Images of the birth of the universe

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Today’s going to be one of those days when I cheat just a little bit and my blog slips ever so much away from photography into the realm of physics. A team of scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has announced detection of the very first direct evidence for what is referred to as the cosmic inflation and as a result published the first ever images of gravitational waves.  These can be seen on the Center for Astrophysics’ website.  They are essentially maps of the sky showing the gravity waves.

Say what! Cosmic inflation?  Gravity waves?  Cosmic inflation is the massive initial explosion of the Big Bang, when the universe was born and expanded exponentially.  And with this cosmic nativity should come waves or ripples in space time.  You may remember a short while ago that we spoke about quantum mechanical waves in the context of Schrodinger’s Cat and quantum mechanics.  Therein lies the significance of gravity waves.  They were predicted by Albert Einstein and they represent a unification, if you will, a missing linking between gravity theory and quantum mechanics.  And now after at least forty years of hard looking we have not only found them, but we have seen them.

How can that be? Think about the great 19th century volcano Krakatoa. A sound wave from that blast circled the globe multiple times and was recorded on sensitive barometers.  If you think about it, those waves are still circling the globe, except that they have become lost in the background variations in atmospheric pressure.

Similarly, scientists found the gravity waves from the cosmic inflation by examining the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Remember that visible light has wavengths which are fractions of a micron.  Microwave wavelengths are ten or more times that.  That’s very low energy stuff, but gravitational waves left their signature there, a pattern imprinted on the faint glow leftover from the Big Bang.

 

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day

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Figure 1 - Dying the Chicago River Green on Saint Patrick's Day 2009. Image from the Wikipedia Commons, an original work by Mike Boehmer from Chicago, IL, USA and in the public domain under creative commons attribution license.

Figure 1 – Dying the Chicago River Green on Saint Patrick’s Day 2009. Image from the Wikipedia Commons, an original work by Mike Boehmer from Chicago, IL, USA and in the public domain under creative commons attribution license.

Today is the day where everyone is Irish – or seeks to be Irish.  And, I suppose, that tomorrow is that day when everyone is hung over.  So I thought that I would celebrate the occasion today on Haiti and Skill with the quintessential Saint Patrick’s Day image.  Every year on Saint Patrick’s Day in Chicago, they dye the Chicago river green.  Have you ever wondered who the proverbial “They” actually are?  Hmm!  Anyway I found on the Wikipedia Commons this absolutely beautiful photograph of the festivities in 2009.  The photograph is by Mike Boehmer from Chicago, IL,  and is spectacular and, well, gloriously green.  So let me wish everyone “Éirinn go Brach”

Rain drops and puddles

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I for one have a tendency to leave my camera at home on days that are heavy laden with rain.  It makes sense.  You’ve got to get yourself one of those fancy rain enclosures for your camera or have a significant other, who is willing and friendly enough to hold an umbrella over your head.

However BBC News recently challenged its photographically inclined readers to send in their best rain/puddle shots and the results, in my opinion, are pretty astounding. 

Rain and wetness are, if not magical, then at least transforming.  Dull pebbles at the beach or in a stream become magnificent” gems.”. Urban settings come alive with the reflection of street lights, especially at night. And then there is the blurred out image as sheets of rainwater run down a window.  It can be quite enthralling, and the BBC News series has a number of just beautiful photographs.  My personal favorites are Neil Harvey’s picture of a woman sitting and having a beverage at an outdoor table, under a massive umbrella, and talking on the cell phone  untroubled by the deluge around her. And then there is Sambid Vilas Pant’s just wonderful image of a two drops or rainwater forming at the tip of a spoke on an umbrella. 

And it is raining heavily today.  That gives me an idea…

Glenn McDuffie dies at 86

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One of the truly iconic photographs of the world war two era is Alfred Eisenstadt’s Iconic image of a sailor kissing a nurse on VJ Day – the end of the war.  While Eisenstadt, who died in 1995, never said who the sailor was, navy veteran Glenn McDuffie long claimed that he was the “kissing sailor.”  While others also shared this claim, McDuffie’s story was backed up by a forensic scientist, who said that McDuffie’s face matched the bone structure of the sailor in the picture. 

McDuffie was changing trains in New York City, when he heard that the war was over and that his brother would be released from a Japanese prisoner of war camp. “I was so happy. I ran out in the street,” McDuffie told the Associated Press years later. “And then I saw that nurse,” he said. “She saw me hollering and with a big smile on my face … I just went right to her and kissed her. “We never spoke a word,” he said. “Afterward, I just went on the subway across the street and went to Brooklyn.”

Setting the record straight on selfies

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Figure 1 - The world's first selfie, a daguerreotype by taken 1839. In the Library of Congress, from the Wikipedia, and and in the public domain.

Figure 1 – The world’s first selfie, a daguerreotype by taken by Robert Cornellius in 1839. In the Library of Congress, from the Wikipedia, and and in the public domain.

Yesterday the TV networks and internet were all above about former United States Secretary of State Colin Powell’s sixty year old selfie.  Did Colin Powell invent the selfie as kinda implied by some new media. Well not so much!  Significantly, Powell does not claim to have invented the selfie, anymore than Vice President Al Gore ever said that he invented the internet.  Still it’s worth setting the record straight. Readers of this blog are already aware that throughout the history of photography this mirror type selfie has been a common trick – witness our discussion of Vivian Maier, whose self-portraits were contemporary with Sec. Powell’s. Hers were also taken in the mirror.

Figure 1 - 1865 "rotating" self portrait by Nadar, from the Wikipedia, in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and in the public domain because of its age.

