Pink iris – “the ballerina”

Posted on by
Figure 1 - Pink iris, Concord, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Figure 1 – Pink iris, Concord, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

This past weekend, Memorial Day, was a quiet relaxing three days – time to get ready for summer.  I spent part of it doing some maintenance on the Hati and Skoll website.  The “Cabinet of Nature” gallery was getting over run with bird photographs; so these have their own gallery now.  Also, there is a special gallery confined to “Birds of Fresh Pond,” which I am hoping to link with the “Friends of Fresh Pond” website. Over the next few weeks I will be further “touching” things up, culling here and augmenting there.

I did find some time for photographing as well and have already posted some of  these. I do not often succumb to flower pictures, but on Monday, as was walking through a nursery in Concord, MA, I came upon this spectacular pink iris (Figure 1). We tend to think of irises as being blue, but there are varieties, and these include the spectacular yellow wild irises that now grace “Black’s Nook” in Cambridge. I am told that my pink iris resembles a ballerina; so I have named it that. And I do see a resemblance to some of those “dancers in gossamer” photographs that abound.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM at 113 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE mode, 1/1600 th sec at f/8.0 with no exposure compensation.

Gossip, Rumor, & Innuendo

Posted on by
Figure 1 - Gossip, Rumor, and Innuendo, Codman Estate, Lincoln, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Figure 1 – Gossip, Rumor, and Innuendo, Codman Estate, Lincoln, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Every morning and evening as I drive to and from work, I go past the historic Codman Estate, in Lincoln, Massachusetts.  Henry David Thoreau mentions the Codman Estate in “Walden.” So it is both a grounding and a bucolic drive.  There are cows and lamas in the fields, and for a year now I keep meaning to stop and take a few photographs. Well over the Memorial Day weekend, I finally decided to drive over and get out of the car.  I was trepidatious at first. But these are gentle giants and they watched me, but weren’t overly bothered by my presence, even when I came near the little calf that was there.

I wasn’t overly happy with the results of the photo-shoot. That means I am going to need to go back again. But in the meanwhile I have amused myself with this picture of three bovine ladies as if telling tales about others. It is a little clique; so I have named them as: Gossip, Rumor, and Innuendo. I will admit that I did a lot of Photoshopping with this one. I removed a lot of flies and ear tags from the cows to make them look more native and appealing.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 131 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE mode, 1/500th sec at f/8.0 -1 exposure compensation.

Wise as an owl

Posted on by
Figure 1 - Ornamental garden owls, Concord, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Figure 1 – Ornamental garden owls, Concord, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

For some reason I love to photograph garden ornaments. These tend to be little real animals, looking cute and adorable as well as totally fanciful creatures looking, well, fanciful. And I suspect that therein lies the profounder point. Our gardens are private places of refuge, and when we populate them with little whimsical creatures, we simply add to their wonder and our sense of oasis.

OK, we can go deeper. Figure 1 (an IPhone image) shows ornamental garden owls. Now, there are these plastic owls that people put on roofs so as to provide roosting places for pigeons And these animals, the ones in Figure 1, aren’t going to fool Boston pigeons, most of whom have spent some time at one of our institutions of higher learning. But the owls are cool. And they allude to Athene noctua, the little baby owl that accompanied and was a symbol of the goddess Athena in Greek Mythology. This is, of course, the source of the phrase “wise old owl.” Who? You know the one on the bag of Wise Potato Chips. Who? Well, you know, Winnie the Pooh’s companion, who observed that “You, sir, are stuck. A wedged bear in a great tightness. In a word, irremovable.”

Hmm, and as for the creature of Figure 2 (also an IPhone image), I have no idea what that is. All that I can think about is the 1977 children’s Disney movie: “Pete’s Dragon.” That dragon’s name was Elliot. And for fans a remake is currently being filmed in New Zealand.

Figure 2 - Garden creature, Pete's dragon, Elliot? Concord, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015

Figure 2 – Garden creature, Pete’s dragon, Elliot? Concord, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015

Lemon and lime

Posted on by
Figure 1 - Lemon and lime, Concord, MA.(c) DE Wolf 2015.

Figure 1 – Lemon and lime, Concord, MA.(c) DE Wolf 2015.

