Prim.

Prim., a photo by meagan.porter on Flickr.

My camera has been holed up in my purple padded case, waiting for spring. Any other season I'm toting my camera around constantly, snap happy, wanting to linger for extra minutes and hours outside. This time of year I'm a hermit, snug on the couch in my Snuggie with my brandy watching marathons of House reruns. It is difficult to find any kind of motivation these days with less light, sprinting from home to car and from car to work. And yet perusing the Flickr accounts of my friends and peers, I get a little bit jealous. Well, a lot jealous. Everyone else likes to take more winter walks than I would ever care for and they're the ones winding up with the amazing shots of hoarfrost and frozen lakes and things covered in snow.

Inside the house, attempts to learn lighting have been discouraging. Caught up in making wedding invitations and putting the finishing touches on our upcoming nuptials has left me little time for anything else, and I know that's no excuse. Days turn into weeks turn into months and my poor camera waits anxiously in my bag, hoping for more than just photos of check passings and ribbon cuttings. I hate blogs that apologize and make empty promises, disappear for months and then come back with excuses. I won't do that. I've been lazy. I'll do better and not for anyone else but for me and what I enjoy. That's all.

Fiona, always the prim and proper cat, perches above on a shelf in our house. Cats are so random but purposeful, an amalgam of joints and limbs and reactions with a little OCD thrown in the mix. Their routines are fascinating. I always wonder what's going through their tiny cat cerebral cortexes, so packed with neurons, making them sixth smartest animal on earth, twice as smart as dogs. And all that intelligence sometimes focuses on the most minute detail, like lining up all of one's toes on the edge of a shelf just so, arranging a tail just right. What else is life for if not positioning one's self just perfectly for a long nap? Maybe they've got it all figured out.

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.