American goldfinch – Spinus tristis

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Figure 1 - American goldfinch, Little Fresh Pond, Cambridge, MA, August 2015. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

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

It is early August, and the weather in Massachusetts has been truly gorgeous. After that threatening storm, we got glorious warm and dry days. I was thinking about what defines this time if year. There is a special quality to the August light as the sky transforms slowly from the intensity of July to the mellow glow of September.  And then there is the Queen Ann’s lace in its myriad forms and, of course, it is the time for the goldfinches to show off their peak yellow color. I have tried to capture this sense of summer in this portrait of an American goldfinch – Spinus tristis– Figure 1. I have photographed the goldfinches before at my feeder, where they act as well behaved guests slowly dining on thistle seeds as if in polite conversation. But outside they are much more wary of humans, ever so peripatetic in their motions. You hear their characteristic chirping song, struggle to find them among the flowers or branches, try to frame and focus on them, and they quickly move on, as if you were some annoying paparazzi. This brilliant colored male was kind enough to allow me a few pictures against the perfect background of underbrush and flowers.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 188 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE mode, 1/4000th sec at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation.

 

Transitions

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Figure 1 - The International Space Station transits the blue moon on August 2, 2015. From Bill Ingalls/NASA and in the public domain.

Figure 1 – The International Space Station transits the blue moon on August 2, 2015. From Bill Ingalls/NASA and in the public domain.

A couple of days ago a reader sent me this photograph (Figure 1) from NASA showing the International Space Station transiting across the blue moon on August 2nd. This means that the path of the ISS placed it directly, line-of-sight, between the Earth and the Moon. It is a wonderful picture in that the shape of the space station is clear and it is highly reminiscent of images from Star Trek showing the Starship Enterprise crossing over some planet. The message is obvious, we are Star Trek, we are going where no man has ever gone before. And in that respect the photograph is amazing. How many pictures truly define the future?

Well fast forward a couple of days and NASA releases Figure 2 taken with a camera abord the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite and captures the moon as she moves in front of a sunlit Earth last month. I will point out that the Earth’s gravitation locks the moon so that it always turns one side towards us. So what you are looking at is the dark side of the moon. The satellite camera captured a unique view of the moon as it moved in front of the sunlit side of Earth last month. The series of test images shows the fully illuminated “dark side” of the moon that is never visible from Earth.

‘Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.’

Mark Twain

The moon transiting the Earth from NASA and in the public domain.

The moon transiting the Earth from the DSCOVR satellite. Image from NASA and in the public domain.

(DSCOVR) satellite

Mammatocumulus over Cambridge

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Figure 1 - Mammatus clouds over Cambridge, MA, August 4, 2015, and in the wake of a cyclonic storm over Woburn, MA.

Figure 1 – Mammatus clouds over Cambridge, MA, August 4, 2015, and in the wake of a cyclonic storm over Woburn, MA.

Two years ago, almost to the day, I blogged about mammatocumulus or mammatus clouds.  Mammatus clouds (named because they look like breasts or mammary glands) are patterns of cloud pouches seen bubbling beneath the base of larger clouds. They form following sharp gradients of temperature, moisture, and wind shear.  They can extend for hundreds of miles, and yes, they can mean trouble! I remember thinking at the time, “Oh how beautiful and that these would be spectacular to photograph.”

Fast forward, as Figure 1 illustrates  today I got my chance.  A colleague came into my office to announce that he had just seen on the web that a funnel cloud had been spotted over Woburn, MA, which is northeast of Cambridge. I looked out the window and said, “Hey! Those are mammatus clouds.” We all headed outside (me camera in hand) and were treated to a glorious display of cloud formations and a dark, ominous, and churning sky. My best pictures were taken with my IPhone because of its wide angle. I can now say that I have not only seen but photographically conquered mammatocumulus and they totally lived up to my expectations.

