Bay-breasted warbler (Setophaga castanea)

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Bay-breasted warble in fall plumage, October 30, 2015, Fresh Pond Reservation, Cambridge, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Bay-breasted Warbler in fall plumage, October 30, 2015, Fresh Pond Reservation, Cambridge, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

The duck migrating through Fresh Pond is the “big” story but there is also a “smaller” story.  These are the warblers passing through Massachusetts for a second time and headed South. Figure 1 shows a Bay-breasted Warbler – Setophaga castanea. This is a small, sweet looking bird if I may anthropomorphize, and its fall plumage nondescript, but its journey is monumental. It winters with the tourists in the Caribbean, in Colombia, and Venezuela.

At this time of year particularly with the females and juveniles it is hard to distinguish the bay breasted from similar warblers. But in the end I has identified, possibly misidentified it as a Bay-breasted. The black feet rules out the Black Poll Warbler and after examine other shots that I got I see faint striping on the birds back, which in turn rules out the Pine Warbler.

Warblers are fun. If you are not paying attention they are easily mistaken for sparrows. But their behavior is different and they tend to pause long enough and get close enough that if you are quick you can get a few photographs. On the small size is always a challenge. Here I got the eyes nicely in focus which is always the goal.

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

Wing flapping

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Figure 1 - Wing flapping ring-necked duck. Fresh Pond Reservation, Cambridge, MA, October 30, 2015. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Figure 1 – Wing flapping ring-necked duck. Fresh Pond Reservation, Cambridge, MA, October 30, 2015. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

The ducks have begun to congregate on Fresh Pond. They appear to have favorite places, and the different species occupy the same spots as last year. I was delighted on Thursday to see that the hooded mergansers had returned to Black’s Nook.  I had taken a day off from my camera, just to enjoy and take in the color and the smell of fresh air after a heavy autumn rain storm.  When I returned on Friday this group was already gone. But I suspect that others will appear.

The pond itself is filled largely with ring-necks (Aythya collaris). All of the ducks treat humans warily. They don’t flee in a panic but paddle off to a safer distance. Hidden behind foliage and a chain-link fence, I was able to photograph a group when one of the males rose out of the water and put on a “wing flapping” display.  Fortunately I had already set the focus and so was able to capture the scene in the few seconds that it lasted.  This is why I prefer the more moderate zoom – it is quicker than the long zoom and doesn’t require a monopod.

Wing flapping is an expression of dominance and, in the breeding season, a  courting ritual. Multiple drakes often gather around a single hen and display in this way. She in turn  picks out the drake she likes with a nod of the head back and forth or paddling with her head held low.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 149 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE mode, 1/2000th sec at f/7.1 with +1 exposure compensation.

 

Sleepy Saturday

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Figure 1 - Sleepy Saturday. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Figure 1 – Sleepy Saturday. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Regular readers of this blog know that I am not fond of posting cute cuddly animal pictures. Still a great privilege of life is being able to share it with feline friends. Today I wanted to capture the exquisite joy of a sleepy Saturday morning, when the room is filled with sunlight, when you are very sleepy, and when your best friends in the whole world are snuggled up with you in bed.

My particular furry friend is more tolerant of the IPhone than my Canon. The Canon is not to be trusted. It tends to flash in your face – ever so annoying to sensitive cat eyes. After all blinking faster than the flash takes up a lot of energy.

Unstuck in time

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In his classic psychological drama of time travel “Slaughter House Five,” Kurt Vonnegut describes his protagonist Billy Pilgrim as being “unstuck in time.” This would suggest that we are tethered to what physicists refer to as our “world line,” the path in space and time that we travel. For us time is an arrow and we move ever forward. For Billy Pilgrim, well, not so much. “All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.”

