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.

Cook Shanty

Cook Shanty, a photo by meagan.porter on Flickr.

Took an unsuccessful trip out to the Dells earlier this week as part of my long-term project, Strange Landscapes. I drove around for a long while and the photo above ended up being the only shot I took during the hour or so I was there. The sky was that steely, early Wisconsin spring grey; I kept looking at it through my office window all day thinking it was going to make a perfect backdrop for my photo excursion. But when I got there I drove around without inspiration, and the light faded, and I left.

I think a cloud was hanging over me while I was there. I kept thinking about the body that was pulled from the river a couple weeks ago. I'm sure it was not the first and unfortunately not the last. The body had yet to be identified and as I was driving around, I kept wondering how long it must have been in the water for it to have become so hard to recognize. A gloom settled over me, and it made it difficult to be receptive to inspiration, no matter how hard I thought I was looking.

Structural things in the Dells don't really change. I still knew my way around even though it had been a year or so since I'd spent any time there. Most of the time the roads won't move on you. What struck me was how different things on either side of the road looked wherever I went. Several scenes I photographed just last year were no longer there, such as Storybook Gardens (the no trespassing signs are still there but the rest is just a scorched piece of earth) and Riverview Park (surrounded by a fake castle wall, I have heard this is set to become some kind of zoo). The Dells is constantly changing, resetting the stage for the next show, and who can say whether this is a good or bad thing.

I've never eaten at Paul Bunyan's though I've heard a lot about it and known several people who've worked there at one time or another. I turned onto Highway 13 from Cty H and was immediately assailed by several signs encouraging me to "Turn Here! Turn Here! Turn Here!" so I did. To the left was a lot for tour buses; directly ahead was an overgrown mini-golf course and to the right was Paul Bunyan himself, accompanied by a sign that urged me to fill out a job application. The acres of parking lot were completely empty except for me and Paul. I snapped a few quick photos and left.

There are a little more than two months now before the tourist season starts. With daylight saving, I will soon have more daylight to work with so we'll see what happens.

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.

Recall efforts in Reedsburg nearly done, city enacts building use policy

Another story Jeff and I collaborated on was posted on dane101.com today through our content-sharing partnership with the site.

Check it out: Recall efforts in Reedsburg nearly done, city enacts building use policy

The article is also available in this week's Reedsburg Independent.

City moving forward with building use policy draft

A story Jeff and I collaborated on was posted on dane101.com today through our content sharing partnership with the site.

Check it out: City moving forward with building use policy draft

Epic Points of Light

Epic Points of Light, a photo by meagan.porter on Flickr.

Who wouldn't love to work in a place like Epic? My fiance has worked there four-ish years and through my comings and goings picking him up from work or seeing a new office he's moved into or giving unofficial tours to relatives, I've seen quite a bit of the campus. But it changes constantly; every time I pick him up from work I feel like I'm taking a different road, even if I'm going to the same place.

We always offer visiting relatives a tour of John's office, which makes it sound banal when you put it like that. I think the visiting relatives think the same and initially agree just to be polite. And then they see the place and know what we're talking about. I try to take my camera every time we go on an extensive tour as there's so much of the fantastic incorporated into the buildings. A fifties diner in the cafeteria, a waterfall, an Indiana Jones-themed hallway, a treehouse, a replica of the NYC subway, a Dungeons and Dragons-themed building (John's old office), just to name a few. It is a severe understatement to say that someone put a lot of thought into the campus. Literally no stone was left unturned in crafting this environment in the middle of a Verona cornfield; it is a sight to behold and difficult to describe unless you've been there. The campus resembles a theme park more than a medical software company and I hope the employees never stop appreciating the thought and wonder instilled into design of their workplace.

Anyway, I never go without my camera but I find it's difficult to take fantastic pictures of something that's already fantastic, you know? How do you find a good angle, something that's not already obvious? On Flickr, giantmike does an amazing job of capturing even seemingly mundane aspects of the campus and making them beautiful.

I snapped the above photo on a quick jaunt to see John's new office in Pluto. Yes, Pluto. They moved him in as soon as the office space was available, so there wasn't too much decor yet in the labyrinth of hallways leading to his office. I noticed the light fixture as we were leaving Pluto through the hallway that leads to the training center (I think). What could otherwise be a plain but perfectly acceptable hallway had four or five of these lights about midway up the wall on either side. The walls themselves were painted in what can only be described as a light-speed-ahead-triangle-pattern, complimenting the lights perfectly so that when one stopped to look full on at the fixtures, you were left with the image I took above.