OK, I am officially declaring summer in New England.  It seems remarkable.  Barely more than a month ago, I was photographing frazil and pancake ice on Fresh Pond and now we are in summer. Spring is an iffy affair in Massachusetts.  The usual scenario is clear sailing from winter to summer with a brief mud season in between.  Well, there was precious little of that this year.  Still I cannot understand how after all that snow, we could be having water shortages. Not to worry much of the United States Congress has declared that there is no global warming. What a relief that is.  I mean, I was starting to give in to the ravings of my inner scientist.  Don’t be sarcastic, Wolf.  I am sorry. They are morons, the lot of them.  Well back to pleasanter things.  Everything is green.  It is in the high seventies (twenties to the civilized world), the birds are singing, and the flowers are blooming.

With the photograph of Figure 1, which I call “Lemon and Lime.” I’ll let it speak for itself, since some languages do not distinguish lemon from lime.  For most of us the eye does and the two colors are glorious, intense, and wonderful.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 109 mm, ISO 200, Aperture Priority AE mode, 1/250 th sec at f/9.0 with no exposure compensation.

I Robot near you

Posted on by

Last week I posted about photographing subjects that will become obsolete and I mentioned robotic waitstaff. A couple of years back I was having dinner at a local pizza chain and was confronted with the ability of ordering, paying, and tipping automatically.  I resist these, because they are taking somebody’s job away from them and also because part of the “dining experience” is interacting with the waiters.  I had a lovely anniversary dinner last night, and part of the appeal and loveliness was the attentive and sweet waitress.  But as the Borg are (were?) fond of saying: :Prepare to be assimilated. Resistance is futile.”

I have been gleaning the web and as it turns out, friends, that as regards robot waiters the future is, well, now! Restaurants featuring such automatron are now in Hong Kong and Tokyo. Where is Seven of Nine when you need her? Photographically, I am thinking that the choice is not whether to photograph the transition, but whether to photograph the transition from or the transition to.

A distant yet familiar memory

Posted on by
Figure 1 -Prime Minister Winston Churchill flashing the V for victory after announcing the end of war in Europe to the Britsh people. In the public domain.

Figure 1 -Prime Minister Winston Churchill flashing the V for victory after announcing the end of war in Europe to the British people on May 8, 1945. In the public domain.

As we contemplate Memorial Day today, we should also consider the fact that May 8th was the seventieth anniversary of Victory in Europe Day or VE Day, marking the surrender of Nazi Germany to the allies.  Figure 1 – is an outstanding image from that day showing Winston Churchill waving to crowds in Whitehall after his announcement to the British people that the war in Europe was over. It raises the hair on the back of your neck as do a series of VE Day images from NBC News.

A couple of these images particularly move me.  The first is a photograph by Harry Harris for the AP showing New Yorkers jamming Times Square on May 7, 1945 upon hearing the news of victory and the second is an image by R. J. Salmon from Getty Images showing soldiers from the Women’s Royal Army Corps driving their service vehicle through Trafalgar Square during V-E Day celebrations in London.  If you stop and think about it so much races through your mind when you see such images.  It is as ever the power of photography, and I will even go so far as to say especially of black and white photography.

The sensations are complex. Consider the Times Square image.  For those people, it was the defining moment of their generation.  My eye is distracted by the theater marque.  Alan Ladd and Gail Russell in “Salty O’Rourke.” There is the man holding the newspaper with the huge headline “Nazi’s Quit.”  This was my parents’ generation, and I keep searching the crowd for them – perhaps the man with the cigar.  I search even though I know that they weren’t there.The significant point is that photography not only transports us back to that historic moment, but it actually puts us into the skins of those people.  By the magic of a silver gelatin emulsion we are transformed.

Also I think about how almost all of those people are gone now.  They have fallen, in the end, victims of the common maladies that lead to our demise.  This was their second defining moment.  The first was the moment that global war against Evil became inevitable, when the free peoples of the world united in their cause against tyranny.  It was not a choice that anyone would make lightly.  Indeed it was thrust upon most of them.  It was not a conscious choice  I suppose that this is what Memorial Day is all about – real people rising to greatness, to become what Tom Brokaw has called “The Greatest Generation.”

Arlington

Posted on by
Figure 1 - Union soldiers on the lawn of Arlington House, June 28, 1864. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person’s official duties under the terms of Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105 of the US Code.

Figure 1 – Union soldiers on the lawn of Arlington House, June 28, 1864. In the collection of the United States National Archives. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person’s official duties under the terms of Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105 of the US Code.

