Rain on the pond

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Figure 1 - Rain on the pond. Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge, Sudbury, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Figure 1 – Rain on the pond. Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge, Sudbury, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

It was a rainy, foggy day here in Massachusetts. But at lunch time the sun came out and I headed to the pond in the hope of catching the peak of the foliage. When I got there the clouds had come back. As i walked through the woods marveling at the damp silence, I ran into another photographer and chatted with his for a while. When I made it down to the pond the rain had started in earnest; so I tucked my camera beneath my rain coat. But then I decided to experiment with the image of Figure 1 of the rain on the water. I was quite pleased in the end not only with the rings on the surface but also with the vertical rain drops. Vertical as a result of the fact that the shutter moves vertically as well.

And speaking of rain drops. I dried them off my camera with a Kleenex and when I got back to the car with a cloth that I keep there. Once home I carefully further dried the camera with my wife’s hair dryer. No damage done and I am reasonably happy with the results. Rain is tricky with your camera but it can be rewarding. But it’s always important to plan on how you would keep your camera dry in a pinch.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 184 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode 1/200th sec at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation.

Using up the fall foliage

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Figure 1 - Fall on the pond at the Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge, Maynard, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Figure 1 – Fall on the pond at the Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge, Maynard, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

A friend and reader wrote me yesterday in response to my photograph of the fall foliage at the Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge. She is traveling in Europe and asked me to save some of the fall color for her. Well i went off into the woods again this morning and well, Jane, I’m a little worried that I’m eating it all up!

It was a picture perfect [sic] day this morning. There was gorgeous long golden light, blue skies, and so many leaves falling that I even tried t capture the scene in a little video on my IPhone. You pass another walker and you greet them with a big smile. Well, I always do that, only here when you are not fighting mosquitos the act seem a little more sincere.

So this morning I found myself delighted by the image of Figure 1. I am starting to realize, to understand, that fall is more than vivid reds and yellows against crisp azure skies. There are also wonderful pastel tones, cyans and magentas, that seem to give the season a contrasting, complementing pallet.

Canon T2i with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens at 100 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode 1/1250th sec at f/7.1 with -1 exposure compensation.

October on the pond in a time of drought

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Figure 1 - October on the pond in a season of drought, Sudbury, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Figure 1 – October on the pond in a season of drought, Sudbury, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

I went walking at the Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge for the first time, in a long time, yesterday. There seems to be a disagreement about where we are in terms of fall foliage. One point is clear, that the color this year in New England are going to be pretty pathetic, because of the past summer’s drought. Still there are a few spots of dramatic color, as in Figure 1. The drought itself is clearly visible on the pond, where the water levels are dangerously low. In many places where there should be water there are only reflective pools of mud.The geese are irritable and the sluice-way where the path crosses the water and bisects the pond is dry and there is no reason the walk across the make-shift wooden bridge.

I met an enthusiastic young fellow, who was walking on an adventure with his mother and brothers. He was so excited about the ammunition bunkers and explained to me, barely able to contain himself, about how the bunkers were locked and how there were bullets inside but no dead bodies. I told him about the history of the place and he said, “wow you know a lot about it.”The only actual war being waged was by a battalion of rangers and volunteers clearing the path of branches and pulling up invasive plant species.

Canon T2i with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens at 100 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode at 1/2500th sec f/7.1 with -1 exposure compensation.

 

Photopictorialism Study #16 – The Harvest

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Figure 1 - Late summer harvest, Concord, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Figure 1 – Late summer harvest, Concord, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

I was looking through some photographs over the last coupkle of months and came upon this one of the late summer harvest. I was troubled by the whiteness of the sky, but the addition of noise gives it some depth. When I took the photograph my thought was very much of a landscape painting. So here it is done up in an impressionist photopictorialism style. As we head now into autumn and winter, this is meant to capture the last glorious moments of summer, as if it were and old friend.

Fuji FinePixAX550, ISO 100, 1/60th sec at f/8.0 with no exposure compensation.

Beware

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Figure 1 - Having your tarantula on a silver platter. Halloween, 2016. West Concord, MA. IPhone photograph. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Figure 1 – Having your tarantula on a silver platter. Halloween, 2016. West Concord, MA. IPhone photograph. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Well, we are deep into October, and you never know when you are going to encounter something delightfully frightening. As an example we have the ghoul of Figure1 serving up a silver platter of tarantula. He bears just a bit of a resemblance to the Harry Potter’s Gringotts Wizarding Bank. This is part of the great joy of a New England October. The air is crisp. The colors are emerging, there is apple cider and pumpkin pie, and Halloween is everywhere. We can, for a few moments, ignore the upcoming election and just be kids again.

