Yearly Archives: 2014

Ancient sentinels

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Figure 1 - The Hermaphroditic Sentinel, Concord, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Figure 1 – The Hermaphroditic Sentinel, Concord, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

I found myself once more at the Old North Bridge, National Historic Site, in Concord, MA again.  It is one of my favorite places, and I gravitate there spontaneously seeking the photographic opportunity of any given day and time’s uniqueness of light.

It is always rewarding to wander off the main path, to try wherever you can to reach the river, even if you have to slog through a bit of mud to get there.  There is one particular spot where you emerge to find an old cement landing.  It is lost to time, but undoubtedly speaks to a different layout of the site.  You can shut your eyes and imagine the laughter of swimmers fifty, maybe a hundred years ago – men in straw hats and ladies in white. There are two huge trees there, and these have suffered the ravages of termites.  The have tremendous girth – and certainly date back to the nineteenth century.  But they are partially hollowed out and you have to wonder just how long they will last.  Perhaps they will sprout “suckers” and truly live forever.  These are silent witness, sentinels on the river and they have witnessed a lot – but are silent and mum about just what they have seen.

On this particular day, in the crisp light of a bright but cloud-laden afternoon, skies threatening thunder showers, I was struck by how the light illuminated the mysterious cavern within this particular ancient one.  There is a certain, yet profound, hermaphroditic ambivalence.  And if you look closely into the carnivorous darkness there is a strange serpentine presence.  It reminiscent of H. P. Lovecraft and beckons you to return to the well trodden road and the present.

Apocalypse now

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Unfortunately, The Week in Pictures is all too reminiscent of the movie “Apocalypse Now,” or worse the mythological concept – the Ragnarok  being a favorite theme of Hati and Skoll.  Among this weeks news pictures we’ve got wars (you almost lose track of all the wars), we’ve got fires, we’ve got desperate parents in Nigeria, and we’ve got natural disasters floods and earthquakes. I thought that representative all this misery is a stunningly and therefore, hauntingly beautiful, photograph by Stuart Palley for the EPA.   It is an  extended time exposure showing smoldering remains of overnight fires on the hillsides of San Marcos, California, early on May 16. Firefighters are deparately battling fast-moving wildfires in southern California. The light in this image is amazing.  The blue is an unworldly iridescent shade, perhaps contradictory in that this kind of blue more often depicts water and wetness, not fire, heat, and dryness.  The rocks in the foreground combine with the morning light to evoke the sense of an other worldly lunar landscape – the ultimate in lonely isolation.

Sorry people, I know that I could have chosen the sloth!

The first photograph of a tornado

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Figure 1 - Firs photograph of a tornado, taken by A.A. Adams in Anderson County, KS, from the Kansas Historical Society and in the public domain because it was taken and published before 1923.

Figure 1 – First photograph of a tornado, taken by A.A. Adams in Anderson County, KS, from the Kansas Historical Society and in the public domain because it was taken and published before 1923.

My brief discussion of the supercell video yesterday got me wondering about what the first ever photograph of a tornado or twister was.  The obvious place to turn for this sort of information is the Kansas Historical Society’s website, and it didn’t disappoint.

The first photograph of a tornado, Figure 1, was taken on April 26, 1884 by fruit farmer and amateur photographer A.A. Adams in Anderson County Kansas.  Adams was standing twelve miles from the storm. He subsequently published his photograph both as a cabinet image and as a stereographic image, where he focused in on the storm.  Unfortunately for him, his image was rapidly eclipsed by a second image taken in South Dakota on August 28, 1884, although that images appears to have been doctored.

All of this, is perhaps needless-to-say, the precursor that spawned generations of storm chasers and, of course, the 1996 Jan De Bont film “Twister.” Who can forget the flying cows?

New online archive from the Metropolitan Museum

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Figure 1 - Robert Howlett's portrait of : Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1857). From the Wikipedia and in the public domain because it is more than a 100 yrs. old and copyrights have expired. (This image is not from the MMA collection.)

Figure 1 – Robert Howlett’s portrait of : Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1857). From the Wikipedia and in the public domain because it is more than a 100 yrs. old and copyrights have expired. (This image is not from the MMA collection.)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has released an amazing new  “Colossal” archive of 400,000 high resolution digital images from its collection. This archive is available for non-commercial purposes. Approximately 18,000 of these images are photographs spanning the nearly two centuries of photographic art.

I have been trying to understand how to best utilize the search feature of the Colossal archive.  However, so far no problem.  It’s just delightful fun to enjoy the images that randomly appear on the site.  There is always so much to learn. Just to get a sense of the depth and breadth of this collection you might start with Robert Howlett’s (1831-1858)’s well known image (Figure 1) of : Isambard Kingdom Brunel standing before the launching chains of the Great Eastern and then move on to Stephen Locke‘s timelapse video from My 10th of a Supercell forming over Climax Kansas.    It’s all about the image.

Bend in the road

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Figure 1 - Bend in the Road, (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Figure 1 – Bend in the Road, (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Years ago, when I was a graduate student at Cornell, one of my favorite places on campus was a bench that crowned and overlooked “Libe Slope.”  The bench was placed there in 1892 by Andrew Dickson White and his wife, Helen Magill White.  It bore the profound inscription:

“To those who shall sit here rejoicing,

To those who shall sit here mourning,

Sympathy and greeting;

So have we done in our time.

