The first September light

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Figure 1 – The first September light, Late summer’s grass, Sept. 1, 2017, Sudbury, MA. 9c) DE Wolf 2017.

So, it is officially September, and I am taking a day off ahead of the Labor Day Weekend. Always sad to see summer officially go; always nice to see and feel the coming of the September light. For the first time in a very long time, and I emphasize the very long time, I went this morning to the Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge and was struck, so immediately, by the glow of grass seeds in the September morning light. It was glorious, and I took the photograph of Figure 1 to try and capture the moment. I used my big lens close-up, not the best but what was on the camera, and spot focused on the seeds in the middle foreground. The result, I hope, is successful in its simplicity. The sunlight on the grass is nature’s simple gift for a late summer morning, and, of course, the woods beckon.

Canon T2i with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM len at 100 mm, ISO 800, Aperture Priority AE mode, 1/80th sec at f/22 with -1 exposure compensation.

The first day of school

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Figure 1 – Teacher and children in front of a one room sod schoolhouse, Woods County, Oklahoma, Territory 1895. From the Wikipedia and the US NARA This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person’s official duties

Today was a beautiful late summer’s morning in Massachusetts. Suddenly the traffic has intensified – in an instant. This is because in many towns today is the first day of school. I delighted in passing house after house where the parents had lined their children up on the doorstep to take cell phone photographs. The boys wear clean khakis, their hair combed out. In my day we had a lacquer that we wore to school. It basically pasted down your hair and “come wind or wrack” (Shakespeare again) nothing would move a hair of it. The little girls wear pink dresses and seem so much more willing to accept the experience. They all wear what Shakespeare referred to in the “ages of man” soliloquy a sunny morning face. I have heard that parents slow the whole bus route down to snap images of little Johnny or little Suzie one leg up onto the bus.

But it is all so delightful, a rite of passage for the twenty-first century. It is such a quintessential subject for the cellphone. Just take an image or little video and send it off to grandma. I thought for a moment about fading Kodacolor prints from an earlier age, my earlier age. I am so fascinated about how this record will be saved, sorted, and selected by future archivist.

But, needless to say my mind then wandered to wonder about first days of school a hundred years ago. And a wonderful example of what I found is Figure 1 from the US National Archives. It shows one room school house, constructed of sod, in 1895 Oklahoma. It is Woods County, Oklahoma Territory to be more exact. Standing in front is the teacher and all the children. The picture is like the cellphone images of today. Yes, someone had to set up a significant camera to take the photograph. Everyone appreciated the freedom of being outside for a few moments. Everyone itched to get on to recess. And quite probably, the photograph was quickly forgotten. But school is where we read our first poem. I remember that so well. It was by Robert Frost. And school was where I first read Shakespeare. It was Julius Caesar.

So we may envy the freshness of experience of the smiling faces of this morning. “oh, the places you’ll go.”

 

August skies

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Figure 1 – An August Sky, Westborough, MA August 20, 2017. IPhone photograph. (c) DE Wolf 2017.

I so want to be in Idaho today. Ah well. But I am going to share the image of an August Sky as Figure 1. In the Northeast the Dogs Days are resplendent with dramatic fair weather skies.

I remember August in summer camp. Did I ever mention how much I hated summer camp? But August brought with it warm breezes and dramatic clouds. As a youth, I remember and staring up contemplatively at the August sky. Everything was calm, but there was the promise of the coming of September, which meant another school year. And each new school year was like a rebirth. A sense that lasted perhaps until Halloween, when it all became routine again.

It is strange that even in adulthood we subliminally measure time according to an academic calendar. So soon I will be talking to you about the magnificence of September light. But as we ascend to that, please take a moment to look up and, of course, to take a few images that capture your thoughts. It is not a waste of time.

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.”

John Lubbock (1834-1913)

Forever caught

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Figure 1 -First attempt at photo-pictorialism. Heard Farma, Wayland, Massachusetts, December 17, 2015. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Remarkably today is the fifth anniversary of Hati and Skoll. So I would again like to thank all of my readers. I love your comments and appreciate your continued interest. I cherish the interconnection.

I have been preparing for a photography show – more on that later; but part of that process is chosing your favorite images. So in celebration I wanted to indulge myself and share again, as Figure 1, one of the my photographs that I “rediscovered.” It is my Photopictorialism Study Number 1.

I suspect that many of you are into genealogical research. Thinking about family trees, I was struck the other day by a Tweet by political commentator Heidi Przybyla:

“I have been thinking on how Twitter and social media are putting so many on the record for history — and for their descendants.”

We have spoken often in this blog about the across time experience of nineteenth century photography. There are so many nameless people. All we have of them is a moment frozen in silver gelatin. Usually, even if we know their names, there is so little information to be found. Theirs is the silence of anonymity. As people looking for their roots look back at us a century or more hence, they will be searching huge databases. They will find us tagged in digital images and will go from there to search our tweets and posts.

