Best news pictures of 2015

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I realized today that it is over two weeks into the New Year, and I have not discussed any of the “Best Photographs of 2015” lists – and there are a lot of them. The problem is that 2015 was filled with so much human misery that one feels superficial if you like and make a big deal over any of the happy ones. That said I am going to begin with something glorious, ringing in the New Year with London’s Big Ben. Is this a celebration of what is possible in 2016 or a celebration of the passing of 2015? Still we are told that there will ever be an England – and there is some solace in that.

I was pleased to see in some of these lists some of the images that I have discussed previously. Nilufer Demir / DHA / Reuters photograph from this past September of a Turkish police officer cradling the body of drowned migrant child Aylan Kurdi is there, as is both NASA’s photograph of the discovery of water on Mars and photographs of a starving child in Syria. These images represent the two extremes of human endeavor. But the spectrum is much more complex.The CBS News website has a set of “Best of 2015 Photographs” that prodigiously comes in at 101. It is as if they have avoided the difficult choice.  I think that Philippe Wojazer of Reuters image of Parisians observing a moment of silence at the Trocadero in front the Eiffel Tower in tribute to the victims of the attacks of Paris, Nov. 16 is a poignant reminder of 2015’s end. France will always stand as well. And this seemingly simpole photograph is an image for the ages.

There is Drew Angerer of Getty Images’ photograph of same-sex marriage supporter Ryan Aquilina protesting in front of the US Supreme Court on April 28. And then there is a disturbingly gorgeous but apocalyptic image from September 8 by Suhaib Salem of Reuters, showing a Palestinian boy sleeps on a mattress inside the remains of his family’s house, which was destroyed by shelling during the 50-day 2014 war in Gaza. This dichotomy of the beautiful mixed with the terrible is also to be found in the stunningly haunting image by Aris Messinis for AFP/Getty Images showing Syrian refugees covered with life blankets upon arriving to the Greek island of Lesbos.

On a lighter side there is Johannes Eisele of the AFP’s image of Pope Francis wearing a bright yellow plastic poncho last January as he waved to well wishers in Tacloban. And finally we have Jacquelyn Martin of the AP’s March 9, 2015 photograph showing President Obama crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the historic civil rights March across that same bridge.

These are all, of course press photographs. They remind us of the complexity of the world and of its possibilities. Maybe the last photograph offers up the hope that the world can change – I do not know.

Ancient lenses

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Figure 1 - Viking aspheric Visby Lens. From the Wikimedia Commons originally posted to Flickr.com, by Jonund and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

Figure 1 – Viking aspheric Visby Lens (11th to 12th century). From the Wikimedia Commons originally posted to Flickr.com, by Jonund and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

Yesterday, I discussed the mystery of Layard’s Nimrud Stone and sided with the British Museum’s view that it was a decorative object rather than either a magnifying glass or a burning stone.  It should be noted that the view that it was possibly a functional lens was voiced by none other than the great Victorian physicist Sir David Brewster (1781-1868).  Even if the British Museum is correct and the Nimrud stone never served as a functional lens, the question remains whether there were functional lenses in the ancient world or asked differently, when was the lens invented?

The answer is “absolutely,” as this quote from Aristophanes’ “The Clouds” proves.

STREPSIADES I have found a very clever way to annul that conviction; you will admit that much yourself.

SOCRATES  What is it?

STREPSIADES Have you ever seen a beautiful, transparent stone at the druggists’,with which you may kindle fire?

SOCRATES You mean a crystal lens.

STREPSIADES That’s right. Well, now if I placed myself with this stone in the sun and a long way off from the clerk, while he was writing out the conviction, I could make all the wax, upon which the words were written, melt.

SOCRATES Well thought out, by the Graces!

Now “The Clouds” was first performed in 423 BCE; so the fifth century BCE, which is not really all that far from the Nimrud Stone wthat dates back to the seventh century BCE. And you can see by Aristophanes’ words that it is a pretty common place object in his day.  Of course, you are skeptical of the name lens. Why call it a lens? The word lens comes from Lens culinaris the Latin name of the lentil, because a double-convex lens is lentil-shaped. The lentil plant also gives its name to a geometric figure. So Aristophanes is our earliest written record of lenses.

