Figure 1 – PRISMA stylized photograph, “Behind Front Street in a late Afternoon Light.” Salem, MA, October 23, 2019. (c) DE Wolf 2019.

I thought that I would take a break today from ghoulish Halloween image and share the PRISMA stylized iPhone image of Figure 1. It shows the alley behind Salem’s Front Street in a gorgeous and golden afternoon light. I begin to be wary of the impending time change when we shall be cast into darkness, but in the meanwhile we may enjoy the light.

Figure 1 – A witch of Salem. (c) DE Wolf 2019

There is a hidden dichotomy to Halloween in Salem. On the one hand you have the fun of childhood, the trick or treat of spooks, goblins, and witches. On the other hand you have, at least in the choice of location, the celebration of a truly terrible and unjust persecution of the late seventeenth century. People were falsely accused and murdered. This is not to be lauded and is, in fact, a terrible stain in our march for social justice.

At the risk of getting too serious here, it is believed that large parts of the christian mysogynist world view stems from St. Augustine, who more than any other early early christian thinker forged both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism’s view of woman. Dramatically, in our age of developing feminism, where thinkers like Richard Tarnas see feminism as a positive rising force in Western Philosophy – the Passion of the Western Mind – we are beginning to spontaneously think much more positively of witches.

In Figure1 we see one of the Good and True Witches of Salem, MA. In a real sense the term “Good Witch” is a hold over of St. Augustine’s prejudices. One and a half millennia later are we just beginning to understand that goodness is a fundamentally human quality despite all contrary indications?

“The first time I called myself a ‘Witch’ was the most magical moment of my life.”
― Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America

Figure1 – Faces, Halloween 2019, Salem, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2019.

We hear that people can put on multiple faces. “He is two-faced!” The theme of today’s photograph, Figure 1, is just that. cast in a macabre Salem Halloween light, I ask the simple question whether you can change your face. Perhaps this question has new or re-emphasized meaning in our current political environment, where truth and reality are continuously being challenged. Here a skeleton, whose flesh is still liquifying, takes off its grinning face to reveal an even more terrifying demeanor. All the while a watchful face in the background stares at him. This was taken through the window of a gallery on Essex Street. And just to confuse and mix message everything, we have the flowery pastel colors.These are happy colors. The subject matter tells a different story.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4 USM lens at 100 mm, ISO 400, Aperture Priority AE Mode 1/60th sec at f/8.0, pattern metering with no exposure compensation. 

Figure 1 – Photominimalism – Gull tracks and shell shards in the sand, Crane Beach, Ipswich, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2019.

A walk along the beach so often draws me photographically to minimalist subjects. Ripples in the sand, strands of seaweed, and a few small shells draw me inexorably to photograph. On last Sunday’s trip to Crane Beach I was drawn to the subject matter of Figure 1. Here are some gull tracks in the wet sand and a few shattered and sun-bleached shells. Animal tracks are curious, of course. Most often they are of the most fleeting and ephemeral nature, soon obliterated by the shifting forces of nature. A few times they turn to rock, preserved forever. And rarest still, these stoney impressions become discovered by paleontologists, eons hence, and become held in high esteem as trinkets of lost ages and species.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4 USM lens at 100mm, ISO 400, Aperture Priority SE Mode 1/640th sec at f/7.1 with pattern metering and no exposure compensation. 

Figure 1 – Horsewoman on the sand bar, Crane Beach, Ipswich, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2019.

I have been continuing to work on my Crane Beach images from Sunday. As the tide was receding, a sand bar developed, and a group of horse riders rode out on the sand. It was magical! Waves on both sides, just a lick of solid ground surrounded by water. The horses appeared to be having as much fun as the riders. Although one of the four horses I saw never went out on the bar, perhaps made nervous by the surrounding water. And with my 70-200 mm lens I was able to get several good images of them. The photograph of Figure 1 is so far my favorite. I have a few “riders in the mist photographs” that I still need to work up. I surprised myself here, when I decided that the image worked best in a soft sepia-toned black and white.

Canon T2i with EF70-200 mm f/4 USM lens and 200 mm, ISO 400, Aperture Priority AE Mode 1/1000th sec at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – Great black-backed gull, Crane Beach, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2019.

Yesterday was an absolutely gorgeous trip to Crane Beach. Crane Beach is spectacular anytime of year, but particularly gorgeous in October, when the crowds of beach goers are gone for the season and you can more quietly reflect on the sea, the surf, and the birds. I took figure 1 of a great black-backed gull, Larus marinus. The great part refers to the fact that this is the largest species of gull in the world. Typical wingspans are five to five and a half feet! The black-backed part is, well, that is kind of obvious.

This fellow is delighted to have grabbed a tasty clam from the receding tidewaters. Now to crack it open, simply done by flying high and dropping it on a rock.

Canon T2i with EF 70-200 mm Lf/4 USM lens at mm, ISO 400, AE Priority Mode 1/1000th sec at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation, and I got away with pattern focusing.

Figure 1 – Stylized iPhone Image “The Wizard on Front Street,” Salem, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2019.

I was very taken by the bright and shiny wizard or warlock costume going down Salem’s Front Street during last Thursday’s Halloween Parade. I took the photograph that is the basis of Figure1 with my iPhone XS but, as with the gossamer dancer, the lack of facial detail and the pixelation of the night photograph troubled me. Also some of the people and objects in the background were distracting. So again, as with the gossamer dancer, I resorted to stylization in PRISMA and was quite happy with the final result of fantasy that Figure 1 reveals. It all seems like a book illustration, perhaps this is the wizard Gandalf from The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings!

Figure 1 – Windaersheek Beach, Gloucester, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2019.

Figure 1 – is another image from last Sunday, a gloomy day, at Windaersheek Beach in Gloucester, MA. It shows Avalon terrain granite boulders rising from the sand. Avalonia was a microcontinent in the Paleozoic Its remaining lithospheric fragments underlie the eastern coast of North America.  It bears its name from the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland.When you sit on a windy day and look out at the sea, such geological formations seem to call out to cousin boulders across the sea, these in Africa. It is a reminder of the age of the Earth and the physical forces that drive its evolution. 

Canon T2i with EF 70-200 mm f/4L USM Lens at 98 mm, ISO 400, Aperture Priority AF Mode 1/100th sec at f/16 with no exposure compensation.