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.

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.

Lucky Shot.

   A very lucky shot from the window of the airplane. My phone was off and camera buried in my carry-on because I had no idea we were going to get such a good view on take off. I scrambled to wrench the camera from my bag and took this pic without looking through the camera.
   The Washington Monument is the most obvious in this photo... if you follow the lawn back and to the right, that's the US Capitol building. If you follow the lawn back and to the left, that's the White House.

   The photo above is zoomed and cropped from the original. You can click on the photo above for a bigger view. Hit the jump for the original version.