One of my favorite visitors to my bird-feeder is the Red-bellied Woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus). However, it rarely spends much time off the feeder on nearby branches. Off the feeder is a rule for me, and as a result getting a decent photograph has eluded me. Today I finally (Figure 1) succeeded in photographing this young male, and this was with the added handicaps of through glass and low solar illumination.

It has been said that the red-bellied is poorly named, because it rarely exhibits a subtle reddish coloration on its belly. So it is an added bonus to the day that Figure 1 actually captures this coloration.

Canon T2i with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens at 250 mm, ISO 400, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/160th of a sec at f/7.1 with -1 exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – IPhone portrait of Steve. (c) DE Wolf 2016

My calendar is telling me that today is December 22, which is the usual day for launching my favorite photographs of the year series; so that I end on New Year’s Eve. At least it reminds me that I really should be blogging. All the impending doom and gloom in the news encourages me to something lighter, and so I thought that I would feature instead, in the waning days of the year. some of my “Animal Faces” series. I have reptiles, canines. felines, and ruminates. But as a first entry here, I thought I would offer up the photograph that started it all “Steve.”

Now Steve is a very wrinkle-face bull mastiff that belongs to a friend. He epitomizes the point to the “Animal Faces” Project. Cicero (106-43 B.C.) is credited with saying that “Ut imago est animi voltus sic indices oculi‘ (The face is a picture of the mind as the eyes are its interpreter), or in its more common form, “The eyes are the window of the soul.”

You must wonder what Steve is thinking, or more significantly feeling. Common cartoons would put a bubble above Steve’s head with the words “Woof, woof, woof). However, dogs are not vacant headed, nor are they single-minded, laser focused on food. I have read several theories of the origin of dogs, more importantly of the human-dog relationship. Dogs feel, love, and crave affection. To some extent they remember the past and anticipate the future.They are absolute in their devotion. Clearly they see us as some odd two-legged member of the pack that is somewhat lacking in the canine social graces.

This point was made by John Steinbeck in the Grapes of Wrath,

Figure 1 – Thanksgiving in NYC #1, Architectural Detail at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (c) DE Wolf 2018.

Thanksgiving this year was a return to the place and the places of my youth. That is, it was a trip to visit my son and his girlfriend in New York City and then to visit some of the places that I frequented there when I was growing up. Figure 1 was taken on Friday, November 23 and is an architectural detail within the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Specifically this is in the Americas Wing and represents the important point that, often, it is the museum itself, the architecture of its bones, that draws your eye. Here the subject is a staircase and the surrounding archways. The image was, needless-to-say?, taken with my IPhone, which in this case did a much better job than my Canon could have done. And, of course, the image is further enhanced by a warm bright, but waning, light of a late November afternoon in the city – here flooding in through the skylights in the sculpture courtyard.

The museum was packed with holiday travelers. But I managed to capture a moment of quiet solitude. This is the very point of city life, to capture the fleeting moments of isolation and pure joy.

Figure 1 – A dismal day on the pond. Maynard, MA (c) DE Wolf 2018t

Figure 1 was taken back in early October with my IPhone at the Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge. The idea was to capture the absolutely dismal quality of the light as well as the gloomy solitude of denuded trees. I have chosen to remain in color, though it is minimal. The image required almost no processing to obtain the effect that I was after – just a tiny bit of dodging in the clouds and an emphatic blue tone. And, of course, there was the requisite sharpening of the image. Dominant is the bilateral symmetry of tree and sky reflected in the water.

The odd quality of a gloomy scene is that it is somehow uplifting. Melancholia, like that of Hamlet, evokes contemplation. Here our thoughts zero in on the transitional moment, the liminal passage between fall and winter. Soon the pond will be frozen. But always there is the assertion of spring and summer – the promise of another year.

Figure 1 – Iridescent fan, Natick, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2018.

I was struck yesterday by this giant paper fan that had been coated with a film to create and iridescent interference pattern.This is where the film has a thickness near that of the wavelength of light, such that light reflected from the top surface recombines and interferes with light reflected from the bottom surface of the film. Differences in thickness cause light maxima to occur at different wavelengths or colors, and hence the flowing pattern of color as if it is painted on.  It is much like the interference of an oil slick on water. This kind of interference is, in fact, the cause of color in butterfly wings – which we might have otherwise attributed to some sort of pigment. The image is, of course, taken with my IPhone 6.0. I am ever-ready to test its ability as a camera.

Figure 1 – A bird of a different color, Natick, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2018.

Not a horse, but a bird of different color! Just for fun I’m offering up today Figure 1 of a stuffed toy that I was attracted to at a local department store. And yes, my inner child wants to take it home and play with it.It is reminiscent of Big Bird, only polychromatic, not just yellow.  It was taken with my IPhone and is a kind of Joseph Bird, with an amazing multicolored dream crop of feathers.

Figure 1 – Photopictorialism Study #17, “Center Court,” Natick, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2018.

Figure 1, which I entitle “Center Court,” is another of my experiments in photopictorialism. Here the impressionist granularity, or noise, was achieved optically, by shooting the scene as reflected in a picture frame with a diffuse grey background. The image, taken with my IPhone 6, is of the center court region of the local mall. There is actually very little processing: just a bit of highlighting of the bright regions in the background and some subtle antique vignetting, both done for the same region. I am pleased with the dreamy effect.

Figure 1 – The Cyborg, Natick, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2018

I’m offering up today Figure 1 that shows a fellow I encountered recently at the local mall. I took the image with my IPhone.  We may call him The Cyborg – a cube man – enhanced to be super human. The fact that he averts his eyes and looks down is meant to suggest that he is up to, or contemplating, something threatening – you know,  like taking over the world and annihilating all human life on the planet. That after all is what malevolent supermen do. There is, for instance, the Borg continuum and the Incredible Hulk. As for the cubes, well, they are the building blocks, the elements of malevolence.

“But it is true that I am a wretch. I have murdered the lovely and the helpless; I have strangled the innocent as they slept and grasped to death his throat who never injured me or any other living thing. I have devoted my creator, the select specimen of all that is worthy of love and admiration among men, to misery; I have pursued him even to that irremediable ruin. There he lies, white and cold in death. You hate me, but your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself. I look on the hands which executed the deed; I think on the heart in which the imagination of it was conceived and long for the moment when these hands will meet my eyes, when that imagination will haunt my thoughts no more.”

Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus

Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley

Figure 1 – Dragon fruit or pitahaya, Natick, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2018.

Figure 1 was taken with my IPhone at the local market. It shows the dragon fruit or Pitahaya. Of course, there is a legend associated with this edible form of cactus. The story goes that the fruit was created millennia ago, needless-to-say by fire breathing dragons. When the dragon is slain in battle the last thing to emerge would be the fruit. This fruit was collected and presented to the emperor as a great treasure. To me this fruit looks like something that Siqourney Weaver might avoid in some cavernous place on an alien planet. The combination of reds and yellow claws are reminiscent of some horrible teratoma perhaps. But the effect is chromatically spectacular, and I am most appreciative of the shoppers that were patient with me as I set each of the fruits to properly compose the image. In particular there must be no sign of price tags if we are to properly achieve and Edward Weston like effect.