Images of the first winter Olympics

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Figure 1 - Gold medal figure skater Gillis Grafström at the 1924 winter games in Chamonix, FR. Image from the Wikimedia Commons uploaded by Scanpix, photographer unknown, in the public domain.

Figure 1 – Gold medal figure skater Gillis Grafström at the 1924 winter games in Chamonix, FR. Image from the Wikimedia Commons uploaded by Scanpix, photographer unknown, in the public domain.

A link containing some wonderful photographs from the first winter Olympics in Chamonix, France was brought to my attention by reader and friend, Wendy.  I just couldn’t resisted reposting them along with Figure 1, which shows three time gold medalist in men’s figure skating, Gillis Grafström, of Sweden, in Chamonix in 1924.

About 250 athletes participated in the 1924 winter Olympics and there were 16 events including: alpine and cross-country skiing, figure skating, ice hockey, Nordic combined, ski jumping, and speed skating. The winter games were held regularly every four years until 1936.  The 1940 games were awarded to Saporo, Japan but this was cancelled with the Japanese invasion of China.  The Winter Olympics resumed in 1948.  They held every four years.  In 1992 it was decided to stagger the winter and summer games by two years.  So the winter games were held in 1992 and then again in 1994, when the four year cycle resumed.

Pictures such as these evoke two feelings, to me at least.  One is a sense of nostalgia and the lost innocence of simplicity.  The games have become multimedia events and very glitzy.  The other sense, and maybe it’s because of what’s going on outside my window right now, is one of how cold everything looks.  But several points are universal, the spirit of youth and the concept of bridging borders through sports.

Icicle

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Figure 1 - Icicle, (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Figure 1 – Icicle, (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Winter here in the Northeast is snow and ice.  I have been focusing a lot on photographing the snow.  But ice can also offer some magical possibilities.  And the most magical ice of all are icicles.  They grow on your house and are really beautiful until you realize that they are harbingers of ice dams and roof leaks – not so good.  When I was in graduate school in Ithaca, NY we had icicles behind the physics building that were feet around and five to ten feet long.  They hung from the eaves of the third floor and if you parked beneath them – well let’s just say “Excalibur!” Really not good at all.

In a sense icicles are a record of winter. Successive bulges spell out, like tree rings, the diurnal melting and refreezing. And they are truly magical house ornaments.  I love the way they catch light, refracting it like imperfect lenses, and scattering it off encased air bubbles.

This afternoon I was particularly intrigued by the shining icicles hanging outside our bedroom windows. And since my wife was downstairs, she could not protest as I flung open the window and removed the screen to take some pictures.  The lone icicle of Figure 1 I particularly liked.  It has that specimen quality of something at the same time scientific and beautiful.  After removing the cold blue natural colors and converting to black and white, I found myself toning blue.  Go figure!

Impressionism

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Figure 1 - Impressionism, (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Figure 1 – Impressionism, (c) DE Wolf 2014.

I find that there is real value in having your camera with you at all times.  You never know when a trick of light, color, or shadows is going grab you and demand to be photographed.  Today was a relatively warm day between the endless string of snowstorms.  I had been taking photographs and was putting away my camera at home, when I noticed the golden light of sunset bathing an oil painting and casting the shadows pattern of the window frame.  It was a high contrast light, and I was particularly taken by the flaky texture of the paint.  So I came in really close so as to capture the colors and the texture and I carefully lined up the horizontal shadow of the mullion in such a way as to emphasize the and give three dimensionality to a roof line in the painting.  Figure 1 is my own impressionist interpretation of what was already an impressionist scene.  The colors allow me a short escape from winter’s cold blue tones to a warmer world.

A man-made underground river in Brazil

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On Wednesday we spoke about droughts in the American West, Floods in the United Kingdom, and about the whole issue of global warming.  Today we are hunkering down in front of the fire as New England is once again walloped with a snow storm.  It’s really getting pretty repetitive and boring.  While weather is forefront in my mind, I promised myself that I would not post yet another snow picture.

OK so how about this.  The picture is from January 28 by Ueslei Marcelino of Reuters and takes us inside the Cuncas II tunnel near the Brazillian city of Mauriti in the
Ceara state, Brazil.  The $6.8 billion  tunnel, if it is ever finished, is meant to link canals that will  divert water from the Sao Francisco river to agricultural land in four
drought-plagued states.  The project is, like all such projects three years behind schedule and already at double cost.