 

Foreteller of the seasons

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Figure 1 – Ferns giving up their color in October. Wilmington Town Forest, Wilmington. MA. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

When we think of the changing seasons in the Northeast, we tend to think about crocus in the spring and maples in the fall. Both shout out their message of change with vivid color. But I have noticed that the ferns seem more solid in their prophecy, The start as fiddleheads, but wait until spring is firmly established before they fill the forest floors with chartreuse and delicate leaves, delightfully illuminated by the sun through the canopy. And then they hold the stage through summer, creating what is both a fairy land and a primordial landscape. It is always worth a few moments to stop and study them. Like a character in Jurassic Park, your look nervously about for the tiny but ferocious and pirhana-like Compsognathus longipes. And then when you reach autumn, as we have now, you watch as these intricate old friends turn yellow and then brown. They are soon to disappear, and where they stood proudly, is soon to be covered in snow.

Fuji FinePix AX550, ISO 200, 1/30th sec at f/3.3, with no exposure compensation.

Patchwork in black and silver

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Figure 1 - Patchwork in black and silver (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Figure 1 – Patchwork in black and silver (c) DE Wolf 2016.

I was attracted the other day by this patchwork fabric. The pieces are black cloth and the lines are made of silver thread. The appeal to me was multiple. First, I love the metalic reflections. Second, I love the simplicity of the geometric. Third, I like the top lighting that accentuates the texture and enables you to create a photographic story, a tone-on-tone in black. And recognize that black is the lack of light; so it seems almost a contradiction to have tones of black. Are these shades of nothingness? Fourth, and finally, I am drawn to the randomness of the patchwork itself, which seems to challenge the perfect symmetry of the lines.

And needless-to-say I took this simple photograph with my IPhone. I am starting to master the trick of lining up the lines and edges with the IPhone while at the same time not tilting the camera and creating a warped image.

Happy Halloween

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halloweenrugGet excited, everyone! It is October, and Halloween, my personal favorite, is right around the corner. So I am dusting of my Halloween gallery and adding a Frankenstein image to get everyone in the mood.

The great point about Halloween, in the United States, is that it has lost its religious connotation. It is about trick or treating children, costumes, and candy. Everyone has their favorite candies and there is a lot of trading after the trick or treat, and also a lot of mothers and fathers seizing their tithe by eminent domain.

Frankenstein. (c) DE Wolf 2016 Frankenstein. (c) DE Wolf 2016[/caption]

“If human beings had genuine courage,
they’d wear their costumes every day of the year,
not just on Halloween.”
Douglas Coupland

Shadow of ourselves

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Figure 1 - Cat shadow by Velarius Geng and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Figure 1 – Cat shadow by Velarius Geng and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

The other night my cat jumped up in bed. After a while, it surprised me that she had not settled down’ so I looked to see what she was up to. She was warily watching her shadow cast by the nightlight onto the ceiling.  It was a giant threatening feline. Most pet-lovers have been amused by their puppy or kitten’s first encounter with a mirror. Why won’t it play with me. My cat Cloe’ likes to dig at her reflection on the shiny tile hearth. We call it ‘Eolc.” But all of this made me wonder about how people reacted to the first photographs – or more profoundly what it meant to them to be photographed.

It seems a curious point that when we look at an old picture, we see it as a captured moment a conversation, if you will, with the past. But the point is, in fact, that in reality they are gone; the photograph remains. So the photograph may be only a shadow of self, but it is the photograph that denies corruption.The creepiest of nineteenth century photographic images are the postmortem mementos, usually of dead children in their parents arms or clutching a favorite toy. For those that survived, the photograph again was all that remained, if not alive, then at least tangible.

And, of course, the photograph was magical. Yes, these were people who like us were enamored of technology. They understood, or at least nodded to, scientific explanations of the photographic process. But they remained in awe – and really we should always be in awe of scientific discovery. It is the quintessential ingredient of humanness.

Before photography there was drawing, but an artist was doing the drawing. In contrast, photography seemed more like Moses commanding the Red Sea to part. The photographer commanded light to paint. It was Fox Talbot’s “Pencil of Nature.” It was as if a piece of your essence emanated from your self and was captured in silver.  So everyone wanted a piece of this magic.

What I find myself wondering is whether this magical element is truly the distinction, the great divide, between film and digital photography. We have become so enured to technology that we no longer see it as magical.  There are too many high technology steps between concept and creation for there to be much magic left. And, of course, the the tangibility is gone. With analogue photography, An image lies embedded in the emulsion. It is there for all to see. Where is the tangibility of a digital image? More often than not it is never printed out. Its whole existence consists of captured electrons and frozen magnetic dipoles. It is states. It can be erased forever in and instant.

Cloe’ yawns at all the fuss.

“I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.”
Robert Louis Stevenson – My Shadow