Yearly Archives: 2014

The ghost of Fourth of July’s past

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Figure 1 - "The Day Before." From the Library of Congress Archives and in the public domain.

Figure 1 – “The Day Before.” From the Library of Congress Archives and in the public domain.

Continuing our saga – because of hurricane Arthur Fourth of July celebrations and fireworks displays are continuing here on the East Coast.  The Fifth is proving absolutely golden spectacular.  I have been amusing myself trying to locate the earliest known photograph of Fourth of July celebrations and the first ever photograph of pyrotechnics.  I’m afraid that I still haven’t figured it all out.

However, in perusing the archives of the United States Library of Congress, I keep being drawn to this wonderful stereo card image by E. W. Kelly from 1906 entitled “The Day Before,” and showing a darling little child, arms filled with fireworks and the American flag.  Hint that’s not an IPad in the child’s right hand. 8<}. Note the pinhole aperture effect of the shadows on the ground.

It goes to show both the similarities and the differences between Americans in 2014 and Americans in 1906.  Today parents would shudder to see their child laden down with deadly explosives! It was then just part of the glory of early twentieth century childhood.

Doing the laundry

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So what about a photograph of someone doing the laundry. The thought brings to my mind the image of someone beating the dirt out of clothes with a rock in a river, ever wary of crocodiles, I guess. Or it brings to mind a street scene with colorful laundry billowing in the breeze across clotheslines. Well today we have neither. Instead we have this intriguing image by Alexander Zemlianichenko of the AP showing an employee at the the Russian space training center air drying on a clothes line the spacesuits of cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin and flight engineers Kathleen Rubins and Takuya Onishi after a training session. Those babies do not look like beach wear to be sure!  And it really isn’t the high tech solution to the problem that one might expect. Is it?

But to the significant point that like everyone else, astronauts certainly have laundry too. No beating your space suit on a meteorite or stray piece of space debris for them. Indeed, it has always struck me that to hang out on the International Space Station you need to be able to set aside any OCD tendencies towards super cleanliness that you might harbour. Of course, the views are amazing!

It’s not raining on my parade!

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Figure 1 - The Sudbury Minutemen march in the rain at the town's Fourth of July Parade 2014/ (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Figure 1 – The Sudbury Minutemen march in the rain at the town’s Fourth of July Parade 2014/ (c) DE Wolf 2014.

As many people know.  This year’s Fourth of July was a bit of a washout in the Boston area.  The first hurricane, named Arthur, of the year barreled up the East Coast.  The Boston Pops Concert on the Espanade, which has defined the Fourth of July for me, even years before I moved to Boston, was shifted to the Third of July, and even then they had to curtail the playing of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture because a cold front was driving storms  into the area. Pure sacrilege!  People scrambled and raced from the Esplanade as a deluge of biblical proportions bore down on the City.

Hmm!  Sudbury’s hometown parade was rain or shine! And as the Sudbury Minutemen marched up the street (Figure 1) playing their fifes and drums, one might have thought that it was raining on our parade.  Well never mind that.  As little Charlie recognized you can have fun in the rain if grandma Donna is willing to dance in the puddles with you (Figure 2).

Figure 2 - "Dancin' in the rain." (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Figure 2 – “Dancin’ in the rain.” (c) DE Wolf 2014.

On the brink of disaster

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Figure 1 - Photograph of the Archduke and his wife emerging from the Sarajevo Town Hall to board their car, a few minutes before the assassination. From the Wikimedia Commons uploaded from http://www.europeana1914-1918.eu/en/contributions/1225#sthash.RbkTiJmq.dpuf and puyt in the public domain under creative commons license.

Figure 1 – Photograph of the Archduke and his wife emerging from the Sarajevo Town Hall to board their car, a few minutes before the assassination. From the Wikimedia Commons uploaded from http://www.europeana1914-1918.eu/en/contributions/1225#sthash.RbkTiJmq.dpuf and put in the public domain under creative commons attribution license.

Last week,June 28 marked the 100th anniversary of the assasination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, who was heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg.  The assassination was carried out in  Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, one of a group of six assassins.  WE should remember this event because it ultimately triggered a month later the First World War by setting in motion decade old treaties. We have only to look at the sectarian battles in the current Middle East to recognize that the brutal effects of that war are enduring. The triumphant European powers carved up the old Ottoman Empire into convenient states, oblivious to sectarian and religious lines.

But the subject here is photography, and what strikes me is how we hunger for images to show us what happened and if possible to explain it.  In a world where everything occurs under the robotic eyes of surveillance cameras, it is very unsatisfying that the only pictures that we have of this event are a picture of the Archduke and his wife getting into their carriage moments before the assassination (Figure 1) and a picture of Princip being arrested (Figure 2).

In a haunting way we may see parallels with John and Jackie Kennedy arriving in Dallas and of Lee Harvey Oswald being killed in a Dallas jail.  The photographs, in these instances, don’t really explain anything.  They only provide a visual context.  They are ultimately (merely?) memes –  in this case to events that we only know through history books.

We recognize in all of this how visual a species we are.  The death toll of this war was, and sadly continues to be, unthinkable. It was a very defining moment – a critical point where the world changed forever.  It was the end of innocence, the breakup of iron-fisted monarchy.  These are the lovely thoughts for a Sunday afternoon.  For the thousands who died in that senseless war, who continue to die, we have only the words of the British poet Wilfred Owens who died in this “War to End all Wars” to explain how they felt.  Eponine is not singing at the barricades.

“I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now. . . .”
Wilfred Owen
Strange Meeting
Figure 2 - The arrest of Princip, from the Wikimedia Commons, uploadeed by Anominski and put in the public domain under create commons attribution license.