The picture to me is amazing.  The man gives size perspective – man and what man creates. And of course, we are haunted by the knowledge that a lot of such projects have unforeseen ecological consequences.  The reflections create an other worldliness.  Tunnel imagery in mythology and its ultimate connection with birth we have already discussed.  Hey, I’m not making this stuff up.  There’s a reason that tunnels are so haunting. Here what seems most important are the allusions to classical mythology that describe journeys in tunnels (where the protagonist swallows a hard gulp of innate claustrophobia and ventures forth, Yes, to be reborn!): to Dante, to Beowulf, to Alice in Wonderland, and even to the Hobbit.

 

Shakespeare and St. Valentine’s Day – wolves and Ophellia

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Figure 1 - Hungarian actress Török_Irma in the role of Ophelia in 1901. Image from the Wikimedia Commons and believed to be in the public domain.

Figure 1 – Hungarian actress Török_Irma in the role of Ophelia in 1901. Image from the Wikimedia Commons and believed to be in the public domain.

Happy St. Valentines’ Day everyone!  For me Valentine’s Day is filled with Shakespearean connotations.  For regular readers of this blog, there’s no surprise in that!

First of al,l St. Valentine’s Day was meant to replace the ancient Roman holiday of the Wolf, the Lupercalia. So, of course, Hati and Skoll is going to celebrate it.  The Roman holiday was, in fact, celebrated on February 15, but what’s a day in 2100 years.

Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar begins during the feast of the Lupercal.  Mark Anthony in his “Friends, Roman, countrymen…” eulogy alludes directly to the point:

“You all did see that on the Lupercal
      I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious,
And, sure, he is an honorable man.”

 

And then there is the fair Ophellia from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, who met her untimely  death by suicide, driven mad by Hamlet, on St. Valentine’s Day.  It is, of course, fitting because in a sense she dies for love, caught up in vortex of ambiguity at being in love with her father’s killer.

 ‘Tomorrow is St.Valentine’s Day
And early in the morning betime,
I’m a girl below your window
Waiting to be your Valentine.”

 

For years I thought of Ophelia as a hopeless twit.  But then in 2009 I saw Sir Patrick Stewart’s made-for-television Hamlet and I was quite blown away by Mariah Gale’s Ophelia.  She is stunning!  For the first time ever, and I have seen a lot of versions of Hamlet, I related to Ophellia and felt sorry for her.  So as an aside, if you love Shakespeare as much as I do and have never seen this version, do so.

There are some really amazing images of Ophelia over the years.  Some of these are paintings: for instance John Everett Millais (c1851), John William Waterhouse (1908), and, of course, Dante Gabriell Rossetti (1884-1888).  Figure 1, shows a photographic postcard of one of the great beauties, who has played Ophelia, Hungarian actress Török Irma c 1901.  It is such a lovely image that I thought that I would share another image of Török Irma from the Hungarian Wikisite as Figure 2.  It shows her in  Herczeg Ferenc’s “The Nabob’s Daughter.”

Figure 2 - Török_Irma in "The Nabob's Daughter" 1893. Image from the Hungarian Wikipedia and believed to be in the public domain/

Figure 2 – Török_Irma in “The Nabob’s Daughter” 1893. Image from the Hungarian Wikipedia and believed to be in the public domain/

 

Sochi from the ISS

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Figure 1 - The Sochi Olympic Village photographed at night from the USS. Zoom in on the stadium and you can see the Olympic Torch. Photograph from NASA and in the public domain.

Figure 1 – The Sochi Olympic Village photographed at night from the USS. Zoom in on the stadium and you can see the Olympic Torch. Photograph from NASA and in the public domain.

I know that I have been posting a lot about space pictures, and I have been trying to cut back despite there appeal both as examples of two favorite themes: robotic eyes and the magic of photographic.  However just as I was on a roll of abstinence, I say this amazing picture taken by an astronaut onboard the ISS and showing a night view of the Sochi Olympic Village.

