Figure 1 – The tailor’s shop, Natick, Massachusetts. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

It is usually the case that lighting in “the mall” is defined by the artificial. Figure 1 is an exception. I was at the Natick Collection in Natick, Massachusetts early Sunday morning, before most of the stores open. And when I past the Tailor’s Shop I saw that the display in the window was flooded with a warm beam of light coming in through one of the skylights.  It show and antique sewing machine and sewing table. These always remind me of my grandfather, who like so many of the immigrants of his day was himself a tailor. I smile also at the tailor Motel Kamzoi in the musical “Fiddler on the Roof.” I saw that play with my parents and grandmother in its first Broadway run many years ago. My grandfather had a foot treadle machine in his apartment, which I marveled at with the curiosity of my childhood.

The Singer sewing machine was the manufacturer of my grandfather’s day, and far into the twentieth century these icons of the past were ubiquitous. Isaac Merritt Singer was did not invent the sewing machine but he designed the first practical model, which he patented on August 12, 1851, and he embraced and adopted the mass manufacturing techniques pioneered by Henry Ford in the auto industry and perhaps more significantly he made it available under a hire-purchase plan enabling consumers to buy on credit in “easy installments.”

This image was taken with my IPhone 6 and I think really competes with what I could have achieved with my Canon DSLR. And it is unusual for me, in that I did it without toning despite its antique allusions.

“A fiddler on the roof. Sounds crazy, no? But here, in our little village of Anatevka, you might say every one of us is a fiddler on the roof trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck. It isn’t easy. You may ask ‘Why do we stay up there if it’s so dangerous?’ Well, we stay because Anatevka is our home. And how do we keep our balance? That I can tell you in one word: tradition! “

Figure 1 – The common milkweed along Little Fresh Pond, Fresh Pond Reservation, Cambridge, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

In Massachusetts, we are well into the transition from late summer to early autumn. We have had glorious dry sunshine, cool nights, and medicinally warm days.  The colors are slowly changing, and you have only to look closely and see the subtle shades of color that define this season. Indeed, fall is fractal in nature. The range of color occurs on all levels. You have only to look.

I have been intrigued and watching the milkweed pods along the shore of Little Fresh Pond, in Cambridge. They have just started to pop.  They conjure up memories of the late summers of my childhood – strange alien plants. Yes, this sensation of the alien was driven by the scifi movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,1956, ” which in turn was driven by the mid-century communist scare. Wandering around the grassy areas of the Catskills you would find them – compact pods that would explode into little cotton balls of seed.

Milkweeds once were prolific in the American Midwest, but they were decimated by herbicides.  This in turn threatened the population of monarch butterflies whose larvae feed exclusively on them. Now in places like the Fresh Pond Reservation where there are projects to restore and save the monarchs, part of that is the repopulating of the milkweeds. The specimen of Figure 1 are in a little fenced in area by the dog beach on Little Fresh Pond. I like the color and the chiaroscuro lighting but am a bit disappointed by the sharpness. My camera is always set for birds and as a result the f-number was set at 4.5, which gives a rather shallow depth of focus.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 75 mm Aperture Priority AE Mode, ISO 1600, 1/4000th sec. at f/4.5 with no exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – American goldfinch (Spinus tristis), Little Fresh Pond, Fresh Pond Reservation, Cambridge, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015

You see the bird watchers at Fresh Pond in September stalking the goldfinches. For goldfinches this is their most spectacular time of year and they are very busy. They typically hardly stay still for a photograph. I was treated yesterday by this female American goldfinch (Spinus tristis), which typically have a greenish yellow coloration, pretty in its own right even if it pales in comparison to the male’s bright yellow. This one sat still enough long enough for me to really get “a bead on it.” I slowing moved around until I got her with a good side view and head turned down coy pose. And I especially love it when the picture shows the fine features of food in the bid’s mouth.

A couple walking around the Pond stopped politely and when I had finished taking my pictures asked what I had photographed. We chatted for a while and they equally politely squinted at the images in my view finder.

There is this golden light and a warm sense of harvest abundance, especially for the birds who feast on end of summer seeds, which are everywhere. Among these are the delicate milkweed pods, which will always remind me of the movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” The colors are just starting to change, with the dominant red coming from the year’s crop of poison ivy.  This is everywhere.

Can T2I with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at , ISO 1600 with Aperture Priority AE mode, 1/2000th sec at f/4.5 with no exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – First touches of fall, (c) DE Wolf 2013

Today is the first full day of fall and I was greeted this morning with a message from Facebook about how exactly two years ago I had posted the photograph of Figure 1 on Facebook.  So two things:

First the picture is exactly how I am feeling. I went for a walk today at lunch around Fresh Pond and everything was warm and glorious. The colors haven’t quite achieved the autumnal impressionism that I love so much. But of course, with Photoshop I could fake it. I hope my readers will forgive me the repost. I like this IPhone image so much that I just have to repost it.

Second, what the hell is going on? Our trail now proceeds us like so much cyberspore.  Look at a product on the web and you will be plagued with it forever. And should we find ways to stop that then website purveyors are going to have to find new means of revenue, like charging us for visiting – gulp. Is this the return of the AOL model?  The other problem with being followed by your past is that not so subtle voice yelling: “Look at you. You were young and fat then, and now you are old and fatter.” It is so inescapable!