Some have argued that lenses were well-known to the ancient world.The writings of Pliny the Elder (23–79) show that burning-glasses were used by the Romans and also mentions how the emperor Nero (37-58) used a concave emerald as a corrective lens to help him watch gladiatorial games.

As we move into the eleventh and twelfth centuries ACE the use of lenses becomes well documented. Figure 1 is an example of a quartz lens excavated in the Viking harbor town of Fröjel, Gotland, Sweden 1999. These “Visby lenses” appear to have been produced turning on pole lathes. The lens of Figure 1 is encased in a beautiful silver mount, which may have been created later. These 11th to 12th century objects have imaging quality comparable to aspheric leneses produced in the 1950s.

Aspheric lenses are lenses that correct by shape for spherical aberration. That is a pretty sophisticated and some complicated mathematics is required to derive the required shape. But herein lies another marvelous paradox. The Viking craftsmen didn’t have knowledge of the mathematics needed, instead they worked by trial and error. Indeed, we may ask whether more than one craftsman actually possessed this knowledge. In any event it is a beautiful example of so-called “secret knowledge.” Perhaps most intriguing is the fact, a reverse on the paradox, that today when an optical engineer wants to design a complicated lens, (s)he uses Monte Carlo-based software. These programs are the modern day equivalent of trial and error.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

The mystery of Layard’s Nimrud Stone

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Figure 1 - The Nimrud or Layard's Lens in the British Museum. Image from the Wikipedia and uploaded by user Geni under creative commons attribution license.

Figure 1 – The Nimrud or Layard’s lens in the British Museum. What was its purpose? Image from the Wikipedia and uploaded by user Geni under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nimrud_lens_British_Museum.jpg.

It is an interesting point that the critical “invention” of photography was the development of the photochemical process. That is, because of the development of the camera obscura many centuries earlier, the “camera” itself was developed before the process. Indeed, it may be solidly argued that the concept that you could create a miniaturized or demagnified image of what you were looking at was a well-established fact as was the fact that light can react with materials, such as the bleaching of book binding exposed to too much sun. Neither of these rise as obvious, but rather each had to be discovered and refined through observation and experimentation.

This said, it has to be the case that while it was invented and developed much earlier than the photographic process, the camera too did not spring forth fully born from the brow of Zeus. Over the next few weeks, I’d like to explore some of the history of the camera. It seems a good point to begin with the mystery of the Nimrud or Layard’s lens. This object is shown in Figure 1 and is a mystery fit for Sherlock Holmes, and while it has an answer, we will never know it for sure. What is it?

The name of Austen Henry Layard (1817 – 1894) is one that raises the hairs on the necks of antiquaries. He was an archaeologist and cuneiformist, best known for his excavation of ancient Assyrian ruins at Nimrud and of Niniveh. Significantly, in 1851 at Niniveh he uncovered the library of Ashurbanipal. We should note that the Assyrian king Shalmaneser I (1274 BCE–1245 BCE) built Nimrud and that it remained occupied until 610 BCE.

Layard’s Nimrud lens, is a 3000-year-old piece of rock crystal or quartz, which was excavated by Layard in the Assyrian palace of Nimrud, in modern-day Iraq. Obviously, it looks very much like a magnifying glass. But the mystery of what it was used for remains unanswered. Was it indeed a magnifying glass? Was it perhaps a burning-glass used to start fires? Or was it merely decorative?

The lens is currently on display at the British Museum in London. It is slightly oval and appears to have been roughly ground. It has a diameter of ~ 38 mm and a thickness of ~ 23 mm with a focal length of about 12 cm (so ~ f/3.0)  and is approximately equivalent to a 3 X magnifier. It is very imperfect as a focusing or imaging device and as a result the British Museum believes that the lens was merely decorative. They point out that there is no evidence that the lens was used either as a lens for magnification or as a burning glass.