You may have heard yesterday that a US military surveillance blimp became untethered in Maryland and drifted a couple of hundred miles across rural Pennsylvania. Yes unstuck, unthethered, but certainly not in time. Well a photograph taken yesterday by Jimmy May of Bloomberg Press Enterprise via the AP tells, or at least suggests, a different pilgrimage for the blimp.  He captured it hanging over an Amish horse drawn carriage in Millville, PA. The Amish strive for a peaceful timelessness and here it was certainly broken by an apparent anachronism.

“It is just an illusion here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone, it is gone forever.”

Kurt Vonnegut, “Slaughter House Five,” 1969

Faces of the old country

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Figure 1 - Augustu Sherman Guadeloupean woman. In the public domain in the United States.

Figure 1 – Augustus Sherman Guadeloupean woman. In the public domain in the United States because of its age and that it was taken by an employee of the federal government..

A friend and reader has brought to my attention a remarkable article in The Washington Post showing the faces of “the old country.” It has been estimated that approximately 40% of the population of the United States can trace its ancestry back to the 12 million people who entered  America through Ellis Island in New York Harbor. It raises the old cliche that we are a nation of immigrants. But the true story is much more than one of numbers, As rich as America has been in natural resources, its greatest asset has been, and continues to be, it immigrants. These people came and come to the United States to build a future and their future is the future of the country.

These photos were taken by Augustus Sherman, who was both an amateur photographer and the chief registry clerk on Ellis Island from 1892 until 1925. He photographed people coming through in their native costumes, while they were the greenest of “green horns.” The photographs were published in National Geographic in 1907 and for many years they hung in the federal Immigration Service headquarters in Manhattan. They are now archived in the the New York Public Library.

There are several points to be made about the images themselves. There was a certain seriousness to the picture process, or was it fear of rejection. The pride of the sitters rings through. And in composite they are a definitive monument to America’s diversity.It is hard to pick a favorite among these images. But I have chosen as Figure 1 this stunningly expressive photograph of a beautiful Guadeloupean woman in native dress. All of the elements are there: pride and just a hint of a smile

Photographs of imaginary places

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Figure 1 - Don Quixote in his Study, 1857, by Julia Margaret Cameron and in the public domain in the United States because of its age.

Figure 1 – Don Quixote in his Study, 1857, by Julia Margaret Cameron and in the public domain in the United States because of its age.

There is a prologue to the musical “Man of La Mancha” and then Cervantes grabs us with the words:

“May I set the stage? I shall impersonate a man.
Come, enter into my imagination and see him!“

And there he is in Figure 1. There is Don Quixote in his study as Imagined by Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) in her 1857 photograph.

So fast forward, for several weeks I had been anticipating last Monday’s release of the movie “Jurassic World.”  It became available for rental and on Saturday I found time to watch it. The movie begins with images of the imaginary theme park Jurassic World and at about the moment of the attack of the pterodactyls I became struck by how real the images seemed. See for instance the mosasaurus eating a pterodactyl and like me forget everything that you know about these soaring reptiles and their precarious flight.  These scenes seemed, indeed were, photographs of what previously existed only in the mind. That is the beauty of modern digital photograph and its cousin digital video.

From the very beginning the word photograph carried with it a sense of authenticity. Of course that was misplaced, but it was there. And the very roots of photography in classic art meant that early photographers sought to imitate painting and so photographed the religious, the mythic, and the literary. Julia Margaret Cameron was a major practitioner of this art and her legacy is followed by the magic mysticism of modern day photographers like Beth Moon.

Recently I have been struck by what is called “Fantasy Photography,” which is not to be confused with boudoir photography. In fantasy photography the photographed person is integrated seamlessly into an other world, and you cannot quite be sure if you are really looking at a portrait reworked or a totally manufactured and created person and scene. It marvelously extends the possibilities and stretches the limits of the photograph.  There is a wonderful series of fantasy photographs by photographer Annie Leibovitz where she transforms celebrities into well known Disney Characters. And one of my favorites is Kristy Mitchell’s “Wonderland.” This typifies the marvelous transcendence of the genre into the magical, into the mythic. We seem to be looking at photograph of Mallory’s  “Nimue, the Lady of the Lake.” It conjures up Edward Burnes-Jones’ The Beguiling of Merlin (1872-1877). You may recognize his model, Jane Morris, from a previous blog. But as beautiful as the painting is, Ms. Mitchell’s  image is so much more. It is a photograph, and photographs have an implied truth. It is as if the photographer transcended reality and entered the realm of Mallory’s mind.

