Yearly Archives: 2014

A soggy vacation in Charleston, SC

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Figure 1 - On the Ashley River at Middleton Plantation, SC, (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Figure 1 – On the Ashley River at Middleton Plantation, SC, (c) DE Wolf 2014.

We have just returned from vacation in Charleston, SC.  We sent there to seek relief from what has seemed an endless winter of snowstorms and bad weather.  We went there in search of sunlight.  There was two hours of that in five days.  We went there in search of warn. Ixnay on that.  It was cold, rainy, and dreary. And yes it was rather challenging photographically.  The light was continuously dark, flat, and uninteresting.  I guess that it may be said to have been a challenge.  And from such challenges you can learn a lot about how to take pictures.

Did I mention that it is a beautiful city. And the food…  Well the food is wonderful, and I find myself to be so much in grit withdrawal that today I had to have polenta with my lunch.

Over the next few days, I shall post some of the pictures that I took in Charleston.  They are what I would call quirky because of the weather.  I want today to start with Figure 1, which shows a venerable oak at Middleton Plantation on the Ashley River gloriously adorned in Spanish Moss – what can be more quintessentially South Carolina. And I have to say that I could spend years learning to take such pictures.

This was taken with my Canon T2i at ISO 3200 f/9.0 at 1/320 s with my EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM lens, IS on.  Because of the dull lighting the image took quite a bit of work and it is not as sharp as I like.  But I will say that the subject matter seems to demand a painterly style; so I will not begrudge it being a bit fuzzy to match the light and over dramatic in effect.  It captures not only what I saw but what I felt, the mood of the moment.

Bill Cunningham – Fashion and architecture at the Museum of the New York Historical Society

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In 1968 photographer Bill Cunningham, who died last year at the age of 101, began an eight year project photographing the great architectural facades of New York City.  The catch in Mr. Cunningham’s photoseries was that he posed models in front of the building who were dressed in the period clothing of the year that the building or structure was constructed.  The result is a fascinating combination of historical context, apparent anachronism, and often poignant commentary.

I think that one of my favorite images is that of model Editta Sherman riding the subway for a photoshoot at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in 1972 dressed in a Victorian period costume.  Ms. Sherman is the picture of an imagine dainty time.  She sits among the dirt and graffiti of modern New York – and we are left to imagine what has changed, what has been lost, and yes, even what has been gained.

There is a exhibitr of these works on exhibition of the Museum of the New York Historical Society that contains many images from the project not seen before.  And I should also comment that the NYHS is a treasure trove of historical images that document that history and vitality of New York City.  The exhibition is on display now through June 15th.

Where in the spectrum is the image?

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Yesterday’s discussion about gravity waves and the Big Bang raises a significant point or question.  Where in the electromagnetic spectrum is the image?  Indeed, do you have to use light?  We can easily argue that a sound images, like a sonogram of a fetus en utero is an image, even a beautiful one at that. And the  X-ray image of the Hand of God nebula that we spoke about a while back is certainly beautiful and has a photographic image quality about it.

I think that the gravity wave images hold an important answer.  There are two of them.  With this first one, you might argue that I am stretching the envelope to ascribe a photographic image quality to it. Arguably it looks more like a graph or even a watercolor. But how about this one. And we don’t need to worry about the technicalities of what these are. This certainly possesses a photographic quality.

I believe that these two images illustrate the important dividing line. It does not matter what form or wavelength of energy was used.  Rather there is an aesthetic quality of pictureness, being like a photographic, that our mind uses to make the judgment: Ich bin eine Fotografie! And remember, to say that the distinction is an aesthetic one is really to say that because of a combination of wiring and training our mind associates a certain set of image qualities as being photographic.

 

 

 

 

Images of the birth of the universe

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Today’s going to be one of those days when I cheat just a little bit and my blog slips ever so much away from photography into the realm of physics. A team of scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has announced detection of the very first direct evidence for what is referred to as the cosmic inflation and as a result published the first ever images of gravitational waves.  These can be seen on the Center for Astrophysics’ website.  They are essentially maps of the sky showing the gravity waves.