1892 A.D.W.–H.M.W.”

There you have it once more – the sense that we may speak to our fellow humans across the otherwise impenetrable abyss of time.

I have carried that bench in my mind with me for over forty years now and truly I think of it often.  I thought of it again this past weekend when I took the photograph of Figure 1, which I entitle: “Bend in the Road.”

The Old North Bridge – National Historic Site

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Figure 1 - The Concord River, Concord, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Figure 1 – The Concord River, Concord, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

For me the National Historic Site at the Old North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts is a place that ever rewards photographically.  There is always something different, some difference in light or color.  I just keep coming back and have been coming back since my first visit, dare I say it, fifty years ago with my parents.

This past Sunday I went hoping that the wild irises that I spotted in the woods along the river bank beside the Old Manse would be in bloom.  They were not, but I was rewarded instead by vivid, cloud filled azure skies and cold dark water reflecting the trees.  I am offering up Figures 1 and 2.  The first is a look at the reflections of the trees on the opposite bank of the river.  The second is a tribute to the fact that more things than pumpkins and the color’s namesake can be vivid orange.

Figure 2 - Kayaks along the Concord River, Concord, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Figure 2 – Kayaks along the Concord River, Concord, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Foreground out of focus

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Figure 1 - Wonder of Childhood, Concord, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Figure 1 – Wonder of Childhood, Concord, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

When you are doing a portrait there is a tendency to put the foreground in focus and to let the background be out of focus.  The opposite, where the foreground is out of focus but the background in focus can also be expressive and sometimes it actually works best.  Today I decided to experiment with that option.  I was on the Old North Bridge in Concord Massachusetts when my eye caught this little boy in a straw hat with a blue band excitedly watching the kayakers below.  He knelt down to watch the boats approach, and I grabbed the moment.  Using spot metering I had the boat in focus but the boy, back to the camera, just out of focus.  The picture remains about the boy.  I entitle the image “Wonder of Childhood,” because I can remember way back when…

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 75 mm, ISO 400, Aperture Priority AE, 1/800 sec at F/8.0.

Bob Collins – Observing the crowd

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Street Photography holds a special magic for us.  It transports us to times and places that we might otherwise never see, or it forces us to pause and see the details that we might otherwise fail to notice.  And when time paints a patina of nostalgia and history on street images, they bring back to life people and emotions that would otherwise be lost to us.

A current exhibition at the Museum of London celebrates the life and opus of London street photographer Bob Collins (1924-2002).   His work spans important moments in British history, the post war years and the emergence of a new Britain.  Collins turned professional in 1956 and he covered the streets of London for nearly fifty years.  He was seeking people and the emotions of the moment.  We have for instance, a photographer covering the coronation of Queen Elizabeth.    Collins’ camera is trained on the other photographer, not on the events themselves.  The key point is the intensity of the moments, that is lived in a thousand lives.  A truly amazing photograph is Collins’ picture of the morning rush hour at Victoria Station.  Technically, this is a beautiful example of blurred motion, here accentuated by the seeming motionless ticket taker and a few of the riders.  I love this picture on a technical level, for sure.  I ponder as to how exactly it was taken.  For once, I want to know the lens and the f-setting and the exposure time.  But then I realize that there is something much more profound going on, something that truly defines street photography.  The world is abuzz with motion.  Time doesn’t stop for us, it rushes on like the riders in this picture.  Despite their hurry, they are mostly gone to us now, having rushed hell-bent into oblivion.  The camera, the street photographer, captures and freezes in time the visages of a few individuals.  The rest is a blur.

For those of you lucky enough to be in London this spring and early summer, “Observing the Crowd: Photographs by Bob Collins” can be seen at the Museum of London, 16 May to 13 July 2014.

Dusty rose

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Figure 1 - "Dusty Rose," IPhone photograph. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Figure 1 – “Dusty Rose,” IPhone photograph. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Figure 1 is the latest addition to my collection of IPhone images of folded fabrics.  This one I entitle “Dusty Rose.”  I just cannot resist, especially when the light is right. Isn’t that always the case.  We live for the light.  I just love the variety of form and the intensity and purity of color.  In these images I hope that form and color are equal elements. Too often in photographs color is so dominant as to create the illusion that you’ve accomplished something.  Form is always required as well, at least in good photographs.

I have commented before how, when I use the IPhone as a camera, I imagine that I am using a large format camera.  Actually, what I am imagining is that I am using my father’s Ciroflex, twin lens reflex.  This was 2 1/4′ by 2 1/4″ and I always marveled how, in contrast to 35 mm photography, it slowed down the picture taking process and forced you to concentrate deeply on composition.  So the use of the IPhone really brings back fond childhood memories.

And as for composition, there was a tendency to center the V here, to make the image perfectly symmetric.  But that would have created to strong a sense of static equilibrium.  I chose instead to make the image just a bit asymmetric, just as the distribution of light and shadow is asymmetric in the image.  This makes the composition more dynamic and alive.