All the rage on the internet over the last few days are images taken by Nantucket-based photographer Jonathan Nimerfroh of what have been dubbed slurpee waves after the slushy drink. These waves are at once surreal and magical. And once more it points to the fact that if you are willing to suffer a little inconvenience and discomfort that winter is filled with photographic opportunities. Nature rises to the fore in all its glory and complexity.

I am waiting and looking for a decent scientific explanation to satisfy the physicist within me. Scientists interviewed by the NY Times didn’t have a real explanation, but that’s different than saying that it has no explanation. So in the meantime I am content to applaud these wonderful images by Mr. Nimerfroh. You never know what you may encounter on a cold winter’s morning on the beach.

I have spoken in the past about photography as a kind of time travel. Yes, you can look and at some strange level interact with people from the nineteenth century, and that is a wonderful experience. But perhaps more intimate is to look at an old picture of yourself, this because you associate with the picture. You might even remember the picture being taken. And the strangest aspect is that the person in the picture with the strange hairstyle, or in my case with hair itself, it is you, yet it is not quite you. Phew! What does it all mean?

In the literature and Gedankenexperiments about time travel, there is the paradox. How can you go back and interact with yourself, if you don’t remember having done it, and also don’t you risk changing events and therefore undoing (that is obliterating yourself). In the philosophy of science, the kind of late night conversations with wine especially, there are ways around this paradox – especially ways involving parallel universes and what are referred to as world lines in space and time. Doesn’t that some profound and cool.

Photographer Irina Werning has explored time travel of this kind with a twist. In her “Back to the Future” and “Back to the Future 2 2011” series. What she has done is taken a snapshot of an individual, typically 20 years old, and paired it with a reenactment of the scene. The results are both delightful and magical. I really love it. It is a kind of every man and every woman version of Nicholas Nixons now forty years of photographs of “The Brown Sisters.” Here there are just two images, one before one after. It is an exploration of both change and immutability. And some of the images subtly seem to ring to profounder issues, like coming of age (Carli 1990 & 2011 Buenos Aires) and major world events (Cristoph 1990 and 2011 at the Berlin Wall). I am amazed at the availability of some of the image props and details and how much likeness prevails. I think, this a really wonderful series and much to be applauded.

A weaker man would post about the cute and cuddly red pandas frolicking in the snow at the Cincinnati zoo. But I will not yield to temptation. What I want to talk about today is the “Your Photographs” feature on the BBC, which this week is highlighting some gorgeous black and white photographs from its readers. This is a place to go to see two things: first how much great photographic talent there is around among amateurs, and second how black and white photography, always my personal favorite, is alive, well, and flourishing.

The second point, the enduring appeal of black and white photography, is at some level surprising at others not. From a technological stand point it represents a transitional technology, and you might have expected a complete adoption of color photography. But it stayed around as sole photographic form for so long that it became a recognized art form. Indeed, an on the other hand, the same is true in drawing. Black and white drawings, charcoals, pen and inks, and engraving are still all very appealing. And every once in a while some cinematographer will still produce a black and white film, because “the subject matter demands it.”  Whatever that means! As a jaded ex-New Yorker, I always assumed that it meant that the artist was too cheap to spring for the color film.

Never-the-less, the BBC series shows the magnificence of the art and the glorious appeal of deep black and brilliant whites and really everything in between. Like thick cream, it’s almost tactile! When I photograph, my first thought and inclination is always towards black and white. My favorite among the BBC images is Daniel Furon’s wonderful photograph of coffee cups and saucers at the Café Stijl in San Francisco. De Stijl is a Dutch art movement, whose origins date to 1917, that was based on pure abstract geometric form. And therein is an important point really. For this kind of geometric image, color would be superfluous and distracting. Shedding color accentuates the geometry, and I find my eye delightedly exploring Mr. Furon’s image. The compositional balance in the photograph to me is just perfect.  Well done, indeed!