Say what! Cosmic inflation?  Gravity waves?  Cosmic inflation is the massive initial explosion of the Big Bang, when the universe was born and expanded exponentially.  And with this cosmic nativity should come waves or ripples in space time.  You may remember a short while ago that we spoke about quantum mechanical waves in the context of Schrodinger’s Cat and quantum mechanics.  Therein lies the significance of gravity waves.  They were predicted by Albert Einstein and they represent a unification, if you will, a missing linking between gravity theory and quantum mechanics.  And now after at least forty years of hard looking we have not only found them, but we have seen them.

How can that be? Think about the great 19th century volcano Krakatoa. A sound wave from that blast circled the globe multiple times and was recorded on sensitive barometers.  If you think about it, those waves are still circling the globe, except that they have become lost in the background variations in atmospheric pressure.

Similarly, scientists found the gravity waves from the cosmic inflation by examining the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Remember that visible light has wavengths which are fractions of a micron.  Microwave wavelengths are ten or more times that.  That’s very low energy stuff, but gravitational waves left their signature there, a pattern imprinted on the faint glow leftover from the Big Bang.

 

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day

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Figure 1 - Dying the Chicago River Green on Saint Patrick's Day 2009. Image from the Wikipedia Commons, an original work by Mike Boehmer from Chicago, IL, USA and in the public domain under creative commons attribution license.

Figure 1 – Dying the Chicago River Green on Saint Patrick’s Day 2009. Image from the Wikipedia Commons, an original work by Mike Boehmer from Chicago, IL, USA and in the public domain under creative commons attribution license.

Today is the day where everyone is Irish – or seeks to be Irish.  And, I suppose, that tomorrow is that day when everyone is hung over.  So I thought that I would celebrate the occasion today on Haiti and Skill with the quintessential Saint Patrick’s Day image.  Every year on Saint Patrick’s Day in Chicago, they dye the Chicago river green.  Have you ever wondered who the proverbial “They” actually are?  Hmm!  Anyway I found on the Wikipedia Commons this absolutely beautiful photograph of the festivities in 2009.  The photograph is by Mike Boehmer from Chicago, IL,  and is spectacular and, well, gloriously green.  So let me wish everyone “Éirinn go Brach”

Rain drops and puddles

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I for one have a tendency to leave my camera at home on days that are heavy laden with rain.  It makes sense.  You’ve got to get yourself one of those fancy rain enclosures for your camera or have a significant other, who is willing and friendly enough to hold an umbrella over your head.

However BBC News recently challenged its photographically inclined readers to send in their best rain/puddle shots and the results, in my opinion, are pretty astounding. 

Rain and wetness are, if not magical, then at least transforming.  Dull pebbles at the beach or in a stream become magnificent” gems.”. Urban settings come alive with the reflection of street lights, especially at night. And then there is the blurred out image as sheets of rainwater run down a window.  It can be quite enthralling, and the BBC News series has a number of just beautiful photographs.  My personal favorites are Neil Harvey’s picture of a woman sitting and having a beverage at an outdoor table, under a massive umbrella, and talking on the cell phone  untroubled by the deluge around her. And then there is Sambid Vilas Pant’s just wonderful image of a two drops or rainwater forming at the tip of a spoke on an umbrella. 

And it is raining heavily today.  That gives me an idea…

Glenn McDuffie dies at 86

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One of the truly iconic photographs of the world war two era is Alfred Eisenstadt’s Iconic image of a sailor kissing a nurse on VJ Day – the end of the war.  While Eisenstadt, who died in 1995, never said who the sailor was, navy veteran Glenn McDuffie long claimed that he was the “kissing sailor.”  While others also shared this claim, McDuffie’s story was backed up by a forensic scientist, who said that McDuffie’s face matched the bone structure of the sailor in the picture. 