Great blue heron – Ardea herodias

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Figure 1 - Great blue heron on Little Fresh Pond, Cambridge, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Figure 1 – Great blue heron on Little Fresh Pond, Cambridge, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

By far the king of Massachusetts water birds is the elegant Great Blue Heron – Ardea herodias. They walk stealthily along the sides of ponds and nest high in inundated trees creating an inspiring sense of timelessness and Jurassic splendor. I have been away from Fresh Pond for two weeks. So yesterday I braved what the weatherman had warmed me was “oppressive” heat and humidity and went out for my usual walk. I was rewarded by a great blue heron across Little Fresh Pond from me just in front of the bull rushes. He was arguably a little further than my 70 to 200 mm could really handle. But he was glorious.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE mode, 1/2000th sec at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation

Socrates and the callous on my middle finger

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Figure 1 - "David - The Death of Socrates" by Jacques-Louis David - http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/436105. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:David_-_The_Death_of_Socrates.jpg#/media/File:David_-_The_Death_of_Socrates.jpg

Figure 1 – “The Death of Socrates” by Jacques-Louis David” from the Wikipedia and in the public domain in the United States

Socrates, in the Phaedrus, recounts the story of how the god Thamus, ruler of the Thebians reacts to the baboon headed god, Theuth’s, introduction of writing:

“This discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.”

Hmm! Crank forward 2500 years and we might as well be talking about the internet!

I was thinking the other day about the callous on my right middle finger.  When I was in school this callous, spawned by writing and gripping pencils, was much larger and often painful, from too much or too intense writing.  Today people write less and less, cursive script is evaporating in favor of printing, which is certainly much more user friendly for writing on a Microsoft Surface, if you are seeking character recognition.  The other day I was reading scientific references at work, searching for them.  I leaned back in my chair to relax my eyes and found myself outright annoyed any time that the computer demanded that I lean forward to actually type on my key board.  Of course, the callous on my middle finger only yields to replacement by other maladies of repetitive action, eyestrain and carpels.

Still there is nothing that I like more than the freedom of creativity afforded by digital photography.  The taking is easier.  The processing is easier.  Color is infinitely more accessible than in the film days.  In face, and arguably so, the only thing that seems complex is what to do with, how to index, all these huge files that I am taking.

Photography is an interesting example of technological evolution.  Digital photography arrives and rapidly everything becomes automated and precise.  But consumers rebel and demand a through back. They don’t want to look at flat miniature screens, they want the feel of the single lens reflex back.  And camera designers obliged.  It is a lot like the cell phones.  Miniaturization worked to a point, but now aging eyes are demanding larger formats.

Maybe this last point is important.  The shamans of technology have a hard time creating a need where there isn’t one – at least not for any real length of time.  Technology is driven by demand and by the demand for economy of cost. Nobody in this day and age would put up with a pile of yucky and sticky failed Polaroid instant prints at their feet at a dollar a pop.

His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Photography Awards 2014-2015

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I was doing my usual weekly great photographs on the web search, when I came upon this year recently awarded His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Photography Awards (HIPA) for 2014-2015, and really they kind of “knocked my socks off.” Picking a favorite was very difficult. The World of Color images were truly a retinal delight, but then I came upon a beautiful black and white of three women laughing an drinking tea by Chi Hung Cheung, which was the third prize winner in the Faces category.  From my perspective this has everything that a great black and white photograph, especially a portrait, should have: great tonal range, luscious blacks, deep whites, great composition and it tells a wonderful story. I never quite agree with the judges aboutr what should be number one.  But hey, we’ve all got our own perspective. That’s what makes photography so personal and magical.

 

Arrowsmith

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Something important happened yesterday, a rare good moment, and I started to wonder which photographs, fifty years from now, will commemorate it. The moment was the publication in the British medical journal “The Lancet” of preliminary results of the successful testing of the VSV-EBOV vaccine against Ebola virus. Development of this vaccine was begun by the Public Health Agency of Canada and then developed by the pharmaceutical company Merck. It was a very long, grueling, and dangerous process.