There you have a straight-forward scientific mystery complete with a likely, albeit disappointing, solution. However, there are those that subscribe to the view that the ancients were more intelligent than we or, at least, than we give them credit for. This is a curious phenomenon, and you have to wonder whether it reflects a keen observation of current events leading to the view that we are an incredibly stupid species and must have been smarter once. In any event, conjecture has run simply from the suggestion that Layard’s lens was used to aid in fine detail writing or decoration to the fanciful belief that the ancient Assyrian’s invented the telescope – two and a half millennia before Galileo. The fact that the god Saturn was often depicted surrounded by rings of serpents has been taken as evidence of this view. For us, it would appear unlikely that Layard’s lens is an ancestor of the modern camera lens. But the mystery remains. We must look elsewhere for the camera lens’ origin.

 

Teacher teacher shining bright

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Figure 1 - Photopictorialist study # 6 - Middleton Plantation, Charlston, SC. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Figure 1 – Photopictorialist study # 6 – Middleton Plantation, Charlston, SC. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Last Thursday, I happened upon one of those witty posts from “Purple Clover:”

“Question – If someone from the 1950’s suddenly reappeared today what would be the most difficult thing to explain to them about life today?

Answer – I possess in my pocket a device capable of accessing to entirety of information known to man. I use it to look at pictures of cats and get in arguments with strangers.”

It struck me that there was a lot of truth to this point, even though I am myself a great admirer of cute, cuddly, cat pictures. The cat after all is the symbol of greater knowledge and many of us have wondered whether they truly have a terrestrial origin and genesis.

On Friday I found myself on the MBTA Boston’s subway, the Red Line to be precise, and I mention that because therein rides the nation’s intelligentsia. The Red Line passes Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and then the Massachusetts General Hospital. Anyway I was hanging from a strap – trying, of course, to minimize my contact with the pathogenic, microbial world inhabiting that strap, when I noticed that the people in front of me were all looking at their cell phones, reading emails, and looking at baby pictures. I turned around to realize that it was only I and the fellow a few seats away who was muttering to himself that weren’t looking at their cell phones.

So we have once more the profound question of whether all these people escaping to the internet are more connected or less connected. Certainly, if you project back into the world that was the domicile of the 1950’s fellow mentioned above, all of these people would be staring at books, newspapers, or otherwise blankly through everyone else, and especially through the poor fellow who was muttering to himself. Today’s rider of the Red Line while not connected to each other are, at least, connected to someone else – someone with babies. So I am not so quick to criticize!

And then there is another important point. I was recently out with friends for dinner and we were talking about a variety of topics. I was talking about my photography and immediately pulled my photographs up on my cell phone illustratively from the web. The subject turned to pictorialist photography, and snap I was able again to illustrate. So it is far from true really that we do not access the collective knowledge of mankind. This is only a small initial step towards extending and augmenting our brain-stored knowledge with machine-stored knowledge. The possibilities are limitless – ask the folks at Harvard, MIT, and MGH.

Hanging from that germy subway strap I began musing. You may recall in the play “Peter Pan” that every time a child says that they do not believe in fairies a fairy dies. We love you and believe in you Tinker Bell! Imagine that every teacher of English, history, science, or math who has inspired us, is like some Greek hero transformed into a star upon dying, and that every time someone makes the effort to look up a fact on their cell phone, recognizes the value of facts, that some not forgotten teacher’s star shines just a little more brightly. Imagine what it takes to create a supernova! Porter Square. It was my stop and I had to get off the train.

Photo-pictorialism study #3 – Tree line

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Figure 1 - Photo-pictorialism study # 4 - Tree line. Heard Farm, Wayland, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Figure 1 – Photo-pictorialism study # 3 – Tree line. Heard Farm, Wayland, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

As I have indicated this year’s winter-break was a successful one for me photographically, and I wanted to share today my most recent photo-pictorialist study. This one I took back in December and only this week rediscovered it and “worked it up.” The scene itself was much crisper, but it is the addition of atmosphere that creates the mystery and ambiguity of the image. The scene was taken at dusk but the fogginess evokes a sense of dawn instead.

There is an excellent and succinct description of this style and the role played by atmosphere in an image from Alfred Stieglitz. “Atmosphere is the medium through which we see all things. In order, therefore, to see them in their true value on a photograph, as we do in Nature, atmosphere must be there. Atmosphere softens all lines; it graduates the transition from light to shade; it is essential to the reproduction of the sense of distance. That dimness of outline which is characteristic for distant objects is due to atmosphere. Now, what atmosphere is to Nature, tone is to a picture.”

