Category Archives: Reviews and Critiques

Sir John Benjamin Stone

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Figure 1 - portrait by "Spy" of Sir John Benjamin Stone. From the Wikimediacommons and in the public domain.

Figure 1 – portrait by  Leslie Ward “Spy” of Sir John Benjamin Stone. From the Wikimediacommons and in the  US public domain.

We have often discussed in this blog the way in which nineteenth century photographs offer us a rare yet highly personal glimpse of life in that century.  Currently on exhibit at the Brazilian Embassy in London is a collection of photographs taken by Sir John Benjamin Stone (1838-1914) during the famous Solar Eclipse Expedition of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1893.

Stone was official photographer for that expedition.  But what is the most remarkable element of Stone’s work is his extensive portrayal of peoples. The expedition brings to life the Portuguese immigrants and Brazilian people working to build an independent nation. There is something oh so appealing, for instance, in the way that Stone takes us back to a shipboard card game of over a hundred years ago. We relate completely with these young immigrants.

Stone was prolific in both his travels and this very intimate genre of work.  I thought that I would share two images. The first (Figure 1) is a classic “Spy” portrait of Stone from the Vanity Fair series “Great Men of the Nineteenth Century.” While this is not itself a photograph, I think it gives a real sense of the cumbersome gear of the photographer of that time. And besides, I so love this series! It too is a time capsule gift to us. The second is a portrait by Stone of two English revelers at a country fare. You share their pleasure and amusement and wish that you could share a pint with the. “And drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things.”

Figure 2 - Sippers and Toppers by Sir John Benjamin Stone c. 1900. From the Wikimediacommons and in the public domain.

Figure 2 – Sippers and Toppers by Sir John Benjamin Stone c. 1900. From the Wikimediacommons uploaded by user smalljim  and in the US public domain.

 

The time has come the walrus said…

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Figure 1 - The 2014 "haul out" of 45,000 walruses along the Northern Alaskan coast. Image from NOAA.

Figure 1 – The 2014 “haul out” of 45,000 walruses along the Northern Alaskan coast. Image from NOAA.

I am thinking that the picture of the day is the one of Figure 1.  It was released by NOAA on September 27 as part of their annual aerial survey of marine mammals and shows a “haul out” of walruses in Northern Alaska.  Estimates now are that there are about 45,000 individuals in the mammalian cluster.

These events occur when melting ice robs the walrus of his/her favorite lounging spot and they have to resort to hauling out onto the beach.  One local news woman commented this morning that there definitely “a shortage of towel space.” Unfortunately, this is likely an effect of melting arctic seas.  The picture is amazing and poignant!

“The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand:
“If this were only cleared away,”
They said, “it would be grand!””

Lewis Carrol, (from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)

Mirror India on Mars?

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Near full disk image from the ISR Mars Orbiter. Reposted from the ISR Facebook page.

Near full disk image from the ISR Mars Orbiter. Reposted from the ISR Facebook page.

I’m giving huge kudos to the Indian Space Research Organization for their successful insertion of their Mars Orbiter into Martian Orbit at 46,000 miles or 74,500 kilometers.  This is no mean feat, and a lot of credit also has to go to the heroic French mathematicians of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, who made all of this possible.

Now less than a week after the insertion the spacecraft has captured a beautiful gibbous portrait of the Red Planet, capturing a massive dust storm and in true egalitarian form posted it to the ISR’s Facebook Page. I’ve reposted it here as Figure 1. Wait a minute and look just left of center in the image.  Saurabh Gupta wrote in a comment to the posting, “OMG, India map on Mars!”

Well, deja vu! We have another wonderful pareidolia. It’s all a testament to the way that the human mind seeks to see familiar and recognizable paterns. This in turn essentially creates a whole genre of photographs.

Shopped or not shopped? That is the question!

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The other day an old friend asked me how to tell a real photograph from a fraudulent one, or more specifically, “how I can tell a touched up, photo shopped, photograph from the real thing?” It is a subject that we have spoken about before, but one I think revisiting, especially since there are about to be midterm election campaigns in the United States.

