The melt

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Figure 1 - Spring melt comes to the New England marshland, Sudbury, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Figure 1 – Spring melt comes to the New England marshland, Sudbury, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

At last, but as is inevitable in the revolutions of nature, spring is coming to the New England marshland.  There is a special place that I like to watch the seasons change just off Landham Road in Sudbury, Massachusetts.  This past Saturday I made a special stop there, knowing what I would find.  The thaw had been melting the ice and collecting in huge puddles, and on this particular day our first big downpour of the season was adding to the effect and creating an atmospheric softness.

So far we are melting just right. After so much snow a quick melt and we will be inundated.  I am sure that the beavers in this little marsh are wary of that.  A few seasons back they were flooded out and would sit frightened and confused by the side of roads turned to rivers.

I had to cover my camera with a towel to keep it dry as I took Figure 1.  It was raining heavily.  And for that reason I decided not to slow myself down with my monopod despite the fact that it was pretty dim light and the lens that I was using had no image stabilization.  Would Fox-Talbot have laughed at us or would he have been envious?  Pleased with what I was getting, I took several images, and this was the first that I worked up.  I liked the glistening snow and water against an otherwise brooding scene and chose to stay in color for just a hint of hue.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 100 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture=Priority AE mode 1/200th sec at f/7.1 with +1 exposure compensation.

Photographic first #16 – First portrait of a woman

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Figure 1 - Copy of an 1840 daguerreotype by Charles Henry Draper of his daughter Dorothy Catherine Draper, th earliest extant portrait of a woman. In the public domain because of its age.

Figure 1 – Copy of an 1840 daguerreotype by John William Draper of his daughter Dorothy Catherine Draper, the earliest extant portrait of a woman. In the public domain because of its age.

By now you will have realized that there is nothing that I love better than digging into the photographic past and looking at the faces of the first half of the nineteenth century – so distant yet so close! It is both the familiarity of the people as it is the early photographers applying for the first time the conventions of classical art to this new medium.  It is significant also that we have an incomplete record. It may be known that there is an earlier example, but that is lost to us. Yet there is always the possibility that it will suddenly reappear.

Such is the case when it comes to the earliest example of a portrait of a woman.  Samuel Finley Breese Morse (1791–1872) said in 1855 that he had taken full-length portrait daguerreotypes of his daughter as early as September and October 1839. But these have not survived.

So for the earliest remaining example we have to turn to Figure 1 which is a striking portrait by John William Draper (1811–82), professor of chemistry at the New York University of his daughter Dorothy Catherine Draper (1807–1901),  The image is of a copy.  The original now in the Spencer Museum of Art, in Lawrence, Kansas was taken in 1840.

We are struck by the beauty of this image and by the beauty of this young woman of the early nineteenth century. She is a flower captive of her clothes, which perhaps aided her in holding still for the excruciatingly long exposure.

Several years ago I went to visit the Women’s Suffrage Museum in Seneca Falls, NY.  The first Women’s Rights Convention held in Seneca Falls, NY on July 19-20,1848; so thd the start of the American Suffrage Movement was contemporary with this photograph, and I was struck by the statement that the first step in the liberation of women was freeing them from the confines of their clothing. You have to be able to move, before you can move freely.

The pretzel that Hannah Stilley Gorby never ate

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Figure 1 - Reproduction of a daguerreotype from 1840 of Hannah Stilley Gorby, perhaps the person with the earliest birth date ever photographed. In the public domain because of its age.

Figure 1 – Reproduction of a daguerreotype from 1840 of Hannah Stilley Gorby, perhaps the person with the earliest birth date ever photographed. In the public domain because of its age.

Figure 1 is a reproduction of a daguerreotype taken in 1840 of Hannah Stilley Gorby, who was born around 1746.  The around part is important because Mrs. Gorby is believed, by many, to be the earliest born person ever photographed.  This is a controversial point among people like me who worry about such distinction.  So I will not say it with any certainty.

I was thinking about Hannah this morning when I came upon an interesting article on the web from the Archaeological Institute of America  that the world’s oldest pretzel had been unearthed in Bavaria. Indeed, on Thursday this pretzel went on display in Regensburg, Germany.  “The remains of a pretzel, a roll, and a croissant, all dating to some 250 years ago, were found at a site where the remains of a wooden house thought to be 1,200 years old have also been unearthed.”