These are heroes. When I was in high school and college, people who applied to medical school had to write an essay about “Why I want to go to medical school.” Probably they still do. A common answer in those days was “I realized that I wanted to become a doctor when I read Sinclair Lewis’ Arrowsmith in high school. Arrowsmith tells the tale of a bright and scientifically minded Martin Arrowsmith as he makes his way from a small town in the American Midwest to become a leading physician and scientist. Along the way he puts himself in harm’s way, when he faces an outbreak of bubonic plague on a fictional Caribbean island. Over the years I’ve wondered how many of these same doctors would live up to the standards of Lews’ hero and put themselves selflessly in harm’s way. And I have to say that I know several medical doctors who do that. These are heroes.

Today when I meet someone who says he or she wants to go to medical school, I ask them if they’ve read Arrowsmith. They look at me blankly and shake their heads. Such is the degradation of American literacy.

I think and hope that the world will long note and long remember these heroes of the Ebola war, who faced not only a deadly disease but in many cases the dangers of armed conflict for the sake of humanity. So I celebrate them.

As for which photographs will become mimetic or iconic, for now I will have to go with one from the the MSP that I saw yesterday on the BBC News.

Semipalmated plover – Charadrius semipalmatus

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Figure 1 - Semipalmated Plover, Goose Rocks Beach, Cape Porpoise, Maine. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Figure 1 – Semipalmated Plover, Goose Rocks Beach, Cape Porpoise, Maine. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

I have one more bird photograph to share from my recent mini-vacation in Kennebunkport, Maine. It shows a semipalmated plover – Charadrius semipalmatus  and was taken with my “big” lens. I love the plovers. They chase along the beach just at the surf’s edge in hunt for whatever is brought ashore. Like many such birds these plovers insist that you maintain an acceptable social distance. And this is not without reason. During the late nineteenth century they were hunted nearly to extinction. Happily the species has made a healthy return.

As for the name “semipalmated,” literally this means a plover with a partial palm. This refers to the fact that the bird’s toes are partially webbed together, creating what looks like the palm of the hand.

What I like about the bird in Figure 1 is that he is looking out to the sea and also the minimalism of the surrounding flotsam. We have a tendency to anthropomorphize and may wonder if he is contemplating the weighty issues of the universe. But I am pretty sure that he is only looking for his lunch and at the same time wary of aerial attack by raptors.

Canon T2i with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens at 260 mm, ISO 400 Aperture Priority AE Mode 1/1600th sec at f/6.3 with no exposure compensation.

Snowy egret – Egretta thula

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Figure 1 - Snow egret, Kennebunkport, Maine. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Figure 1 – Snow egret, Kennebunkport, Maine. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

We had just reached our vacation destination and stopped for lunch.  My son called me to take a look and there in the mudflats of the inlet was a beautiful snowy egret – Egretta thula. They are beautiful both in their wedding white plumage and in the way that they stealthily walk on the hunt. Needless-to-say I had not brought my big lens; so I had to be content with my 70 to 200 mm. the narrow heads and tiny eyes present a challenge, and the image of Figure 1 took a bit of processing to get it right.  But I like the white bird contrasted against the brown mud, the pure symmetry of its reflection, and also the little bubbles on the surface of the sand.

Beyond any doubt the snowy egret is one of the most elegant of the herons. It’s plumage is truly immaculate, quite a feat for a mud walker. But, of course, for a water bird feather care is essential for survival. At one time the elegant plumes were in high demand for ladies’ hats and fetched huge sums. As a result, the snowy was almost driven to extinction. Fortunately, in the early twentieth century, conservations managed to get legislation to protect this bird and it has made a wonderful comeback in eastern United States coastal waters. Like all herons there is something gloriously prehistoric in their design and locomotion.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 200 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE mode 1/2000th sec at f/8.0 with no exposure compensation.