Photograph or watercolor?

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Figure 1 - Pictorialist study #4 - distorted refraction, Sudbury, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015

Figure 1 – Pictorialist study #4 – distorted refraction, Sudbury, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015

As it turned out I had a lot of fun taking pictures over the break. You may remember my resolution of having my camera with me more. Well the picture of Figure 1 was, in fact, taken with my IPhone, even though I did have my Canon T2i with me.

I was speaking to a friend when I noticed that the glass in the window, especially when viewed at an oblique angle, distorted the image in a very pleasant fashion. I am told that this particular pane of glass is original and dates back to around 1886 – no jokes here about the distorted world-view of the nineteenth century. They had their illusions and delusion, we ours. The effect makes the photograph look very much like a watercolor. In that regard it may be viewed as a pictorial image, one that imitates or emulates painting. Here of course, the atmospherics that Steiglitz spoke of are created not with atmosphere or fuzzy noise but with distortion by refraction. This point seems significant. There is a dichotomy, that is often two ways of creating a visual effect: one by digital manipulate; the other by optical modification.

The trick to taking the photograph lay in paying close attention to the window frame. It was essential to be both perpendicular to the floor and parallel to the sides. This is why I feel that using my IPhone is not that different from using a large format or view camera.The intensity of the color comes from a bit of additional saturation. I feel that it is often essential to reproduce what the mind rather than the eye sees. I am actually both happy and enchanted by the results.

The details amaze me. There is the crack in glass and the smudges. And then there is the dried flowers of last summer just visible on the right hand side. All of these I think subtly make the composition. As for the question whether the image is a photograph or a watercolor then I have succeeded.

Trying the sunset in black and white

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Christmas Eve 2015, Sunset along the Sudbury River, Heard Farm, Wayland, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Christmas Eve 2015, Sunset along the Sudbury River, Heard Farm, Wayland, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

I absolutely promise that I will not spend the entire year posting sunset photographs that I took on a very warm Christmas Eve along the Sudbury River. I was, in fact, all set to stop when I was looking over my proofs from the event and decided that I had to try one in black and white.

What had originally drawn me to the scene were some striated patterns in the clouds where the sun was leaking through, and it seemed that this would develop better in black and white. I loved the dynamic range of the original images immediately – the power of 14 bit dynamic range – and I went to work.

A truism of sunset photography is that you need to anticipate the scene. The actual image appears as the sky will look perhaps 30 to 60 min later. So here the “world” is a lot darker. And I have to say I love it. The final image is lusciously velvet in its blacks, sparing but brilliant in its whites. I used just a bit of sepia toning.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 70 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/2500th sec at f/7.1 with -1 exposure compensation.

Reliving my youth and catching the light

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Figure 1 - Christmas Eve sunset # 3, Heard Farm, Wayland, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Figure 1 – Christmas Eve sunset # 3, Heard Farm, Wayland, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

I have always felt that the best analogue photograph of my “youth” was a picture that I took from a bridge over a canal in Amsterdam, NL. The light was truly there in its luminous glory for an instant and I went into automatic mode and well was lucky, I guess. In a sense every photograph that I have taken since, I am trying to recapture that moment.

Yesterday, I posted a photograph of our Christmas Eve 2015 in New England and there are two more images of that sunset that I would like to share.  The first is Figure 1. Taken at Hear Farm in Wayland, Massachusetts from down along the Sudbury River, it shows the sun breaking through the clouds and reflecting off the water. As I was looking through the viewfinder I was thinking of that wonderful moment in Amsterdam 45 years ago with my Leica.

This image is meant to evoke the primordial mix of water and sky. It is also meant to capture the peculiar sense of a world meant to be cold and dark instead being warm and if not dark then illuminated. The sun appears as if it is boiling away the clouds. And this is stated more strongly in a telephoto zoom of the same clouds a few moments later when the sun’s disk becomes visible.

Figure 1 - Christmas Eve sunset # 2, Heard Farm, Wayland, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Figure 2 – Christmas Eve sunset # 2, Heard Farm, Wayland, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Figure 1 – Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 70 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/3200 at f/7.1 with -1 exposure compensation.

Figure 2 – Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 200 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/4000 at f/7.1 with -1 exposure compensation.