Figure 1 – Mackeral Skies, cirrocumulus clouds over Salem, MA, October 25, 2019. (c) DE Wolf 2019.

The sky here on the North Shore of Massachusetts often takes on dramatic aspects. As a break from Halloween, I’d like to share the image of Figure 1, which shows what I believe are cirrocumulus clouds forming what are referred to as a  Mackeral sky. “Mackerel sky and mares’ tails make tall ships carry low sails.” So goes an old mariners’ rhyme, referring to skies of rippled cirrocumulus clouds that resemble the striped scale pattern of a mackerel. While the pattern was striking in and of itself, I thought that it would benefit from stylization using the PRISMA program.

Figure 1 -It’s so spooky that even the pit bulls are scared! Salem, MA, October 25, 2019, Salem, MA.(c) DE Wolf 2019.

I just want to say that it is the weekend before Halloween and the festivities in Salem are really getting excited. It is so spooky that even the pit bulls are scared! I am worshipping at the alter of Henri Cartier Bresson and “The Decisive Moment!”

Figure 1 – Abigail’s Ghost. (c) DE Wolf 2019.

Abigail’s Ghost

Mother’s funeral was finally over,

All the dishes washed, and food put away

Black-clad, mourning guests had all departed.

His sister had stayed to help him clean up.

He had kissed her goodbye in the driveway.

Odd to sleep again in his mother’s house.

She died in her great poster bed upstairs.

James sat watching the embers slowly die out

A reflection in the window, he turned

No one there.  So it had begun again.

Mom was not the first to die in this house.

Abigail? He asked. Fire crackled back.

She died three hundred years before, died here

In this very  house. It was smaller then.

Sixteen, really too young to be a bride.

Golden hair, blue eyes reflecting silence.

Obedient child. A jealous husband.

Twenty years her senior. Horrible things!

They say he beat her, although never proved.

Made her watch unchristian horrible things!

James saw her first when he was merely ten.

Wandering the house, sobbing in the dark.

Twenty December seventeen nineteen.

It was the shortest day. She took her life.

Slit her wrists with a kitchen knife. They say

A suicide! Banned her from the church yard.

No one knew where her remains were buried.

James knew. They were in the old root cellar.

At sixteen she had seen horrible things.

Unchristian things. Her husband only laughed,

Mocked her innocence, hitting her harder.

They might have understood had she killed him.

But she took her own life. James turned again

Towards the weeping spirit. Vacant blue eyes.

A corruption with her soul on fire.

Blood seeping to the floor. Horrible things!

Abigail? He asked. She had disappeared.

Returned to eternal desperation.

Figure 1 – PRISMA stylized photograph, “Behind Front Street in a late Afternoon Light.” Salem, MA, October 23, 2019. (c) DE Wolf 2019.

I thought that I would take a break today from ghoulish Halloween image and share the PRISMA stylized iPhone image of Figure 1. It shows the alley behind Salem’s Front Street in a gorgeous and golden afternoon light. I begin to be wary of the impending time change when we shall be cast into darkness, but in the meanwhile we may enjoy the light.

Figure 1 – A witch of Salem. (c) DE Wolf 2019

There is a hidden dichotomy to Halloween in Salem. On the one hand you have the fun of childhood, the trick or treat of spooks, goblins, and witches. On the other hand you have, at least in the choice of location, the celebration of a truly terrible and unjust persecution of the late seventeenth century. People were falsely accused and murdered. This is not to be lauded and is, in fact, a terrible stain in our march for social justice.

At the risk of getting too serious here, it is believed that large parts of the christian mysogynist world view stems from St. Augustine, who more than any other early early christian thinker forged both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism’s view of woman. Dramatically, in our age of developing feminism, where thinkers like Richard Tarnas see feminism as a positive rising force in Western Philosophy – the Passion of the Western Mind – we are beginning to spontaneously think much more positively of witches.

In Figure1 we see one of the Good and True Witches of Salem, MA. In a real sense the term “Good Witch” is a hold over of St. Augustine’s prejudices. One and a half millennia later are we just beginning to understand that goodness is a fundamentally human quality despite all contrary indications?

“The first time I called myself a ‘Witch’ was the most magical moment of my life.”
― Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America

Figure1 – Faces, Halloween 2019, Salem, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2019.

We hear that people can put on multiple faces. “He is two-faced!” The theme of today’s photograph, Figure 1, is just that. cast in a macabre Salem Halloween light, I ask the simple question whether you can change your face. Perhaps this question has new or re-emphasized meaning in our current political environment, where truth and reality are continuously being challenged. Here a skeleton, whose flesh is still liquifying, takes off its grinning face to reveal an even more terrifying demeanor. All the while a watchful face in the background stares at him. This was taken through the window of a gallery on Essex Street. And just to confuse and mix message everything, we have the flowery pastel colors.These are happy colors. The subject matter tells a different story.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4 USM lens at 100 mm, ISO 400, Aperture Priority AE Mode 1/60th sec at f/8.0, pattern metering with no exposure compensation. 

Figure 1 – Photominimalism – Gull tracks and shell shards in the sand, Crane Beach, Ipswich, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2019.

A walk along the beach so often draws me photographically to minimalist subjects. Ripples in the sand, strands of seaweed, and a few small shells draw me inexorably to photograph. On last Sunday’s trip to Crane Beach I was drawn to the subject matter of Figure 1. Here are some gull tracks in the wet sand and a few shattered and sun-bleached shells. Animal tracks are curious, of course. Most often they are of the most fleeting and ephemeral nature, soon obliterated by the shifting forces of nature. A few times they turn to rock, preserved forever. And rarest still, these stoney impressions become discovered by paleontologists, eons hence, and become held in high esteem as trinkets of lost ages and species.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4 USM lens at 100mm, ISO 400, Aperture Priority SE Mode 1/640th sec at f/7.1 with pattern metering and no exposure compensation. 

Figure 1 – Horsewoman on the sand bar, Crane Beach, Ipswich, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2019.

I have been continuing to work on my Crane Beach images from Sunday. As the tide was receding, a sand bar developed, and a group of horse riders rode out on the sand. It was magical! Waves on both sides, just a lick of solid ground surrounded by water. The horses appeared to be having as much fun as the riders. Although one of the four horses I saw never went out on the bar, perhaps made nervous by the surrounding water. And with my 70-200 mm lens I was able to get several good images of them. The photograph of Figure 1 is so far my favorite. I have a few “riders in the mist photographs” that I still need to work up. I surprised myself here, when I decided that the image worked best in a soft sepia-toned black and white.

Canon T2i with EF70-200 mm f/4 USM lens and 200 mm, ISO 400, Aperture Priority AE Mode 1/1000th sec at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation.