The Ebola epidemic is tragic, terrible, and ultimately pretty terrifying. We have all been trying to understand exactly what it means, and trying to remain cool, no panic, and analytical about it. And it is the kind of thing where photographs can be just two vivid to deal with. Still we are being bombarded with images constantly, most of which, quite frankly, fail to really tell the story of what is going on in West Africa. Yesterday, I came across a new form of Ebola image from AFP-Getty images which really gave me pause. It shows a Chinese seamstress in a factory, churning out hundreds of protective suits for healthcare providers. Suddenly one is confronted with the magnitude of the reality of the epidemic. And what makes it doubly poignant, is that my first thought on looking at this photograph was how much it reminded me turn of the twentieth century images of workers in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. That tragedy we have discussed before. The point is that human tragedy is universal. It spans place and it spans time. What I think is most significant here is that when actual events are so horrific, it often proves to be the case that images that essentially allude to reality can be just as, or even more, effective in portraying it than raw and visceral reality. This alluding image is ever so successful.
Rock doves (Columba livia) in flight
Figure 1 – Pigeons in flight, Concord, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2014.
Rock dove is a fancy name for our common pigeon. The ones in Figure 1 were photographed in Concord, MA; so they are suburban birdsand probably drive BMWs. As a result, they need a fancy Latin name, hence “Columba livia.” I was watching these birds, their identity was obvious from the way they flocked and their flight pattern, as I walked along a muddy path this past Saturday at a farm in Concord. They were obviously drawn by the remnants of September’s harvests but were quite a bit off. But in the end my patience was rewarded when they flew frenzied past me against the background of the late fall foliage.
Birds are hard enough to photograph, but birds in flight represent a true challenge and it is more than a bit of a challenge to achieve the eyes in focus goal. I didn’t quite accomplish it here. But the feathers on the wings are well defined, and the seemingly random asynchronous beating delightful. Birds always seem to be in a frenzy come October – all hurrying somewhere. My father used to tell me that they were debating whether to go south for the winter and that birds like these pigeons debate too long.
I know that these guys will be huddling together come January, and it is a tribute to the resilience of nature that anything can survive outside in those elements. We have ultimately to consider the pigeon quite noble. They figure prominently in Darwin’s thought process that led to his “Origin of Species,” and for that we owe them a great gratitude.
Radishes and sunflowers
Figure 1 – Radishes and sunflowers, Madison, WI. (c) DE Wolf 2014.
The image of Figure 1 was meant to be an experiment. The goal was to let color dominate but then to break a few compositional rules, or at least to be quirky. It was a cold wet morning at the Madison, WI farmers’ market when I saw this woman buying sunflowers. The brilliant yellow sunflowers were beckoning and they stood out against a pile of gorgeous radishes. I had thought to exclude the woman’s face, but it seemed more interesting to let her nose and bangs enter into the image. The vendor counting change and looking rather cold is relegated to the background.
I got exactly what I was after. With a little knife and a shaker filled with salt I could feast on those radishes! Whether it is a success, I have to ask you.
Wars and conflicts past
I was struck yesterday by some photographs on the BBC. These images deal essentially with old wars and conflicts and they, perhaps, suggest that with time even the most terrible and seemingly unresolvable conflicts can in end reach some level of closure – unfortunately only to be replaced by other vicious conflicts.
The first of these is an image by Peter MacDiarmid of Getty images showing the reinterrment northern France of fifteen British soldiers who were killed a century ago in battle near the village of Beaucamps-Ligny. The remains were found in 2009 during drainage work. This is one of those breath stopping moments. You wonder about what was and what might have been.
The second is a set of images, a set of photographs of Londonderry taken by French photojournalist Gilles Caron in 1969.These recently donated images will be on display at the Void and City Factory Galleries in Derry from 28 October until 20 December. This was the first battle in what became euphemistically referred to as “The Troubles.”