I am not sure that this truly represents photography news, but it is curious news just the same. And the remains of the deceased are carefully on display wrapped in styrofoam and mounted atop a photograph of a modern pretzel bavariensis.

When we look at the photograph of Hannah Gorby, we invariably wonder what those ancient eyes saw and we are grateful that she and her contemporaries spared the pretzel in question. I echo the comment of Regensburg’s mayor Joachim Wolbergs that “this discovery is really extraordinary, because it depicts a snippet of everyday life.”

I might suggest that it seems possible that the meaning of human life resides in a pretzel.  It is a snippet of life that we are oh so comfortable and familiar with that we can certainly see ourselves sitting down by the fire with Mrs. Stilley Gorby or her contemporary the baker of the Regensburg pretzel, yes to nosh on pretzels and to seek her view of things, her perspective, her feelings about the world and about life.  And all that would interfere with this bucolic if impossible scene, other than the realities of time, would be some artificial distinction of race, nationality, or religion some arcane point of philosophy that nobody truly understands but upon which we have constructed the prejudices of the world.

Behind Photographs

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One of the great things about producing this blog is that it keeps me searching for new and intriguing photographs, and, of course, searching is learning.  Yesterday I found a fascinating portfolio by photographer Tim Mantoani entitled “Behind the Photographs.”  The concept is to create a portrait of a great photographer holding his or her greatest or best known work. These images were taken with a gigantic 20” x 24” Polaroid view camera – a major undertaking in and of itself.  But more significantly, the format enables both the photographer and the picture within the picture to be sharply captured.

These are beautiful images and they truly bring to life the faces behind the pictures.  Many of the images, are of the kind, to bring back memories and perhaps a shiver – Nick Ut’s image of June 8, 1972 showing nine year old Kim Phuc screaming in agony her clothes burned off by a napalm attack or Bill Eppridge’s June 5, 1968 image of Robert Kennedy lying dying on the floor of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.  The images have served to define the events of our lives, and Mantoani’s project sheds them stunningly in a new light.

Perhaps, it is all defined by the photograph on Mantoani’s “About the Photographer” page.  It is a self-portrait where the artist stands obscured in front of the great view camera.  Only his legs are visible.  But then there is the giant inverted portrait of himself on the view glass. It truly tests the meaning of reality and also truly takes photography back to its roots, when it was described as capturing the otherwise fleeting image in the camera obscura.

The word “obscura” has always struck me as a bit odd.  Is the photograph meant to reveal or to obscure?  What does it reveal and obscure about the subject?  And at the same time, what does it reveal and obscure about the artist?

Bloody Sunday – The Selma marches

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March 7th, 1965 was a Sunday, and when police attacked a peaceful group marching from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama it became known as  “Bloody Sunday.”  That was fifty years ago today and the Steven Kasher Gallery in New York has assembled a remarkable retrospective by three contemporary photographers: Spider Martin, Charles Moore and James Barker.  An excellent web view can be found on the CBS News site.

This, I believe, is really one of those instances when the images truly speak for themselves and tell the whole story without words.  The public attention raised by these images at the time led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 19654.. The irony however, remains tat we are still a half century later conflicted by race and we may reflect on what Martin Luther King said on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery on March 25, 1965. Twenty five thousand people marched to the capitol to hear the speech.

“The end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. … I know you are asking today, How long will it take? I come to say to you this afternoon however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long.”

Something you don’t see everyday

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Here’s another image from the viral internet zone and it is truly something that you don’t see everyday.

It is an image by amateur photographer Martin Le-May, showing a weasel attacking a green woodpecker and being taken for a ride through the air.  The photograph was taken at Hornchurch Country Park in east London.  It is one of those once-in-a-lifetime shots that reward the photographically prepared, aka someone carrying a camera and having just the right lens at the right time.

Le-May said that: “I heard a distressed squawking noise and feared the worst…I soon realised it was a woodpecker with some kind of small mammal on its back…I think we may have distracted the weasel as when the woodpecker landed it managed to escape and the weasel ran into the grass.”

Don’t be fooled by any cute and cuddly stuff.  Weasels are ferocious preditors, which, fortunately for us, usually only attack animals their own size. Birds are not their usual lunch.  In any event, what a wonderful shot!