McDuffie was changing trains in New York City, when he heard that the war was over and that his brother would be released from a Japanese prisoner of war camp. “I was so happy. I ran out in the street,” McDuffie told the Associated Press years later. “And then I saw that nurse,” he said. “She saw me hollering and with a big smile on my face … I just went right to her and kissed her. “We never spoke a word,” he said. “Afterward, I just went on the subway across the street and went to Brooklyn.”

Setting the record straight on selfies

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Figure 1 - The world's first selfie, a daguerreotype by taken 1839. In the Library of Congress, from the Wikipedia, and and in the public domain.

Figure 1 – The world’s first selfie, a daguerreotype by taken by Robert Cornellius in 1839. In the Library of Congress, from the Wikipedia, and and in the public domain.

Yesterday the TV networks and internet were all above about former United States Secretary of State Colin Powell’s sixty year old selfie.  Did Colin Powell invent the selfie as kinda implied by some new media. Well not so much!  Significantly, Powell does not claim to have invented the selfie, anymore than Vice President Al Gore ever said that he invented the internet.  Still it’s worth setting the record straight. Readers of this blog are already aware that throughout the history of photography this mirror type selfie has been a common trick – witness our discussion of Vivian Maier, whose self-portraits were contemporary with Sec. Powell’s. Hers were also taken in the mirror.

Figure 1 - 1865 "rotating" self portrait by Nadar, from the Wikipedia, in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and in the public domain because of its age.

Figure 1 – 1865 “rotating” self portrait by Nadar, from the Wikipedia, in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and in the public domain because of its age.

What is widely considered to be the world’s first photographic selfie, remember that the self-portrait has been a time honored form in portraiture, was a daguerreotype was taken in November or December of 1839 by Robert Cornelius.  This is shown in Figure 1.  Perhaps, more interesting is Figure 2, which shows an animation of the 1865 “revolving” self-portrait by the great nineteenth century French photographer Nadar, of balloon over the French village of Petit-Becetre fame..

It’s not true that no idea is original it’s just that we are off here by 120 years!

Towards an ethics for photography

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My discussion about science and the baby picture yesterday got me thinking not only about accountability, but about ethics – and in particular the ethics of photography.  In science there is a fundamental ethics against, misleading people and this translates to a very precise set of rules about how, indeed mostly how not, to manipulate images.   The essential tenet of this is the preservation of quantitative information both in terms of intensities or grey values and spatial distributions.  Actions like burning and dodging are big no-no’s. So scientists don’t want to fake data, and you don’t want your scientists to fake data.  All scientists, even the frauds, understand this ethic.

The key to all of this is not to mislead.  But as soon as we leave the realm of science, do we leave behind this taboo?  In general many people would say that faking pictures or altering pictures for political gain is bad, that altering press photographs is bad.  But when we hit the realm of advertising, as we have seen, do all limitations collapse in the quest for financial gain.  Why does this become acceptable?  And don’t hide behind the coattails of art.  Anything goes in art; and advertising is an extension of art.

Where I think that ethics in photography, outside of science, really comes ultimately  into play relates to photographs that are mean, demeaning, or vulgar – faked or not.  I’ve seen a lot of images on popular photo-sites on the web, which I would characterize as vulgar.  They’re not truly pornographic just vulgar in that demean and therefore marginalize a particular group, most often women.

Again you cannot hide behind a smokescreen of political freedom and artistry. The problem, of course, is that we want to protect artistic freedom, and this opens the door.  The ethics to photography has to lie in the basic recognition of human dignity, a fundamental right of privacy, and of protection of the vulnerable, like children.  As always, there is the question of personal taste and sensibility.  One person’s pornography is another’s art. Yes, but the reality is that most of us, just like scientists, share an intrinsic and common understanding of when the line has been crossed, and while we cannot preach and absolute ethic, we can aspire to one.