Nicholas Haggin Photography
Selected views through my lens
Philo Gloaming
When we were first married, my wife was the organist at St. Thomas Catholic Church, Philo, IL, and in the course of her job we did much driving around southeastern Champaign County. Because of the Embarras River, which rises on the south side of Champaign and then flows southeast, this part of the county has gently rolling land, very gentle but enough to make it noticeably prettier (to my eye) than the rest.
We paid a visit recently to St. Thomas for Mass and were rewarded with this scene on the way home. I had forgotten how much I liked the area, and I’m inspired to go back for some less spur-of-the-moment pictures later this year.
The Busey Woods Monster
When your children and your nephew have the day off school, what could be better than to go wandering around a local forest preserve? Sure, it may be January, and melting ice may make the boardwalk trail too slippery for mere mortals, but you’re going to have fun, dangit!
Slippery trails or no, it was worth it for this picture.
Cold Chapel
Part of a campus church on a snowy evening, taken as I waited for the bus.
Frozen Blood
My neighbors have a bleeding-heart in a little flower bed next to their driveway, and the stars aligned one morning to cover it in snow and ice at a time when I could grab this frame.
Well-Benched Vans
I wonder how many people who buy the Honda Odyssey get a mythological vanity plate to go with it. To me it seems a no-brainer, but then I read Robert Fitzgerald’s translation of the Odyssey on my own initiative in 6th grade. (I enjoyed it greatly, too.)
Fashionable faux-tilt-shift blur on the edges courtesy of Snapseed.
January Skies
A little grab shot from the passenger seat taken while riding from Colfax to Gibson City. The church where my wife works chose a day of dramatic skies to go Christmas caroling to their members at various nursing homes between Bloomington and Gifford. Please excuse the grunge (particularly noticeable in the dark clouds at left); I couldn’t put the window down but I didn’t want to lose the moment.
Hot Wires
On the street side of the new Electrical and Computer Engineering building, there is a second themed sculpture:
This piece, entitled “Diss-Connections,” elicited a tart comment from a fellow photographer: “Oh, someone is having fun with the residents of that particular asylum.” Between the slightly insulting name, and the fact that wire nuts are more the province of electricians than electrical engineers, there is much in what he says. The sculpture was good for a chuckle the first time I saw it, anyway.