Melting winter’s witch

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Winter 2015 #5 Trees reflected in the melting snow, Fresh Pond, Cambridge, MA, March. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Winter 2015 #5 Trees reflected in the melting snow, Fresh Pond, Cambridge, MA, March. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

March the first marked the beginning of meteorological spring.  Boston and Cambridge remain waste deep in mountains of dirty snow.  Still there are signs that Winter’s Witch will soon be beaten.  We had our first serious melt today, and I slogged through it along Fresh Pond in Cambridge.  Spring’s signs are definitely there.  There is the unmistakeable greenish yellow tone of the willows ready to burst fourth. I was greeted by a bulldog named Kaylee, who was just so excited to be out and about.  I heard and saw the first male cardinal proclaiming his territory and love of mate from the tallest tree. And I found just enough open water on the pond to be a sure sign that the ducks will soon feel welcome and return.

As for the melt, I became photographically intrigued by the bare trees reflected in the puddles. I offer two of these as Figures 1 and 2. There is a certain delight in the fuzzy focus, or lack there of, brought on my the wind blowing over the water.  For someone as obsessed by sharpness as I the impressionist sense is disconcerting, but appealing.

And as for Winter’s Witch:

“I’m melting! Melting! Oh, what a world! What a world!”

Figure 2 - Sycamore reflected in melting March snow, Fresh Pond, Cambridge, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015

Figure 2 – Sycamore reflected in melting March snow, Fresh Pond, Cambridge, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015

Both photographs taken with a Canon T2i using a EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens ISO 1600 Aperture-Priority AE mode with no exposure compensation

Figure 1 at 113 mm 1/4000th sec at f/4.0

Figure 2 at 70 mm 1/2500th sec at f/4.0

Winter 2015 #4 Leaves in the snow

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Figure 1 - Winter 2015, Leaves in the snow, Fresh Pond Reserve, Cambridge, MA, (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Figure 1 – Winter 2015, Leaves in the snow, Fresh Pond Reserve, Cambridge, MA, (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Figure 1 – “Winter 2015 Leaves in the snow” is so far my favorite image of this grueling winter.  There is nothing that I like better than coming upon a scene where a beam of light accentuates.  In this case there is a sense of golden warmth contrasting with a cold blue-tinted winter snow.  I tend to think of winter in black and white, but sometimes, this being an example, it demands color.

Significantly the view is very small. To me it is like a Japanese garden, a miniaturized idyllic garden.  Japanese gardens have taught me to think of landscapes as fractal in nature.  They function equally on all scales, from sweeping vistas to perhaps a single plant or stone and everything in between..  The day itself, was warm in a winter sense and sunny; so I was actively in search for shadows and highlights. And here you have the additional contrast of the leaves of autumn against the snows of winter.

One complication when I took the photograph was that there was a breeze causing the leaves to move.  I cut back on the f-number and therefore depth of field so that I could decrease the exposure time.  I waited for an auspicious moment of near quiet and shot at f/8.0 at 1/800th sec.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM at 70 mm, ISO 400, Aperture-priority AE mode, 1/800th sec at f/8.0 with +1 exposure compensation.

Auction of vintage NASA photographs

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When I was growing up I had a friend who had a collection of NASA photographs and pamphlets.  These were the days of the original “Right Stuff,” and all you had to do to get these items was write to NASA, and they would send them to you for free.  I mention this, because yesterday I read on CNN that there was an auction at Bloomsbury Auctions in London on February 26 of vintage NASA memorabilia; so my mind came naturally back to my friend, whose name, btw, I have quite forgotten.  Such are the tricks and vagaries of of time.

The photographs from this sale brought back a lot of memories, conjuring up the same excitement as when I first saw them forty or fifty years ago.  But what really struck me were the ones that I had not seen.  Let me mention in particular the photograph of Buzz Aldrin taken on the Gemini 12 mission.  This image may well be the first selfie taken in space.    And then I contemplated in amazement a photograph of the Earth taken from a V2 rocket on October 24, 1946.  This was the first photograph taken of from space.  And how is space defined.  Glad you asked, space begins at the so-called Karmin line, which lies 100 km or 62.5 miles above the Earth.

There is, I believe, an important lesson here.  Look at these photographs and notice how many feature the Earth as either subject or background.  As human inhabitants we are defined by our planet.  We are of it, and as hard as we may try to leave it, we must ever remain nostalgic for it.