Photography

Wednesday Photo & A Poem-Smeared A Bluish Green

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Pastoral

When I was younger
it was plain to me
I must make something of myself.
Older now
I walk back streets
admiring the houses
of the very poor:
roof out of line with sides
the yards cluttered
with old chicken wire, ashes,
furniture gone wrong;
the fences and outhouses
built of barrel staves
and parts of boxes, all,
if I am fortunate,
smeared a bluish green
that properly weathered
pleases me best of all colors.

No one
will believe this
of vast import to the nation

–William Carlos Williams

As posted, down in Ballard, by the docks. An early sketch that keeps me going…

Seattle Photo-Muted Spring Colors

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Looking for some leading lines and color.

To whom it may concern: The old DSLR Nikon 3100d starter camera took a tumble onto the pavement last week. It’s probably not salvageable given its age and the cost of repair.

I left the camera bag open, and while later snatching everything out of the back seat, out it fell to the ground. To those who know how sensitive and expensive camera equipment is, I feel your pain.

I’m likely moving to a used Nikon Z (mirrorless)with a 24-200mm lens soon.

Thanks for looking.

Seattle Photo-Around That Theme

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See some other photos here. Presented mostly without comment.

A reader points out: Yeah, I know his face is not in focus. I know. Come on, man. I’m working on it.

My rationalization: The textures of the blanket, and the bunching up of the blanket and his face towards the center of the frame, precariously and uncomfortably resting over an abyss, that’s what I was aiming at.

Do you believe that horses**t?

Seattle Photo-The Winter Before

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I chased Badeau to the bottom of the stairs, where he gave a grunt and a cry before disappearing to the upper rooms. It was the last anyone would see of him until summer. Our little waterfront pursuit would go on to make headlines.

That night, I awoke as a neighbor’s headlights launched through my eyes, illuminating some animal part of my soul.

Which Lens Are You Using? Some Links

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David Hockney ‘On Secret Knowledge: On Rediscovering The Lost Secrets Of The Old Masters’:

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Optical devices were likely common practice more than is commonly known these days, way before the camera, the television etc.

As previously posted:

Just as optics revolutionized the sciences and the boundaries of human knowledge, from Galileo to Newton and onwards, Tim Jenison wonders if optics may have revolutionized the arts as well.

‘But still, exactly how did Vermeer do it? One day, in the bathtub, Jenison had a eureka moment: a mirror. If the lens focused its image onto a small, angled mirror, and the mirror was placed just between the painter’s eye and the canvas, by glancing back and forth he could copy that bit of image until the color and tone precisely matched the reflected bit of reality.’

Good Vermeer page here for a refresher on the Dutch master.

Penn & Teller helped make a documentary which has gotten good reviews, entitled ‘Tim’s Vermeer.‘

Perhaps only the Girl With The Pearl Earring knows for sure if the painter used such a technique:

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Interesting quotation from Quora, on Richard Feynman’s discussion of light in ‘QED: The Strange Theory Of Light And Matter’:

‘Mirrors and pools of water work pretty much the same way. Light interacts with electrons on the surface. Under the laws of quantum mechanics, each photon interacts with ALL of the electrons on the surface, and the net result is the sum of all possible pathways. If the surface is perfectly smooth, then most of the pathways cancel each other out, except for the one where the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection. ‘

Click through for the illustrations to help explain Feynman’s theory, which fascinated me when I first came across it; much as I understand of it.

Have you ever seen sunlight reflecting off a body of water from a few thousand feet up in a plane?  A rainbow in a puddle with some oil in it?  A laser reflecting off a smooth surface like a mirror?

Related On This Site: In The Mail: Vivian Maier

Goya, that modern, had to make a living from the royal family: Goya’s Colossus…Goya’s Fight With Cudgels…Goethe’s Color Theory: Artists And Thinkers…NASA Composite Image Of The Earth At Night…Beauty?…Garrett Mattingly On Machiavelli-The Prince: Political Science Or Political Satire?

Repost-From The NY Times: Schlieren

Phospine Above Venus, Blurbs & A Poem By Wallace Stevens

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Somewhere up in the clouds of Venus, there’s Phosphine [possibly]. So far, there’s no known naturally occurring reason for this, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. On Earth, when bacteria farts in our guts and in swamps, that’s when you get Phosphine. I’ll bet it smells nice.

Maybe in those clouds of sulfuric acid, racing above surface temperatures high-enough to melt lead, there’s some ammonia? Maybe this ammonia is neutralizing the cloud PH balance enough for some kind of bacteria to survive?

These are questions to which a little exploration can provide answers.

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You know the moment you notice that the world has fallen away for awhile? You’re leisurely enjoying a photograph, or a painting, or a poem…

…and there’s a passage like this:

‘In the critical terminology of the time, Ghirri’s close-up photographs of the details of atlases and other maps question the link between signifier and signified, referring to a supposedly ‘natural’ environment that has long since become a simulacrum, and revealing the specific aesthetics harboured within ‘objective’ representation.’

The NIGHT of the BLURB! It’s postmodern, it’s (S)elf referential, it’s….alive. It’s dead. It’s…subjectivity and objectivity combined!

—

And now for a ‘modern’ poem.

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

 –Wallace Stevens

Seattle Photo-Street Preacher At Dusk

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After noticing my shooting him, we talked for a while about why he’s out there, and the meaning of repeating: “God is King…Jesus is….”

His message is chanted, and somewhat hypnotic. It is practiced, repeated on a loop, and I suspect invoked from within him as well as for those of us outside.

After noticing the camera, he became self-aware, laughing a bit, awkwardly. Sheepishly, even. He pointed at me, smiling.

Who was I? What did I want? Friend or foe? What might the lens see?

In the photos, in his face, I see some anger, impatience, sadness, despair, and maybe a bit of hope. The kinds of emotions usually visible when people (kids, especially) stop paying attention if anyone’s looking.

Thanks for looking.