Minimalism #12

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Figure 1 - Minimalism#12, Kennebunkport, ME. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Figure 1 – Minimalism#12, Kennebunkport, ME. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

I spent a lot of time this past weekend working on my photominimalism project.  Right now these are pictures taken in Kennebunkport of seaweeds and other flotsam on the beach.  The idea is to mimic minimalist art: a strand of seaweed or a shell creating patterns in the sand.  It is a surprising challenge because of the relatively narrow dynamic range.  But the variety of effects, particularly with the seaweeds in different states of wetness is wonderful and intriguing.

I found myself particularly excited about Minimalism #12 which is a very moist clump of seaweed.  Perhaps it test the “outer envelope” of true minimalism, as there is a lot of structure and detail. It seems more to encroach on the genre of Edward Weston. But I really love it; so I thought that I would share under the canon that the artist makes the rules and can bend or reforge his own rules.

I’m Cheryl, fly me.

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Figue 1 - National Airlines flight attendants 1972 in first class cabin. Image from the Wikimeda Commons. Image from Clipperarctic and uploaded by Russavia under creative commons attribution license.

Figure 1 – National Airlines flight attendants 1972 in first class cabin. Image from the Wikimeda Commons. Image from Clipperarctic and uploaded by Russavia under creative commons attribution license.

Who can forget F. William Free’s (1928-2003) controversial, and filled with sexual ineuendo, ad campaign for National Airlines “I’m Cheryl. Fly me?”  In a sense, this ad accentuated the essential conflict between the feminist movement of the sixties and seventies and the prevailing objectivization of women. For years, flight attendants rivaled pageant queens in glamour and fashion.  This week NBC News’ website has offered a retrospective on flight attendant dress from the glamorous to the bizarre.  It also serves as a litany of long lost airlines, and it is a brain strain to recollect them all.

Apparently, the distinction of being the first flight attendant goes to Ellen Church (1904-1965), who in 1930 convinced Boeing Air Transport (now United Airlines) that having onboard caped nurses would help alleviate those passengers with a fear of flying.  There is this wonderful photograph from the Boeing archives of the original eight flight attendants standing in front of an A-80.  

My favorite of the vintage images that NBC News’ retrospective is an eye-popping print for Braniff Airlines in 1966 by Pucci (from the collection of Cliff Muskiet ).  Braniff Airlines? Ah yes, I remember Braniff Airlines.  My last Braniff Flight was Boston to Kansas City. It was a blistering day and the flight was so delayed that we were overloaded for the short runway.  So they waited something like four hours for people to get so frustrated that they got off.  Finally, when the weight was acceptable, the plane wouldn’t move. It was so hot that the tarmack had melted under the front wheel…

 

 

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/travel/what-they-wore-flight-attendant-uniforms-past-present-n142891

Weather-vane

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Figure 1 - Weathervane, Dock Square, Kennebunkport. ME. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Figure 1 – Weathervane, Dock Square, Kennebunkport. ME. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

I’ve actually been surprised at just how difficult photographing, ground up, a weather-vane can be. The obvious choice is to go silhouette.  Well, maybe not a choice.  Then you probably want a long telephoto.  In this case 200 mm.  The very real danger, other than incurring a stiff neck, is a really boring bleached out background sky, unless of course you’ve got interesting clouds.  Well, when I took Figure 1 of this cool bugle blower, the clouds were slight and rather wispy.  I chose to shoot in color for interest and I had to dig really deep to get my clouds.  This in turn created grain, which I think also adds interest.  And finally, I took advantage of power-lines, which usually destroy a photograph – we almost don’t see them until we try to take a picture and voila there they are destroying our sense of the rural landscape.  We’ll here they serve to frame and accentuate, to create a dominant sense of the golden rule of thirds.

EF70-200mm f/4L USM at 200 mm (monopod mounted). ISO 400, Aperture Priority- AE, 1/1600th sec at f/8.0 no exposure compensation.

Yakking

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Friday is time to scan the various “Week in Pictures” features, and today I was taken by this beautiful image by  Bogdan Cristel  for Reuters shot on June 22 at this year’s Bucharest International Air Show at Baneasa airport on June 22.  It really takes your breath away, which is real praise for a photograph.  I love the spirals and the graininess of the sky.  And I love the blue.  Will you allow me to call it cerulean blue? I love cerulean blue.  It has such a lovely vaporous sense of humidity and water – this not to mention that the word is really cool. It rolls off the tongue and makes you sound really erudite. 8<)

The image shows the Aerobatic Yakkers flying YAK-52’s.  The YAK-52 (Як-52) was first introduced in 1976 The Yakovlev Yak-52  was the primary Soviet training aircraft. It is still produced in Romania by Aerostar and worldwide is a popular aerobatic plane.

I am going to end hear without uttering the obvious pun.  I do love the photograph.

 

I really should read my own blog – Mars Rover revisted

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That’s pretty much the bottom line.  I was reading my blog of yesterday and started studying the Mars Rover selfie in greater detail.  And I realized that there was an important aspect to point out – hence today’s addendum.  Remember that this image was done by stitching and what that means is that an object that is not in both images is omitted or blurred out – here I think omitted.  It’s kinda a bit of image processing mumbo jumbo, or abracadabra to use the cabalistic term!  The point is that there is an intense shadow in the center right that comes from what? Nothing else is casting a shadow.  It is the shadow of the robot arm.  But the arm itself is not there.  How is that for incongruous?