It is Memorial Day weekend in the United States, and our thoughts run to the soldiers who sacrificed their lives in what seems like countless wars. Our news media abounds with images of thousands of flag being planted.Then too we think of the Arlington National Cemetery, a national symbol, where so many of these dead are buried.

It has an interesting history. In 1802 George Washington Parke Custis, a  grandson of Martha Washington, acquired the land where the cemetery now stands and began construction of Arlington House. The estate passed to Custis’ daughter, Mary Anna, who was married to United States Army officer Robert E. Lee.   Lee resigned his commission on April 20, 1861 and took command of the armed forces of the Commonwealth of Virginia, later becoming commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. On May 7, the Virginia militia occupied Arlington and Arlington House thus threatening Washington, DC. . General Winfield Scott ordered Brigadier General Irvin McDowell to clear Arlington and the city of Alexandria, Virginia, of the confederates   He occupied Arlington without opposition on May 24. In 1862 the grounds of Arlington House became the site of the National Cemetery.  The snub at Lee was an obvious one.  He would have to look out at the dead of the Civil War for the rest of his life. The first burial at Arlington, that of William Henry Christman, was made on May 13, 1864.

The United States National archives has an intriguing photograph, reproduced here as Figure 1.  It was taken on June 28, 1864 and shows Union troops occupying the lawn of Arlington House. There is a certain timelessness of marble contrasted against the soldiers now gone with the wind.  I keep being drawn to the delicate beauty of the stone. And there is that strange similarity evoked by the all too familiar poses.  It could be any of us.  Then too the windows thrown open wide speaks to the Washington heat and humidity that those soldiers must have felt.

Of age and anonymity

Posted on by

End of week and the long Memorial Day weekend lies in front of us.  I have been culling the various websites for photo enjoyable – something light ahead of the coming minivacation.  I found two photographs that I really like on the “NBC best of the week series.”

The first is a photo by Vadim Ghirda  for the AP showing an elderly woman, in cliché elderly woman garb, walking in front of a fashion billboard in the shopping district of Bucharest, Roumania.  The contrast is obvious, itself a cliché.  But it is always a thought provoking one.  What is in the woman’s thoughts?  She appears to be on a cell phone, but isn’t. What is? What was was? What might have been?

The second is an image of a busy rush hour street in Tokyo by Kimimas Mayama for the EPA.  Again this scene of motion where only the center figures approach being in focus is something that we have seen many times before.  Here it is masterfully executed and creates a true sense of both intense motion and the isolation in a crowd that defines modern urban centers.

Freedom of speech

Posted on by

“First Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petitition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

September 25, 1789

Those are the words of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, it “guarantees” to citizens of the United States freedom of speech. In an age where demagogues and entertainers disguise themselves as news commentators and journalists, we find ourselves biting our tongues a lot.  In 1992 Caroline Kennedy and Ellen Alderman wrote a profound book explaining just how much we have to bear In Our Defense. Freedom of speech does not come easily.

Every university and major metropolitan area in every democracy has a square or other location where people stand up on soap boxes, literal or figurative, and exercise this fundamental right.  I very vividly remember visiting Berkeley in my twenties and watching the perennial speakers.  It is a hugely important element of social history.

My mind was taken back to that afternoon in Berkeley, California this afternoon when I was reading a piece by Phil Coomes on the BBC about  a photographic study of the “Speakers’ Corner” in London’s Hyde Park, where anyone can get on their soapbox and make their voice heard.  Photographer Philip Wolmuth has been documenting the corner for 35 years, and has just published a book of the work. An insightful point made by Mr. Wolmuth is that “the subjects under discussion were then, and still are, almost entirely unrelated to day-to-day news headlines.” And yet the rhetoric and debate is pure democracy at work.

When you recognize the importance of the subject matter you instantly recognize the importance of photography in capturing this social history.  Otherwise it would be gone completely, and Philip Wolmuth’s photographs are so vivid that you can imagine the words; you can hear them.  Also to the point, anyone, any photographer can contribute to the important act of social documentation.  Society is all around us and changing at lightening speed. It is not difficult to recognize what will be gone soon – drones to deliver packages, robots replacing waiters.

Take a look at some of these photographs. If you are of my generation they will take you back. And pause for a moment and consider the words of Thomas Jefferson in his second inaugural address:

“…every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.”

March the Fourth, 1801