Back in 1969, most press photographs were in black and white. Here you realize that they must be in black and white. Color would be superfluous. There is such an intense and stark, gritty reality to the use of monochrome. These images are masterpieces, fantastic in there ability to say all that needs to be said without the encumbrance of words. Consider the look on the face of the young, stylish woman in heels, clutching her handbag as she stands on a street corner turned battlefield. She is out of place in her own home. And then there is the man in a gas mask against a wall on which the universal expression is written, “We Want Peace.” Three words and a single photograph that in the end say everything about wars and conflicts past and present.
Sometimes green is best
Figure 1 – Leaf in the Olbrich Botanical Gardens, Madison, WI. (c) DE Wolf 2014.
In photography two things often surprise me. The first, is that many times, when I open the RAW format of an image that I have destined to be black and white, how the color can already be almost monotone. This is probably the unassuming quality of RAW format. It assumes very little about what you are trying to do. The second, is diametrically opposed to the first. It is the moment when I start to convert the image to grey scale and suddenly it is as if someone has put on the brakes. The image demands, or at least is highly enhanced by, color.
Such is the case of the leaf image of Figure 1. I took it inside the green house of the Olbrich Botanical Gardens in Madison, WI earlier this month. I had conceived a black and white photograph focusing on texture and form. But the greens of the leaf itself and the contrasting blue tones of the bokeh behind it were just too appealing to be dismissed out of hand. And the other point about this image is that it was taken in a very flat overcast light. The greenhouse was actually quite dark and demanded a high ISO. But the illumination is beautifully even and still manages to accentuate the veins in the leaf. I have learned to low this kind of light and do not fear an overcast day.
I begin to question Kermit the Frog’s song “It’s not easy being green.” Green is so easy on the eyes and speaks volumes about the essense of life. It is so easy to be seduced by green; so perhaps the better song to sing is “Greensleaves.”
As i revisit the lyrics I am captured by the phrase: “Your vows you’ve broken, like my heart, Oh, why did you so enrapture me? Now I remain in a world apart,But my heart remains in captivity.” Green houses are in a sense meant to deny death or to deny, at least the season. Here we have a green and vibrant tropical leaf, stolen in a sense from its real world, held captive in a place that isolates it from a cold Midwestern winter, a place where it is always spring.
Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM at 98 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture-priority AE mode 1/160th sec at f/6.3 no exposure compensation.
October nor’easter and makimono
October nor’easter, Cambridge, MA. IPhone photograph. (c) DE Wolf 2014.
The Boston area is currently experiencing an October nor’easter. A nor’easter is a storm that moves up the coast and lingers, churning over the ocean. Since it is turning counterclockwise winds come in from the northeast and dump huge amounts of precipitation. This is a four day storm and so far has dumped 3 inches of rain, which is a lot better than the 30 inches of snow, which is what it would be in January. Anyway, eat your hearts out California!
But coming in October, it does have the effect of ravaging the remaining foliage, accelerating us into November. Today after four hours contemplating the details of the electron transfer chain of oxidative phosphorylation (again this is what us geeks do), I found myself in need of two things: a cold wet blast of rain and wind in the face and makimono for lunch. The two were fortunately tied together, and I headed off to the local Japanese restaurant for lunch.
It was then that I recognized an important point. The beauty of autumn is not just colorful leaves on trees, but wet leaves on the sidewalk in a rain storm, and even the fossilike impressions left by these leaves on the pavement. So I captured the image of Figure 1 with my IPhone on my walk back to the office and am left with the sense that I have captured the true experience of an October nor’easter.
Photographic First Number 14 – the first photograph of a solar eclipse
First photograph of a solar eclipse July 18, 1851. From the Wikipediacommons and in the public domain.