Figure 2 – The arrest of Princip, from the Wikimedia Commons, uploadeed by Anominski and put in the public domain under create commons attribution license.

 

Lining up

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Well here’s something pretty amazing. This photograph by Wang Zhao for AP-Getty Images shows Chinese honor guards lining up with the help of a string as they await the arrival of Myanmar President U Thein Sein and Chinese President Xi Jinping, during a welcoming ceremony outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Friday, June 27.

At a technical level there are a number of fascinating features. First of all, of course, the rule of thirds – both horizontally and along the diagonal. Second, is the string itself leading your eye.  The way in which the focus moves along the line of soldiers left to right, leaves no question about where your eye should go.  The squinting commander is really wonderful. And it all goes to show that a photograph is all about perspective and composition.  Here the perspective was perfectly chosen, and the composition excellently executed.

 

 

Minimalism #12

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Figure 1 - Minimalism#12, Kennebunkport, ME. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Figure 1 – Minimalism#12, Kennebunkport, ME. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

I spent a lot of time this past weekend working on my photominimalism project.  Right now these are pictures taken in Kennebunkport of seaweeds and other flotsam on the beach.  The idea is to mimic minimalist art: a strand of seaweed or a shell creating patterns in the sand.  It is a surprising challenge because of the relatively narrow dynamic range.  But the variety of effects, particularly with the seaweeds in different states of wetness is wonderful and intriguing.

I found myself particularly excited about Minimalism #12 which is a very moist clump of seaweed.  Perhaps it test the “outer envelope” of true minimalism, as there is a lot of structure and detail. It seems more to encroach on the genre of Edward Weston. But I really love it; so I thought that I would share under the canon that the artist makes the rules and can bend or reforge his own rules.

I’m Cheryl, fly me.

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Figue 1 - National Airlines flight attendants 1972 in first class cabin. Image from the Wikimeda Commons. Image from Clipperarctic and uploaded by Russavia under creative commons attribution license.

Figure 1 – National Airlines flight attendants 1972 in first class cabin. Image from the Wikimeda Commons. Image from Clipperarctic and uploaded by Russavia under creative commons attribution license.

Who can forget F. William Free’s (1928-2003) controversial, and filled with sexual ineuendo, ad campaign for National Airlines “I’m Cheryl. Fly me?”  In a sense, this ad accentuated the essential conflict between the feminist movement of the sixties and seventies and the prevailing objectivization of women. For years, flight attendants rivaled pageant queens in glamour and fashion.  This week NBC News’ website has offered a retrospective on flight attendant dress from the glamorous to the bizarre.  It also serves as a litany of long lost airlines, and it is a brain strain to recollect them all.

Apparently, the distinction of being the first flight attendant goes to Ellen Church (1904-1965), who in 1930 convinced Boeing Air Transport (now United Airlines) that having onboard caped nurses would help alleviate those passengers with a fear of flying.  There is this wonderful photograph from the Boeing archives of the original eight flight attendants standing in front of an A-80.  

My favorite of the vintage images that NBC News’ retrospective is an eye-popping print for Braniff Airlines in 1966 by Pucci (from the collection of Cliff Muskiet ).  Braniff Airlines? Ah yes, I remember Braniff Airlines.  My last Braniff Flight was Boston to Kansas City. It was a blistering day and the flight was so delayed that we were overloaded for the short runway.  So they waited something like four hours for people to get so frustrated that they got off.  Finally, when the weight was acceptable, the plane wouldn’t move. It was so hot that the tarmack had melted under the front wheel…

 

 

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/travel/what-they-wore-flight-attendant-uniforms-past-present-n142891

Weather-vane

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Figure 1 - Weathervane, Dock Square, Kennebunkport. ME. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Figure 1 – Weathervane, Dock Square, Kennebunkport. ME. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

I’ve actually been surprised at just how difficult photographing, ground up, a weather-vane can be. The obvious choice is to go silhouette.  Well, maybe not a choice.  Then you probably want a long telephoto.  In this case 200 mm.  The very real danger, other than incurring a stiff neck, is a really boring bleached out background sky, unless of course you’ve got interesting clouds.  Well, when I took Figure 1 of this cool bugle blower, the clouds were slight and rather wispy.  I chose to shoot in color for interest and I had to dig really deep to get my clouds.  This in turn created grain, which I think also adds interest.  And finally, I took advantage of power-lines, which usually destroy a photograph – we almost don’t see them until we try to take a picture and voila there they are destroying our sense of the rural landscape.  We’ll here they serve to frame and accentuate, to create a dominant sense of the golden rule of thirds.

EF70-200mm f/4L USM at 200 mm (monopod mounted). ISO 400, Aperture Priority- AE, 1/1600th sec at f/8.0 no exposure compensation.

Yakking

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Friday is time to scan the various “Week in Pictures” features, and today I was taken by this beautiful image by  Bogdan Cristel  for Reuters shot on June 22 at this year’s Bucharest International Air Show at Baneasa airport on June 22.  It really takes your breath away, which is real praise for a photograph.  I love the spirals and the graininess of the sky.  And I love the blue.  Will you allow me to call it cerulean blue? I love cerulean blue.  It has such a lovely vaporous sense of humidity and water – this not to mention that the word is really cool. It rolls off the tongue and makes you sound really erudite. 8<)

The image shows the Aerobatic Yakkers flying YAK-52’s.  The YAK-52 (Як-52) was first introduced in 1976 The Yakovlev Yak-52  was the primary Soviet training aircraft. It is still produced in Romania by Aerostar and worldwide is a popular aerobatic plane.

I am going to end hear without uttering the obvious pun.  I do love the photograph.