It's just another example of how everything at Epic is thought about, every detail considered. Ordinary light fixtures and ordinary paint jobs probably have a cheaper, ordinary price. But I'm sure whoever is in charge over there also recognizes the incredible value in small moments of joy in discovering what I did above, all those perfect points of light.

Thoughts on Christmas Cards

Under the Mistletoe, a photo by meagan.porter on Flickr.

My minor obsession with miniatures and making my own holiday cards continued again this year with the next installment of my Christmas Card Photo Shoot.

I received a lot of positive feedback from last year's attempt, mostly about my photos of Oscar el Gato (one of which even won a contest). But more than that, I get a lot of joy throughout the whole endeavor  for a couple reasons.

I strongly believe that sending and receiving mail is a lost art, and it's easily buried under the process of addressing and sending holiday cards the way we modern folk do it. As a kid, I used to help my mom send Christmas cards. I remember feeling an enormous pressure to get all those cards out, plopping down with a bargain pack of 50 cards most likely bought during sales following Christmas the previous year and going through everyone in the address book. Every card had a pre-written message so it was easy enough; "Dear Aunt Somebody and Uncle So-and-So, Merry Christmas, Love, the Porter family." Sometimes I wrote out our names. And sometimes the cards already said, "Merry Christmas," so I didn't always have to write that. But I was an efficient little assembly line of card messaging and addressing, a task that catered perfectly to my love of my own handwriting and my obsessive need to complete lists.

As an adult, undertaking the societal rite of passage in sending my own Christmas cards for the first time, I remember standing in the aisle at Target in early November, unable to settle on the right holiday greetings or even sufficient holiday greetings. For some reason it felt like a big deal; I was frozen in indecision; I couldn't just grab a box and be happy with whatever I got. I can make cards better than this, I thought, nay, I will make cards better than this.

Which leads me to the point I quickly realized as I set about my task: handmade cards don't come with pre-printed messages. When you forgo the 50 pack of bargain cards, it forces you to handwrite the names of your recipients, handwrite a message, and handwrite a closing. It forces you to think, to really think about all the names, all the individuals in your address book, or at least I do while I'm writing. It forces you to actually communicate, to make a connection beyond the act of checking this person's name off a list once per year. I'm not trying sound holier-than-thou. There is nothing wrong with the assembly-line method of messaging and addressing Christmas cards, if that's the way you prefer to go about it each holiday season. But having tried the alternative, our new modern tradition just isn't for me.

In addition, let it not be taken lightly that there is something immeasurably satisfying in taking one large, seemingly insurmountable project and breaking it down into a series of tiny tasks. Plopped down in the middle of my living room, affixing photos with double-sided sticky tape to cardstock folded in half, buffing off fingerprints with a soft cloth, writing messages on the inside, over and over again, one at a time until each is done.

And so, finally, we arrive at what this blog is truly about: the photography. There's something calming about photographing miniatures. I tend to lose myself faster in the work than just about any other project I do, in the process of constructing a set, positioning lights, breathing shallowly as I try to stay as still as possible. Hours pass. I am impatient in almost every single other area of my life but this one, shifting figures fractions of inches, watching where the light falls. Click.

Last year I remember trying to go for a vintage-y Christmas look with the ornaments and didn't concentrate so much on the miniatures. But the miniatures were my favorite photos from last year, so that's what I focused on this year. I didn't try to go for any certain "look," but in reviewing the series it feels like the photos are darker. I managed to make a snowman look sinister. There were some photos that look like they were barely lit. I can't say that I was going for a certain feeling or other during the photography process. But looking at the pictures now, I feel like I captured the holidays' essential moments: picking out a Christmas tree, building a snowman, caroling, kissing under the mistletoe. Simple and classic.

Another point to consider: every image in this year's series was in color. I have been trying to figure that one out, as I did so many black and whites last year. What changed? I didn't convert any of my images to black and white in the editing process; I don't remember feeling a need to, though I don't doubt that some of them would look good in black and white, maybe even better than in color.

Overall I'm happy with the result. And so, hopefully, will be the people on my Christmas card list.