Figure 1 – 1865 “rotating” self portrait by Nadar, from the Wikipedia, in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and in the public domain because of its age.

What is widely considered to be the world’s first photographic selfie, remember that the self-portrait has been a time honored form in portraiture, was a daguerreotype was taken in November or December of 1839 by Robert Cornelius.  This is shown in Figure 1.  Perhaps, more interesting is Figure 2, which shows an animation of the 1865 “revolving” self-portrait by the great nineteenth century French photographer Nadar, of balloon over the French village of Petit-Becetre fame..

It’s not true that no idea is original it’s just that we are off here by 120 years!

Towards an ethics for photography

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My discussion about science and the baby picture yesterday got me thinking not only about accountability, but about ethics – and in particular the ethics of photography.  In science there is a fundamental ethics against, misleading people and this translates to a very precise set of rules about how, indeed mostly how not, to manipulate images.   The essential tenet of this is the preservation of quantitative information both in terms of intensities or grey values and spatial distributions.  Actions like burning and dodging are big no-no’s. So scientists don’t want to fake data, and you don’t want your scientists to fake data.  All scientists, even the frauds, understand this ethic.

The key to all of this is not to mislead.  But as soon as we leave the realm of science, do we leave behind this taboo?  In general many people would say that faking pictures or altering pictures for political gain is bad, that altering press photographs is bad.  But when we hit the realm of advertising, as we have seen, do all limitations collapse in the quest for financial gain.  Why does this become acceptable?  And don’t hide behind the coattails of art.  Anything goes in art; and advertising is an extension of art.

Where I think that ethics in photography, outside of science, really comes ultimately  into play relates to photographs that are mean, demeaning, or vulgar – faked or not.  I’ve seen a lot of images on popular photo-sites on the web, which I would characterize as vulgar.  They’re not truly pornographic just vulgar in that demean and therefore marginalize a particular group, most often women.

Again you cannot hide behind a smokescreen of political freedom and artistry. The problem, of course, is that we want to protect artistic freedom, and this opens the door.  The ethics to photography has to lie in the basic recognition of human dignity, a fundamental right of privacy, and of protection of the vulnerable, like children.  As always, there is the question of personal taste and sensibility.  One person’s pornography is another’s art. Yes, but the reality is that most of us, just like scientists, share an intrinsic and common understanding of when the line has been crossed, and while we cannot preach and absolute ethic, we can aspire to one.

Imaging a new future

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Today is when I proselytize about the new future that science is offering us.  I say offering because in the end that is all that we scientists can do.  We provide the human race with choices, and these can often be used for either good or bad.

But to make a long self-righteous moment short, I was looking at images in a spare moment today and came across this wonderful picture by Oli Scarff of Getty Images showing this rather cute little fellow named Leo.  Leo is nine months old and he is taking part in an experiment at the Birkbeck Babylab Center for Brain & Cognitive Development, in London.. Leo is outfitted with a halo of electroencephalogram electrodes (he’s even managed to pop one of them) to study brain activity while he examines various objects.

From the Birkbeck Baby lab’s website we have what that their mission is to learn:

  •  how babies recognize faces
  •  how babies learn to pay attention to some things and not others
  •  how they learn to understand what other people do and think, and
  •  how their language and understanding of the world develops

As a picture this photograph tells a wonderful story.  Baby Leo is happy.  The smile and the beautiful catch light tell us this. He is deeply involved in his work.  It is interesting how strong the association of pink with girls.  Because of the strong pink background, our first assumption is that Leo is a girl.  Of course, we wonder what he is thinking.  We even wonder how he is thinking.  And that after all is the whole point.

 

Abandoned store

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Figure 1 - Abandoned store Sudbury, MA, (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Figure 1 – Abandoned store Sudbury, MA, (c) DE Wolf 2014.

There is what I assume to be an old store at the intersection of Haynes Road and Pantry Lane in Sudbury, Massachusetts.  It’s on my alternate road to work; so I pass it often and keep cataloging it as a building to be photographed.  I’ve gone there camera-ready several times, but the light was never quite right.  Recently, I’ve noticed that the early morning light is good this time of year, but stopping on the way to work has been impossible with the traffic.  By this time of year most of the snow has solidified into walls of ice on the sides of the road side.  You feel like you are driving in some kind of tunnel.  So there is never a way to safely pull over during rush hour.

In any event. on Sunday I took advantage of the shift in time (spring ahead) to stop and take a picture of this building.  The result is shown in Figure1.  I moved progressively into the scene and in the end I settled upon this door and window shot.  I love the peeling paint and the little flag that is always there.  I surprised myself by deciding that I favored color for the photograph.  It was not my original intent.  However, I realized that the colors of the building are part of what really appeals to me about the little structure, particularly the red, white, and blue of the tiny flag against the warm brown wood.  I am pretty happy with the end result.

Whoo gives a hoot?

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Figure 1 - What a hoot! (c) DE Wolf, 2014.

Figure 1 – What a hoot! (c) DE Wolf, 2014.

There is a popular television commercial here in the States for GEICO insurance.  The commercial starts with a husband and wife in a car.  The husband is being a bit of a know-it-all until his wife ask him whether he knows that not all owls are wise, and then the scene shifts to the forest, where the lady owl says to her husband owl: “Don’t forget that I’m having lunch with Megan tomorrow.”  The husband owl responds “Whoo.” And as the conversation continues, it becomes clear that he is not paying a feather’s worth of attention and keeps responding: “Whoo.”

I had this poor fellow in mind this past Sunday when I was visiting our local farm-stand and came across the fine fellow of Figure 1.  What a hoot!