The Janus, IPhone 6.0 photograph, Concord, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

oday I’d like to share the IPhone photograph of Figure 1 that I took at our local garden center. It is a stone carving of a Janus, the two faced god of ancient Rome. This one is worm-like with the second face, I believe, at the other end. I looked Janus up on the Wikipedia and learned a number of interesting points. Jaanus was unique to the Romans. There was no Greek equivalent.The Janus is commonly regarded as the god of the new year, one face looking forward the other backwards. But according to the ancient Roman farmer’s almanac, Juno was the goddess that presided over the month of January. I cannot quite wrap my mind around the thought that ancient Roman farmers had their own almanac. Perhaps it was sold at the ticket window at the Colosseum.

We learn that Janus presided over the beginning and ending of conflict. He was the God of war and peace and also of transitions like birth and the beginning of journeys. Transitions are the rites of liminal passage and it strikes me as curious to see him portrayed as a worm, since in physics the wormhole is the ultimate transition, a doorway through which you pass from one place and time to another place and time, potentially with no regard for time’s arrow.

Figure 1 – Spotted knapweed, Centaurea_maculosa, Sept.6, 2016, Wilmington, MA.

This past Friday in the late afternoon, I took a short walk to clear my head and I was rewarded by the delicate flowers of Figure 1. This is the spotted knapweed and is a troublesome invasive in New England. But who can really fault its beauty – especially the delicate lavenders and violet tones. I took this photograph with my botanical rig, namely my IPhone 6, and yes I have fallen into the trap of photographing flowers.

Figure 1 – Tiffany’s window. IPhone photograph (c) DE Wolf 2016.

I took the image of Figure 1 of a detail of a window at the local Tiffany’s with my IPhone. It is a cardboard model of the original Tiffany’s store on 57th Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. There are several feature of the subject/photograph that I like. First, is the dynamic range – note the faint shadows of the building on the left hand side. Second, is the extreme angle of the 57th Stree side of the sign. Third, is the cyan tone on the left contrasted with the flesh tone on the right. It was tricky as it always is to line the camera up correctly to minimize distortions. I think that there is still just a bit of a pincushion of the building. I had originally thought black and white. But in the end decided that the hues of color were important to make the image.

Figure 1 – Toy phone a study in obsolescence, IPhone photograph, (c) DE Wolf 2016.

And speaking of obsolescence, the other day my wife and I were having lunch at a favorite haunt, and I was watching some children playing with the toy telephone of Figure 1. And no I didn’t rip it out of their precious little hands to photograph it. I have spoken before about the fun and historic value of soon to be obsolete technology in its eclipse. And what could be better? The rotary dial phone is barely seen anymore (worthy of a photograph), and a toy version even better. I have intentionally thrust it back into the black and white era and for good measure given it a healthy sepia tone to emphasize its antiquity.

Many years ago, we were on vacation at a hotel and I watched my son face the enigma and conundrum of how to use a rotary dial. He adapted perfectly and flawlessly. This is either a testament to the plasticity and adaptability of the human mind, its ability to figure things out. Or he had played with toys like that in the figure at daycare.

Nevertheless, you can see how old the toy is – broken strings and chipped painted eyes – this not to mention the yucky remnants of a thousand childhoods. It seems unlikely that this toy has been cleaned in at least twenty years. Kids today punch away on toy cellphones. Still all the kids today at lunch picked it up and said “Hello, hello,” and I shuttered at the remembrance of the Twilight Zone episode “Long Distance” where the little boy, played by Bill Mumy, talks to his dead grandmother.  And so it goes. Cords? Rotary dials? How difficult it must have been to live in those days!

Figure 1 – Flowers through a window, Highfield Hall and Gardens, Falmouth, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

I took the image of Figure 1 earlier this summer and have been studying it since. I really liked the geometry of the window and the intense colors of the flowers outside. The subtle lack of squareness the slight angle of the window frame appeals to me. I am even willing to dismiss my general prejudice against flower pictures on the basis that “they are too easy.” They allow you to seize and dominate by sheer force of color. Indeed, the fact that I took only a single frame or shot at this subject is not so much a testimony to my compositional skills as it is an expression of a slight bit of embarrassment at the simplicity of the subject. I don’t want to be caught photographing flowers!

But, of course, flower photographs are nothing of the sort. They still require a demanding eye for not only color but composition. The autochrome days, where color alone was sufficient to intrigue, are long past. But, but, but the issue for me here was whether to just work-up the picture as a pure, sharpflower image or to painterize it, to saturate beyond the normal, or to add noise to the point where it becomes photo-pictorialist or impressionist. In the end I have decided on the purer form. And also, in the intense, drought-laden days of August I can remember the gentler days of July, when even rain was a possibility. The image was taken at Highfield Hall and Gardens this past July in Falmouth, MA.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 94 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode 1/1250th sec at f/7.1 with -1 exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – Parallel lines meet at infinity. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

The photograph of Figure 1 is another example of how well the wide angle capabilities of the IPhone 6 camera copes with huge depth of field. Here is an image of simple bricks painted white – a tone-on-tone. And the fun part is that, at least in the world of the lens’ focal plane, parallel lines do indeed meet at infinity. My geometry teacher was right!