Women’s day off

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I think it highly significant that today is the fortieth anniversary of the day (October 24, 1975), when the women of Iceland staged a massive twenty-four hour strike called “Women’s Day Off, to demonstrate pay inequities (wait that sounds familiar) and to prove just how essential they were for the economy of the country. Only five years later Vigdís Finnbogadóttir became Iceland’s and Europe’s first female president.  According to Vigdis that day was the first step for women’s emancipation in Iceland: “It completely paralyzed the country and opened the eyes of many men.”

It is believed that 90 % of Icelandic women participated in the strike. Many just left their homes early in the morning leaving their husbands and children to fend for themselves.  The tales of quiet desperation are profound. Banks, factories, schools, nurseries, and many shops were forced to close. For the men of Iceland it was a baptism of fire, which led to the other name that the day goes by “the Long Friday.” There are some wonderful black and white news photographs in the Iceland’s Women’s History Archive of that day, including this one showing the 25,000 women (~20% of Icelands 1975 female population) gathered in solidarity in Reykjavik on that day.

As is always the key point with such events, they highlight two significant points: first, is how much remains to be accomplished, and second is the size of the shoulders upon which we stand.

 

 

Autumn mushrooms

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Figure 1 - Oyster mushrooms along Fresh Pond, Cambridge, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Figure 1 – Oyster mushrooms along Fresh Pond, Cambridge, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Fall in eastern Massachusetts is, I think, just past peak.  It seems like a room in disarray. The ducks have begun their migrations. The ring-necks are starting to gather on the pond. I am waiting patiently for the hoodies and tonight on my drive home I saw several V formations of ducks in flight against the dusk.

But there is another pleasure to be witnessed, and that is the explosion of mushrooms brought on by the dampness and cooler days. This is being played out just beneath our feet and easily missed for the vividness of the trees. Yesterday I spotted the cluster of Figure 1. Mushrooms spend perhaps a day in the splendor of fungal youthfulness. These I believe are oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus), although I emphasize that no one should make any eating decisions based on my very limited botanical knowledge.

There is something gorgeous and fresh about them. The image certainly demanded black and white with a subtle tone. But it took a lot of playing with curves, brightness, and contrast to capture the luminescence of the moment.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 140 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/500th sec at f/9.0 with -1 exposure compensation.

CBRE Urban Photography of the Year Awards

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The CBRE Urban Photography of the Year Awards for 2015 have been announced and these are some truly wonderful photographs. First about CBRE, because I think it quite notable. CBRE is a leading global real estate services and investment firm. In creating the CBRE Urban Photographer of the Year competition, their aim is to enhance our understanding of the “built environment” on a global scale by seeing urban areas through different eyes. And for every entry in the Urban Photographer of the Year competition, CBRE makes a donation to leading children’s development charity, Plan International.This I think is significant, because 53 % of the world’s population live in urban environments and this is expected to climb to 70% by 2050. So to seeing people as they live and work in our cities is a defining and uniquely human perspective.

There are several stunning images among this year’s winners. I would particularly note the grand prize winner Oscar Rialubin’s black and white portrait of a watchmaker in Qatar entitled ‘Xyclops.’ Really this is everything that a black and white portrait should be – dramatic lighting, vivid sharpness, and compelling pathos. And second is the winner of the European, Middle Eastern, and African Award, Armen Dolukhanyan’s touching photograph entitled ‘Couple Policemen,’ which catches an intimate moment between a Ukrainian policeman and police woman.  This is truly the decisive moment.