The Rosa Parks Collection

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Figure 1 - Resident of Plain City, OH standing in front of L.L Spiger clothing store circa 1935. Image from the Frm Security Administration and in the collection of the United States Library of Congress and in the public domain.

Figure 1 – Resident of Plain City, OH standing in front of L.L Spiger clothing store circa 1935. Image from the Frm Security Administration and in the collection of the United States Library of Congress and in the public domain.

February 4th was the 102nd anniversary of the birth of civil rights hero Rosa Parks, and in celebration of the event a collection of her memorabilia including 7,500 manuscripts and 2,500 photographs became available to scholars at the United States Library of Congress.  These are on loan to the LOC for ten years from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation.  The photographs are for the most part the kind of personal snaps that, when they belonged to a person of critical note, cause the hair on the back of your neck to rise.  Especially poignant is a posed image of Ms. Parks reenacting her famous bus protest.  The effect is interesting, because while you know that it is posed, it really does not seem to detract from your sense of the bravery of the woman.

Well, one thing leads to another and in an accompanying article on the health effects of the northern migration of African Americans to escape Southern Jim Crow I found the amazing photograph of Figure 1 from the Farm Security Administration, also in the collections of the LOC showing an African American resident of Plain City, Ohio circa 1935 smoking a pipe in front of a clothing store.This image is gorgeous for so many technical reasons that I found myself returning to it over and over again.  I just had to share it here. I love the tones.  I love the fact that the gentleman is caught in mid puff. And I love the way that the hats seem to march upward and draw our attention to the figure.

 

 

Snowstorm at dawn

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Figure 1 - Snowstorm at Dawn, February 15, 2015. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Figure 1 – Snowstorm at Dawn, February 15, 2015. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

It is dawn on the day after Valentine’s Day, February 15, 2015 and it is snowing like crazy, again.  I am looking out my back window at the birds frantically trying to find food to maintain their body temperatures.  I thought that I would try to capture the scene, the pale blueness everywhere and the gusts of wind causing the snow to swirl  The result is Figure 1.  I am hand holding without IS; so shooting with my lens resting against the window pane and at ISO 3200.  I try to use as long an exposure as possible to capture some of the snow trails. I am hoping that the tree leaning to the right gives a sense of opposition to the wind. I found that I preferred taking the image first to black and white and then adding a subtle amount of blue or cold toning.

Pretty soon, I fear that I will no longer be able to see outside the windows as the snow drifts up against.  There is a glorious dullness to the scene, a lack of contrast, and all is quiet because all sound is muffled by the snow-pack.  This is interrupted only by and the wind.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 75 mm, ISO 3200, Aperture-Priority AE mode, 1/40th sec at f/9.0 with no exposure compensation.

Valentine’s Greetings from Hati and Skoll

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Figure 1 - Big Pink Heart postcard Valentines from ~ 1910. From the Wikimedia Commmons and in the public domain.

Figure 1 – Big Pink Heart postcard Valentine’s from ~ 1910. From the Wikimedia Commmons and in the public domain because it was first published before 1923.

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone.  I thought that we should celebrate with this early twentieth century photographic postcard image from circa 1910 – a Big Pink Heart Valentine’s.  There is not enough information available; so we have to guess that the original was perhaps an autochrome.  They definitely had a great love for redheads in those days.  The image has some very classic pictorialist features, the toga, the hair style, the headband, and the sense of fecundity that the figure portrays.  In this last regard I am reminded of the bride in “The Arnolfini Wedding 1434,” a painting where every little detail signifies something.

The nice thing about the image and about Valentines Day, in general, is the theme of love.  The world could use a whole lot of love about now, and the fact that our grand and great grand parents would have sighed and said the same thing a century ago as we say now about the need for love is really kind of pathetic.

So my recommendation is that we all hold our loved ones tight this Valentines Day! Spread the love, people.<3

Dumping

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I went out this lunchtime with my camera to the Fresh Pond Reserve.  I almost froze.  Tomorrow I will dress more appropriately.  In the meanwhile I came across on the NBC News website a rreally beautiful collection of images of the Blizzards of 2015 in New York and Boston.  I am particularly taken by the night photographs.  There is always something truly wonderful about these.  And this picture by Craig Ruttle for the AP of Manhattan’s Upper West Side really nails it as night photography at its best. Indeed, the image almost looks like an oil painting in its colorful fluidity.  Extremely well done!  Also wonderfully done is Robert F. Bukaty’s through the window image, also for the AP,perfectly capturing the pain and torment of trudging through a blizzard.