Some of you are going to have the priveledge today of seeing a partial solar eclipse. Unfortunately, those of us in New England have to be happy with the fall foliage this time. The fall foliage is BTW being ripped from the trees by a violent noreaster – another New England phenomenon. This got me wondering the proverbial question, who was the first person to photograph a solar eclipse. The honor appears, according to the Wikipedia, to go to daguerreotypist Berkowski who took the photograph of Figure 1 on July 28, 1851 at the Royal Observatory in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kalinigrad in Russia).
Now, I say appears because the Wikipedia entry for Berkowski contains the cryptic phrase “the first correctly exposed photograph of the solar corona,” suggesting that someone else tried first. A small 6 cm refracting telescope was attached to the 15.8 cm Fraunhofer heliometer and an 84-second exposure was taken shortly after the beginning of totality.
The problem with solar eclipses being that you don’t get retakes. I photographed one back in 1971. It was amazing and what I remember is all the preparation and then nonstop shooting. You have this desire to just look and say wow!
Solar eclipse are not however, mere curiosities. The eclipse of 1919 was famous for the demonstration that light paths are bent in a gravitational field, in this case that of the Sun. See Figure 2. This was a demonstration of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.
Figure 1 – From the report of Sir Arthur Eddington on the expedition to the island of Principe (off the west coast of Africa) – demonstrating the bending of light in a gravitational field. From the Wikipediacommons and in the public domain.
Breaking the sound barrier
Figure 1 – An F/A-18 breaking the sound barrier. Image released by the USN with ID 990707-N-6483G-001 and taken by Ensign John Gay.
I was watching a piece on the news the other night about photographing jets breaking the “sound barrier” and in a geekish physicist sort of way I found this really cool. So I thought I would share one of these images with you. Figure 1 was taken by Ensign John Gay of the U.S. Navy in 1999 and shows an F/A-18 breaking the sound barrier. When a plane punches through the sound barrier, that is when it reaches a speed of equal to the speed of sound, or Mach 1, it creates a shock wave perpendicular to its direction of flight. What you are seeing here is that shock wave and the jet appears to be breaking through it– very cool!
The term “sound barrier” is a misnomer. Early on as planes approached this speed pilots had trouble controlling the aircraft against the turbulence and instabilities that the physics demands and thought that ity might be a physical barrier, forbidden by the laws of physics. This, of course, turned out not to be the case. And hence we dream of traveling faster than “warp 1” or the speed of light. We shall see, or someone may.
The history of “breaking the sound barrier” is intriguing. However, on October 14, 1947 in the Bell X-1 Chuck Yeager (of “The Right Stuff” fame) was credited with being the first man to break the sound barrier in level flight at an altitude of 45,000ft.
Interestingly, when you crack a bullwhip. The snapping sound that you hear is the shock wave created as the tip reaches the speed of sound. But let’s not stop there. It is, in fact believed based on computer models of biomechanics, that as early as 150 million years ago certain long tailed dinosaurs such as Apatosaurus and Diplodocus may have been able to flick their tails at supersonic velocities. Now that would have been an intimidating sound!
Embden geese – Anser anser domesticus
Figure 1 – Embden geese, Morton Park, Wellesley, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2014.
This past weekend was the absolute peak foliage weekend. Unfortunately the weather was less than obliging. Sunday was cold and a bit damp. Still the colors were magnificent, and I took a short trip through the woods at Morton Park in Wellesley, MA. The geese were out in force and the water dark and leaf covered. I was hand-holding my 200 mm lens again but the geese were close and cooperating; so I got the feather, eye, and beak detail that I was looking for.
The result is Figure 1. these are Embden Geese, the common domesticated geese, Anser anser domesticus. Their proud heritage of domestication is well documented and quite ancient as shown by Darwin. While these particular specimens are doomed to little more than the laughter of children, their cousins elsewhere are pretty likely to find themselves on a dinner plate or stuffing a ski parka.
These two were quite friendly and just a bit erked that I was not providing them with any bread crumbs. You can see from the picture that they were both talking loudly to me.
Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM Lens at 176 mm, ISO 1600, M Evaluative Metering Mode, 1/800th sec at F/8.0.