BeechTree Highfield Hall and Gardens, Falmouth, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

If you grow up with the woods of the American east coast, Beech tree (Fagus grandifolia) is part of your memories. I remember a huge example that I used to sit under in front of Cornell’s Baker Laboratory, having lunch with my friends Jan and Wendy in graduate school. And then there was one where my son went to high school, which was a perfect background for portraits. The one in Figure 1 is at Highfield Hall and Gardens in Falmouth, Massachusetts.

Needless-to-say what attracted me was the stumps of ancient branches. And when I worked the image up I was pleased to find the “Z” carved in the lower left. Zorro? These are, of course, violations and vandalism. But in another sense they indicate a vain attempted at immortality, made all the more poignant by the fact that no one remembers who scarred their mark into the tree’s trunk.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 70 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/250th sec at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – White chairs. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

This morning I came across these white chairs displayed in a store window. White-on-white, tone-on-tone, is one of my favorite black and white subjects. There is a certain purity to the subject that creates a photograph out of shades of grey, and yet the shades of grey retain the sense of whiteness, which seems a paradox.

The image was taken with my IPhone, which did an excellent job of nailing, that is centering, the histogram. As I’ve said before, while this is the most immediate of cameras, it gives you the opportunity to carefully frame the image, as if you were using a big view camera. The only problem that I find is that it is always a bit tricky to get the shutter to trigger. I suppose that they are trying to compensate out random touches of the screen. But I always fear that the hard tapping is going to mess up the focus.

Figure 1 – Ruby-throated hummingbird (female), July 27, 2016, Sudbury, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

After our very mild winter we have moved into a summer of drought. However, the combination of events has been very good for hostas, which are right now putting on a very dramatic floral display. Simultaneously the orange trumpet vines (Campsis radicans) are in full bloom. All of these flowers have attracted the ruby-throated hummingbirds (Archilochus colubris), which are the only breeding hummingbirds on the east coast of the United States.

So my challenge for today was to photograph, or at least attempt to photograph, these iridescent delicate little flyers.  In full expectation of humiliation, I took a chair, positioned myself, among the hosta flowers, watched the bees darting in and out of the lavender blossoms, and waited. Sitting, I am told, is not as threatening to the birds. Optimistically, I had my big lens and because it was just a bit overcast I set the ISO unusually high at 3200.

Figure 1 is my best image so far. I am reasonably happy. I love the lavender pastels. Even the sharpness is pretty good. Although I would have preferred a bit more sharpness in the birds face.

Canon T2i with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens at 250 mm. ISO 320, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/1000th sec at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – Specular reflections off of a car. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Figure1 is another IPhone just for fun image, an abstraction. It is simply the specular reflections of my wife’s car onto our garage door. Perhaps most appealing are the eerie almost spectral appearances or glows on the right hand side. It almost like an aurora display. These kinds of reflections are fairly common and quite often very intriguing, especially when you are stuck in morning traffic, when anything is a relief from monotony. Sometimes they are fairly long lasting, as in the sun reflecting off of bowed window class onto the siding of an opposite house. Besides leading to invented religious experiences they can, in fact, be quite destructive, as in they can cause the siding to melt if they concentrate the light enough. In extreme cases they can actually set houses on fire.

Figure 1 – Water-stained napkin. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Figure 1 is strictly for fun. I am ever testing the limits of my IPhone to capture abstractions in odd places and this afternoon I took this black and white photograph of the water stains from a glass a napkin. It is really amazing how up close you can get with the IPhone. I like the ridges and the valleys of the image and I like the multiple but not concentric circles. These appear like erratic orbits. Try counting the number of circles and tracing them. There are four.

Figure 1 – Great black-backed gull at Woods Neck Beach, Falmouth, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Bird photography is a little like stamp collecting. One of the goals is to photograph as many species as possible. And then you store away in your mind that this not so perfect photograph is an acceptable place holder until you get a really good one. All summer long I have been chasing a decent photograph of a Towhee, and I am having similar problems achieving a decent image of a eastern blue jay or a Baltimore oriole. So Figure 1 fits that bill. It is an image that I took at Wood Neck Beach in Falmouth, Massachusetts of a great black-backed gull – larus marinus. It is fuzzy because of the flatness of the light and the scattering of the atmosphere. But I do really like the juxtaposition of the people of the image. The woman who seems to be launching the bird and indicating a horizontal plan for it to fly in. And in modern times people play an important role in the life of this species.

It is the “flying brick.” I remember once taking the ferry from Falmouth to Martha’s Vinyard. People were feeding these gulls. They would follow along with perfect matched speed with the boat, look to the side, and then break ranks to grab a arm raised offered morsel. These were usually french fries. So much for gull nutrition. So until I get a better image of this beautiful flyer …

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 172 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/2000th sec at f/13.0 with no exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – The construction robot. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

I am starting to realize that even though the singularity by some reckonings is still forty-nine years away that the accelerating pace of movement towards it has resulted in its being more and more visible. You just have to look. Yesterday I was down in Boston’s Seaport District and stopped with a couple of tourists, who with their two sons, was watching a remote-control robotic “tamping device” pressing down the gravel sublayer in front of a hole in the ground. It reminded me immediately of the GE commercial, where the woman says “It’s a brain-controlled drone. My brain controls my thumbs which control the drone.” Hmm!

But here it is – one small step. And besides, this particular robot or drone did bare a striking resemblance to R2D2. That is, it was cute in a metallic sort of way. I snapped a picture with my IPhone (Figure 1). But it doesn’t quite capture the sensations of the moment. The Boston Seaport is filled with the sights, sounds, and bustle of construction. Massachusetts led the continent into the American Revolution and it is truly leading the Singularity Revolution. We have never lost, always expected and practiced greatness.  It’s in the air, and you’ve got to imagine this little R2 doing his job in a massive cacophony of construction noise. It’s interesting because when you think about the asymptotic rush of a mathematical singularity you don’t usually think about sound. But maybe mathematics has a voice. Maybe it is like Pythagoras‘ “Music of the Spheres.” Maybe the sound of a true singularity is so pure that it can only be heard by the gods.

Some years back now I went to a restaurant and encountered a robotic waiter. To be specific you ordered and paid through the robot (for now) and I refused to use it. I was thinking two things. First, that part of the dining out experience is interacting with the waiter or waitress. Second, these people need jobs to earn a living. This second point was reiterated to me by the waitress, who confirmed the fact that she did indeed need her job and didn’t want to be replaced by a machine. There is this underlying view that somehow it will all work out and that we will not create a chronically unemployed class. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

In the classic construction site this process would employ two people. Like the proverbially road construction crew of ten guys digging a hole – one doing the digging and nine looking at the guy in the hole, classically this tamping task would employ two people: one guy doing the tamping and one foreman supervising. The machine makes it a lot safer for the tamperer. I say that because the hole was deep and perilously close. Also the tamperer’s back is certainly spared. But in terms of labor number, the job it seems, so far at least, still requires two people and an adorable, but expensive, machine.