They will know us and know what we thought. They will know how we acted at this moment of national crisis. I am loathe to judge people of a different time. Everything must be taken in context. Yet in the extreme there are absolutes. Lord Kelvin remarked that:

“The true measure of a man is what he would do if he knew he would never be caught.”

The essence of the modern age is that our photographs are tagged and dated, our location imprinted on our images, and our thoughts, both the 140 character kind and the longer ones, are stored forever. Even apathy and indifference are captured. We are all eternally caught.

A fruitcake for the ages

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We’ve spoken often about the magic of photography, and one of the magical aspects of it lies in its ability to bring us the unexpected, allowing us to see what we never expected to see like: Mozart’s wife and a two-hundred and fifty year old pretzel. Seeing such things is an unexpected bonus of the magical ability of the camera to record and preserve.

So speaking of the unexpected and the, well, preserved, I’m offering up today an image of a one hundred and six year old fruitcake. This particular fruitcake belonged to the Cape Adare-based Northern Party of Scott’s Terra Nova expedition (1910-13), and was found by the Antarctic Heritage Trust in Antarctica’s oldest building. It was constructed by a Norwegian explorer’s team in 1899 and subsequently used by Scott’s team in 1911 And therein lay the frozen fruitcake..

There is the immediate question whether it is still edible and the related question whether it ever was. I am reminded of a story that a friend of mine told me about his father. Around 1998 they were cleaning out the family barn and found some chopped beef labeled “1948.” My friend’s wife grimaced and said, “Can you imagine what that tastes like?” to which my friend’s father replied, “It was pretty good actually!”

The cat days of August

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I will make the sacrilegious statement that baseball can get a bit long in the tooth during the dog days of August. Dog days nothing! Rather it took a tabby kitten to rally things up. This past Wednesday Saint Louis was trailing five to four in the bottom of the sixth with bases loaded, when a feral kitten ran onto the field and forced a game delay as a grounds keeper fielded the cat. It did not work out so well for the grounds keeper as the kitten unlike a baseball scratched and bit the poor fellow who was just doing his job.

After the kitten delay the game resumed and on the next pitch Yadier Molina hit a grand-slam home-run to win the game. The kitten was dubbed or anointed as “Rally Cat” for his game winning role. But alas, he “disappeared” in “the tunnel.” However, the story does have a happy ending as the next day “Rally Cat” was found on the streets of downtown Saint Louis. Adoption is in his adorable future. And as for the rest of us, we are left with this wonderful photograph by  Bill Greenblatt of the UPI. It is so like a cheetah flying at top speed over the African savanna. 

 

Wow, now that’s a great photograph

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It’s been a while since I’ve commented about a press photograph. But let me first set the scene. In a unanimous vote last week the United Nations Security Council imposed new sanctions on the North Koreans because of their nuclear weapons program. It was a historic moment, beautifully captured by Mary Altaffer for the Associated Press. The image shows  Nikki R. Haley, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, speaking to the Chinese ambassador, Liu Jieyi, just before the vote. The picture is unusual because it is very reminiscint of a candid photograph rather than a formal press shot. There is the pink dress, Amabassador Haley’s position, the expression on the two ambassadors faces, and the almost hands-touching posture. The photograph is brilliant in its spontaneity and the sense of detente that it conveys. It is something very unusual and well-crafted to my eye. So I am going to say, “Wow, now that’s a great photograph!”

When I was young I used to wonder why anyone would want Ambassador Haley’s position. The UN seems largely talk, talk, talk. I suspect the reality is deeper, and, of course, there is the matter of adding foreign policy experience to one’s resume.

The Photo Ark project

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The other evening I was watching a fascinating documentary about National Geographic photographer Jim Sartore’s project to preserve photographically as many of the worlds animal species as he can. He entitles this The Photo Ark, and the analogy is poignant.  It is a very noble effort and his work is stunning; so I thought that I would share his website with everyone. I recommend it to nature lovers and photographers alike. Sartore is following  a simple but striking approach: to photograph against either pure white or pure black. You may remember my recommendation to photograph flowers at night with flash.

Pictorially this is a magnificent approach. It isolates the species, which is intriguing because in reality species are always part of an ecosystem and have no true existence outside of this system. Here they get to stand for a moment in the sun or in the moonlight by themselves. And this sets them off in isolation. They are beautiful, but for many this may be the end of a long evolutionary line.

 

A churning storm

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Figure 1 – The churning storm, Westborough, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2017.

Storm watching is great as long as your life, home, and loved ones are not in danger. And there is something wonderful in a primordial sense in the staves of lightening and crack of thunder that accompanying a sudden, dark, and churning summer storm.

So we were watching the clouds, rain, hail and wind of a later afternoon July thunderstorm on Wednesday afternoon, when I was struck by churning clouds. These reminded me of images of the unbreathable, storm clouds of Jupiter. That added to the other-worldliness of the moment. I grabbed my IPhone. It was the only camera that I had. The result is the photograph of Figure 1. A few moments later low lying clouds moved in and obliterated the drama into a dull uniform grayness.