It is a lot like the Invisible Man leaving footprints in the snow and is very reminiscent of our discussion of the now infamous Apple Map image of the Loch Ness Monster.  For these Earth images you have to mosaic, in that case in time, so that you can correct for bad weather.  That is done by an averaging method and something that was there yesterday but gone today becomes just a bot ghost-like.

A one year old/ two year old takes a selfie

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Figure 1 - Mars Rover Selfie, from NASA and in the public domain.August 5th marks the two year anniversary of the successful landing of NASA’s Mars Roveron Mars; so in celebration toddler Rover took the picture of Figure 1.  Yes, it’s a bona fide selfie.  In actuality the image was taken at 687  days, which is one Martian year. So arguably  Rover is only a one year old. Like  any true selfie the image was taken by extending the robot arm out with the camera.  The image is actually a stitch of a mosaic of images taken from different angles.  As a result the one element of Rover anatomy that you do not see is the arm itself.  Like all good NASA pictures, the image possesses a duality. It is a picture of its intended subject.  But more significantly it is a symbol of what we can achieve and even a glimpse of the future and what is to come.

A clockwork orange

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The Balzer Family Clockwork at LL Bean, Freeport, ME. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

The Balzer Family Clockwork at LL Bean, Freeport, ME. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

This is a photograph that I took at LL Bean’s in Freeport, ME.  It is a clockwork and, yes, it is orange. 8<)  The Balzers are a family of tower clock restorers, and this commissioned work for LL Bean was manufactured in 1994.  It was dedicated Freeport-born Aaron L. Dennison (1812-1895), who was born, who is is recognized as the father of the watchmaking industry in the United States.   This is the first mechanical “tower” clock manufactured in the United States since 1963.  The clock mechanism drives a huge drum which has pegs that strike out the musical notes by engaging microswitches that activate the corresponding chime tube hammer and thus playing the note.  The tune can be changed by altering the pin locations. The tome of these chimes is magnificent. They raise the hairs on the back of your neck when they are played.

This is a striking and beautiful clock work.  Photographically the trick is two-fold.  First, you have to catch the glitter of the brass.  And second, you have to avoid the reflections in the glass that protects the mechanism from adoring but probing hands.  This glass problem is common and I have run into it often in malls and museums.  It makes catching the metal with flash difficult and often impossible. And, in  my experience using a polarizing filter helps but doesn’t solve the problem. I am pretty happy in the end with this picture.  There is a bit of annoying glass glare in the lower right that I could not totally eliminate.

Canon EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 70 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priorit-AE with -1 compensation, 1/100th sec at f/5.6.

 

Running with camels

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Figure 1 - The British Camel Corps in action in British Somaliland in 1913. From the Flicker Commons and in the public domain, originally uploaded by Dzlinker.

Figure 1 – The British Camel Corps in action in British Somaliland in 1913. From the Flicker Commons and in the public domain, originally uploaded by Dzlinker.

In searching “The Week In Pictures” feature on BBC News, I was struck by this beautiful violet shaded image by Bernardo Montoya for Reuters of a circus performer in Mexico City “Running with Camels,” or at least a camel.  There is this controversy in Mexico City because the local government has banned the use of circus animal;s, which threatens the livelihood of the performers.

The image is not perfect in many ways.  It is too out of focus for my taste, despite the fact that the photographer has banned with the animal.  It would work as an indication of motion but is not quite successfull here. at least to my taste.  I do hower love the color and I love the glow of the spotlight.  But what I really love is that it triggers in my mind, reference to Eadweard Muybridge‘s ground breaking work on motion in man and animals, which answered once and for all the critical(?) question whether all of a horse’s feet leave the ground at once.  Well, as it turns out horse and camels run differently.  I guess that you could call it the “dromedary dash.”  But the critical point, to me, is the allusion to Muybridge’s work and, of course, to the Kevin Costner film “Dances with Wolves.”

Just to confuse the focus of this post, I could not resist posting as Figure 1 and image of the British Somali Camels Corp in 1913, between Berbera and Odweyne in, what was then, the British Somaliland.  Hut, hut!

Stairs to where

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Figure 1 - Stairs, Kennebunkport, ME. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Figure 1 – Stairs, Kennebunkport, ME. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

As every photographer knows, it’s all about the light, and in this particular photograph – again weathered wood in Kennebunkport’s Dock Square – I was beckoned by the light.  The high dynamic range was challenging as were the weird angles Of course, the weird angles merely represent a puzzle to be solved – a puzzle that required very careful framing and attention to all of the details.  In the end I particularly like the slightly out of focus vertical in the lower right.  When I concentrate on the specifics, I am kind of amused by the little stems poking out of the flower box and where dirt and soil have collected on the bottom edge of the box. This is when you know that your lens is delivering!

One of the nice elements of such a photograph is that when I return to this place in the future, when the light will be different, I will remember this photograph.  I suppose that the same must be true for people who paint.  When you have spent so much time studying and capturing a particular moment in time and place, it is always there in your memory.

A little boy came out of a shop just as I was taking this picture, and he laughed at the silly man with the long monopod and camera.  My monopod was extended maximally, and it was propped on a step at the bottom of the stairs and tilted at a large angle.  What a funny man!

Canon EF70-200mm f/4L USM at 70 mm, ISO 400, Aperture Priority, 1/1250 th sec at f/8.0 no compensation.