part of my Strange Landscapes series.

Excerpt from my thesis:
"The Dells in the winter is much less exciting. There is no longer a buzz about the heavy coats, scarves and gloves. Wisconsin winter set in early this October, making the Dells that much less inviting. The sky is that dirty snowy grey and all the leaves are almost gone. The city has absurdly tied dead corn stalks to all the lightposts and, in a gesture of efficiency, decorated all the spindly sidewalked trees in blue Christmas lights. There is no holiday here, only two seasons – tourist and the off-season.  Most businesses are dark, most doors are closed. I’m spending my time off from school sitting at Ripley’s for hours. I’ve memorized every well-placed crack and erosion on the faux ancient wall next to me. The Dells itself is packed because of the indoor waterparks. Everything else on the strip is closed but us. People come into Ripley’s complaining, inquiring. Pissed off that they’ve planned a ski vacation and there’s no snow. Made a week’s reservation at the Wilderness only to tire of their five indoor waterparks by day two. What’s open?  they demand, blaming me. I can only shrug. Hey, we don’t know what you’re doing here either."

View the Boats

View the Boats, a photo by meagan.porter on Flickr.

Taken at the Dells Boat Docks, Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, May 2011. Part of my Strange Landscapes series.

Excerpt from my thesis:
"I can’t get over the fact that every time I return to this life, it’s exactly the same. Exactly. I anticipate a difference and I am always disappointed. I walk out of his back door above the candy shop on the strip to see roller coasters looming out of that cold Sunday morning. Driving home hungover amid the early Masses, I am surprised by the number of people awake when I haven’t yet slept. I’m still trying to figure out exactly how I’m going to tell this story later when I’m startled by the colors on the trees. With a long-time preference for staying up until the early morning and sleeping until mid-afternoon, I have a hard time differentiating between seasons – it’s always cold at night and pretty much everything looks the same in the moonlight. It’s fall, and finally, it’s cold. Roller coasters have stopped running, water ceases from the slides and wavepools, and the ferris wheel on the parkway stands with its cars removed. Every Tuesday after Labor Day weekend, the Dells becomes a ghost town. It is now possible to get: a parking spot, a table in a restaurant, a seat at the movies, and anywhere on time. It’s depressing, in a way, but we need this – we need this so that in seven more months, we can welcome tourists, invite them again with open arms. This city is not a machine that hums and buzzes because it too has a culling song that softly lulls us all into a cold and eventual sleep."

Scenic Dells

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

The photo above was taken from the Wisconsin River bridge in Wisconsin Dells, May 2011. Part of my Strange Landscapes series.

I went on the first shoot for my personal project on Monday. I had a bad day at work and really didn't feel like going, but I'd been planning it for about a week. I'm a sucker for excuses - it was cold, I was tired and I only had an hour or so to take photos. But I bribed myself with Starbucks and a reality check - if I was going to attempt to capture the Dells in the off-season, I only have a few weeks to get started before the tourists flood in on Memorial Day. I forced myself to go through with it, and I'm glad I did. Once I got started it was hard to put the camera down and pull myself away. I had a fantastic first day and it gives me a ton of motivation to continue the project. I wound up with a dozen or so photos that I'm very proud of, with more to come on my Flickr in the next few days.

I used to pass the sign above every single day in the two years that I worked on the strip in the Wisconsin Dells. I always thought it was interesting but I had never gotten out of the car to take a real look at it. I parked in the public lot and for the first time realized how inaccessible the Dells is by foot - the strip is fine but sequestered from the rest of the city, which consists of spread out and sprawling water parks and tourist traps. You really have to drive from one place to another, which is pretty ridiculous. Getting to this spot I felt like a little kid on monkey bars, jaunting from one spot to another.

Anyway, it wasn't until I got in front of the sign that I realized what was behind it - a huge electrical complex thing situated between the river, dam, and railroad tracks. I had passed that sign a million times before, driven on that road twice a day for two years, and had never seen what I was seeing from the sidewalk. I guffawed and got to work.

The rest of my short time there was exactly the same way. Maybe it sounds cliched, but it wasn't until I really stopped and looked at the Dells that I started to see things, to really see them. I expect this project to operate in much of the same way, not only a process of technical discovery with my camera but hopefully a process of personal discovery, teaching myself to look at things and really see them.