The image becomes really amazing when you zoom in on the Olympic Stadium and suddenly realize that you can easily make out the Olympic Flame, which you may recall actually visited the USS.  The Russians have really outdone themselves with the Olympic Torch.  This is the largest and most powerful torch ever – burning enough gas, I think, to supply a decent size city with heat this winter.  Well maybe that’s an exaggeration.  But wow you can actually see it from space!

Dramatic weather

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It seems to me that as winter rolls around, we find ourselves talking more and more about the weather.  We talk about it in person, we talk about it on social media, and we are bombarded by images of the weather .  This is arguably the great oppression of winter.  The rest of the year you hardly think about.  But winter…

Anyway, this morning I was scanning the weather photos and found a couple that pretty much say it all.  The first taken on February 6 in Bakersfield, California by David McNew for Getty Images shows a sign warning people not to jump off a bridge into the river below.  It is sage advice since the river bed is total dry and free of water free. California is in its third year of drought and is suffering through the driest year in 119 years of record keeping.

The second image was taken by Mathew Horwood on February 5 and shows waves breaking over the harbor wall in Porthcawl, United Kingdom.England has been experiencing an unusually rash period of storms and flooding this year. More than 130 severe flood warnings were issued since December 2013.  This contrasts with only nine in the whole of 2012.

What is, of course, the most amazing aspect of the second picture is all the people standing there and watch.  I mean, “Hello!  Anyone worried about being swept at to sea?”  I guess not.  I mean you can just go home and watch the videos and look at the photographs in you dry and cozy living room.

Now I know that I am supposed to stop here and not get into the subject of climate change.  However, I get kind of upset whenever there is an affront to science as basic as this.  There are natural weather and climate cycles – but there is also a very troubling manmade effects.  Indeed, the British Met Office is coming down pretty strongly in arguing that these winter storms are caused by global warming.   The effect of mankind on the Earth’s climate is a proven fact – despite all the claims to the contrary made by hosts of people, who are not qualified to express their opinions on the subject.  There are many places on the Earth, where people live dangerous close to the temperature limit where human life becomes untenable.  We are expert at not reacting intelligently to global problems both because they are difficult and because they are inconvenient.

So while to first order these pictures are beautiful even whimsical, at another level they hold a much deeper and profound message.  It is a message that we cannot really afford to ignore!

New at the Hati and Skoll Gallery

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Thanks to all of the loyal readers of the blog at Hati and Skoll Gallery.  I have finally gotten my act to together and have brought the galleries up-to-date.  So there are a few changes.  First, I have move the images from the New Gallery to the other galleries as appropriate.  The New Gallery is currently empty but will be repopulated soon. Second, I have added some new photographs to the Man-made and Places galleries.  And finally, in keeping with my New Years’ Resolution to take more portraits I have added a gallery called En Persona, which features some of the better portraits that I have taken over the years.  And as I say more to follow.  Thanks again to everyone!

Extreme selfie-ing

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Figure 1 - Extreme Selfie of the Artist, (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Figure 1 – Extreme Selfie of the Artist, (c) DE Wolf 2014.

The other night I was watching the Olympics on television.  There are all these new sports.  It is just a bit bewildering.  And in the United States, if you watch the coverage on network television, you really don’t get that much coverage of any given event.  I understand the problem, but they never have found the right formula.  So when you find yourself contemplating the broadcasters, who haven’t lost a single lock of hair in the past thirty years, you start to wonder what is going on.

One of the interesting points is that winter sports keep going more and more extreme –   “extreme skiing, extreme snowboarding.”  So that got me thinking what about extreme “selfie-ing?” And needless-to-say since the whole show was getting pretty soporific; so I found myself trying it for myself.  As a result I give you Figure 1 – Extreme Selfie of the Artist.  I first tried it out with the front-facing camera on my IPhoe.  But as we discussed the rear-facing camera is a whole bunch better, and since you cannot see what you are doing past a certain distance it really doesn’t matter.  Just stare close into the lens and try to hold the phone straight and flat.

I am actually pretty impressed with the result.  The depth of field is pretty much nonexistent.  But where it is in focus, it’s surprisingly sharp.  And then we can go off on one of those mindlessly profound stories of how the eye is the portal of the soul, or some such.  Well, Dr. Freud, sometimes a pencil is just a pencil, and more often than not, a selfie, even an extreme selfie, is just for fun!