Winter’s bite

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Figure 1 - Winter's Bite, February 9, 2015, Sudbury, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Figure 1 – Winter’s Bite, February 9, 2015, Sudbury, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

There’s all this talk about the weather! The news has been obsessing on this winter’s relentless snowstorms in New England and rainstorms in California.  But if you don’t live there, it is all an abstraction.  We are in the midst of another snowstorm today and the sheer amount of it is really amazing. So there’s the point of perspective.  In the Sierras this latest 14″ would be merely a dusting.  Still we see ourselves as tough New Englanders ever ready to grin and bear. So I thought today that I would share the view from the second floor of my house.  I had to take the screen off to take this image and let both the cold and the snow in.  See what I’ll do for the sake of art!

Canon T2i EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM lens with IS on at 28 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture-Priority AE Mode, 1/125th sec at f/20 with no exposure compensation.

Tough guy challenge

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Yes, they have been reading my mind!  They?  I mean photographers of eccentric sports from all around the world.  Here in New England we’ve got nearly sixty inches of snow on the ground.  It’s getting rather annoying.  And it’s also been rather cold.  As I write it is 13 deg. F. outside my window.  Speaking of eccentric: inches? deg. F.  Hello, Americans!  You’re giving the rest of the world a headache with these stupid conversions from silliness to international standards. But in Perton, we’ve got this wonderful picture by Phil Noble of Reuters of this guy in the all and all crawling in the mud in the annual Tough Guy Challenge. First there is a  cross-country run and then an obstacle course through freezing water pools, fire pits, and tunnels. Don’t you just love the bow-tie.  We’ve got at least one regular reader who’s probably thinking right now, hmm looks like fun.

 

Dim, distant, and haunting memories

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February 2 marked the 72nd anniversary of the end of the fearsome Battle of Stalingrad, now Volgorad – the ultimate triumph of the Red Army.  The casualties of this battle were staggering.  It is estimated that “The Axis” suffered 850,000 casualties and the USSR 1,129,619 (wounded, killed, captured). Such was the tragedy of World War Two.  The siege was ended on February 2, 1943.

This anniversary was marked last week and is captured in a very poignant photograph by Dmitry Regulin for the AP. A man dressed in Red Army World War II uniform walks toward the monument to Motherland.  The form of the monument is indistinct.  The fog seems to epitomize the dimness of memory with age and time.  But as the determined figure indicates memory is dim but remembrance essential.

Bedpost bathed in a winter sunbeam

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Figure 1 - Bedpost bathed in a winter sunbeam. (c) DE wolf 2015.

Figure 1 – Bedpost bathed in a winter sunbeam. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

One of the things that I really like about winter is that the sun is low in the sky, and when you least expect it can suddenly fill a room with a golden sunbeam.  It is almost a contradiction to have this kind of friendly warmth on a February’s day.  Still there it is there, transforming something as ordinary as the bedpost of Figure 1 into something and almost magical. I played with this sunlit bedpost for sometime, paying close attention to how much of the post should appear in the photograph and exactly what the out of focus background should be.  In the end I decided that it should be only the door with vertical and parallel lines that complement the post.  I especially like the solidity of the wooden post and the way in which the angle of the shot creates the illusion of vaulting height.  The post seems to hold the image up, and I also like the double bokeh of the doorknob. For my taste at 70 mm the degree of out-of-focus of the door is perfect for the composition.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 70 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture-Priority AE mode, 1/125th sec at f/8.0 with -1/3 exposure compensation.

Climbing the Empire State Building

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It has been a while since I have blogged about images of weird and eccentric sports events like “wife carry races” and “the Highland Games.  So today I couldn’t resist this image by Carlo Allegri of Reuters of a runner in the 38th Annual Empire State Building Run-Up. Here runner is arriving on the 86th floor.  Here runner is looking pained and not so happy.  It is, of course, a lot like running up a small mountain.  Indeed, I had a colleague back in my postdoc days who used to climb mountains and would practice by donning his hiking boots and running up stairs.

When I first look at this photograph, I feel the man’s pain.  But then I started to look at the compositional elements that really make the image.  The application of the rule of thirds and most interesting the repeating theme of parallel lines, all with perfect internal symmetry but all askew from one another.