I'll leave you with a quote I used in my thesis:
"I had heard of the Wisconsin Dells but was not prepared for the weird country sculptured by the Ice Age, a strange, gleaming country of water and carved rock, black and green. To awaken here might make one believe it a dream of some other planet, for it has a non-earthly quality, or else the engraved record of a time when the world was much younger and much different. Clinging to the sides of the dreamlike waterways was the litter of our times, the motels, the hot-dog stands, the merchants of the cheap and mediocre and tawdry so loved by summer tourist, but these incrustations were closed and boarded against the winter and, even open, I doubt they could dispel the enchantment of the Wisconsin Dells."  - John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley in Search of America, 1962

Strange Landscapes

No Running, a photo by meagan.porter on Flickr.

The photo above is part of a long-term project to capture the Wisconsin Dells in the off-season. I started planning last week and went out on my first shoot on Monday.

The Dells for most people exists between the months of June and August. The Waterpark Capital of the World attracts hundreds of thousands of people in those few months. I'm fascinated by what goes on the other nine months of the year, when the colorful and slightly run-down rides stand out stark against grey Wisconsin skies and landscapes. The Dells doesn't disappear when the tourists go home. It stays. My project is going to be to capture what that looks like.

I was totally inspired by Ted Forbes and Wade Griffith's podcast, The Photography Show, which I listen to on long drives to and from Reedsburg. Their conversations typically run the gamut from banter to inspiration to hardcore information, and I appreciate that. Teaching isn't all about straight-up learning, and we all learn in different ways. I have no interest in "going pro," just taking cool images that make me happy and sometimes sharing that with people, and I feel like that podcast speaks to a multitude of photography audiences. I enjoy it. Anyway, they were talking the other day about having a long-term personal project to work on that might take a year, ten years, whatever it takes - just something on the back burner that you do just because you enjoy it. They said to think of what you like to shoot and go shoot it - if it's portraits, go take portraits, if it's band photos, go shoot band photos. That got me thinking - what do I really like to take pictures of? Which of my photos do I really like looking at? What subject matter makes me happiest?

Besides my cats (lol), only one photo really came to mind. I took this photo at Butterfest last year, and along with this one and this one, they are among some of my favorite images I've ever captured. I've taken photos at Butterfest for the Reedsburg Independent for the past couple years, and from the parade to the demo derby, it's one of my favorite times of year. The colors, the looks on people's faces, the scenes, the rides, everything. And they are photos I love to revisit again and again. But Butterfest only comes once per year.

John suggested that this summer, we follow carnivals around the state and take photos, and while I kind of like the idea of being nomadic carnie-stalkers, those images could get old really fast. Why not go somewhere the carnival never leaves? The Dells.

I grew up in Reedsburg, 15 minutes from the Dells, and I wrote my senior thesis on how that affected my psyche, and the minds and imaginations of my friends and neighbors. We spent three months of the year working in the cartoonishness that is the summer-Dells and another nine months of the year working in an empty city, waterslides devoid of water. What is a tourist attraction like when the tourists are gone?

I did a decent job of writing about it in the year and a half I spent on my senior thesis. I've decided to revisit the subject matter with a new tool - my camera. We'll see what happens. Expect more rambling on my childhood, tourism theory, and hopefully a few decent images.

Life's a Beach

Life's a Beach, a photo by meagan.porter on Flickr.

Taken in Reedsburg, Wisconsin. View of the City Shop off South Webb Avenue. Taken March 2011.

I love the desolation in this photo, the perfect capture of Wisconsin winter. The sky is a dull light blue, trees black, snow piles a mix of grey and cold white. Even the weeds and beach ball are dull colors. 


I'm always attracted to power lines for some reason. Maybe its' the song "Engine Driver" by the Decemberists - "I'm a county lineman/on the high line, on the high line/So will be my grandson/There are power lines in our blood lines." I like the straight lines, extending up into the sky and off into the distance, as far as you can see. I like the idea of length and connectivity, I like how they stand out in flat lands when it seems like the road is the only civilization for miles. Somewhere, somebody is going to be connected to someone else, and to someone else, and to the power source.


The water in the photo is overflow from the Baraboo River, flooding the low spots with the rain and melting of spring, It's a spot that floods regularly.


The ball? Not sure where that came from.

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.

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.