Actually, the word “fraud“ is a telling one. We “Photoshop” (isn’t it great how that has become a verb) for one of three reasons: to entertain, to create art, and to deceive. The evil is obviously in the act of deception. There lies the lie! Fraud may be for monetary or political motives. It always bears that self-serving component.

People tend to be gulible and people want to believe.  But with very little effort you can usually find the fly in your ointment.

First of all to the age old point – if it’s too good to be true it probably isn’t. So much for the zebra standing next to the lion at the watering hole.

Second, look for incongruities. How come Theodore Roosevelt is riding on a moose across a lake and his pants legs aren’t wet? Why does the picture suddenly go out of focus where his hands hold onto the moose? Right, it’s because it’s otherwise hard to obscure the fact that in the original photograph he was on a horse and holding onto the reigns. Also he’s a bit large for the moose in question. Well, that’s just bully. And don’t forget to look at the shadows in the picture. Are they consistent?

Third, zoom in as close as you can and look at the edges.  Yep, all the way to the point that the pixelation of the image is obvious and apparent. A great example of this was the “Money”/”Romney” fake from the 2012 elections. When you cut and paste in Photoshop or other image processing software you form sharp edges, which are tell-tale. So to avoid these people use a process known as “feathering” which kind of scrambles the transition between regions and is itself tell-tale.

Fourth, if you know how to do it, increase the contrast. These edge effects tend to pop out at you when you do that.

Finally, recognize that revealing fraudulent photographs can make you unpopular. President Obama was not born in Kenya. But there are lots of people who want to believe that he was.

 

The anvil of the gods

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In Greek mythology Hephaestus, Ἥφαιστος,” was the son of Zeus and Hera.  He was the Greek god of blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metals, metallurgy, fire and volcanoes.  His Roman equivalent was Vulcan.

These mythic references must come to mind upon looking at a truly fantastic photograph from the EPA this past week showing Mount Slamet spewing ash, lava, and fire into the night sky above central Java in Indonesia. Need-less-to-say, it brings to mind the great eruption of Krakatoa, believed to be the loudest volcanic explosion in the history of the world.  It was reported to have been heard 3000 miles away and the event was recorded on barographs in Greenwich.

The photograph captures all the terrifying beauty of volcanic eruption. It connects us not only with events of human history like the eruption of Mount Vesusius that buried Pompei and Herculeneum in 79 CE, but also pyroclastic events that literally forged our geological world, which is still a fragile lithospheric layer floating upon volcanic magma. There is the image of the human soul being like the flame of a candle.  Here the volcano’s flame is the soul of the Earth.  It truly represents the anvil of the gods.

“Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow “The Village Blacksmith,” 1842.

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http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/77664000/jpg/_77664724_77664387.jpg

Hidden Cities of World War I

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As we lived out the horrors of our own time, we may pause to reflect back on the horror that was World War I a century ago.  All of those veterans are gone now, and it all fades into a collective consciousness barely kept alive by black and white images of wet and disgusting battlefields or the lost army of white grave markers.

But we should not forget it, even if it only emphasizes the similarity between our times and those.  So I’d like to point out a fascinating Blog today in the New York Times by Craig Allen “The Hidden Cities of World War I.” As it turns out the battle fields of “The Great War” were fought over the very ground that covers the ancient stone quarries from which the great French cathedrals were built.  And in these stones soldiers sought refuge from the hell above them. Amazing artifacts are left behind, wine bottles, live grenades, signatures in stone, and wall carvings.  And these have been wonderfully photographed by Jeffrey Gusky. These are gorgeous in the mood the set and in the way they emphasize the trick of the human eye of focusing on details.

Most amazing to me are hearts, celebrating distant sweethearts – a connection home. And as Gusky notes, ever so poignantly, there are many more of these expressions of love and tenderness than of national pride.  There is certainly a lesson in this about the most enduring of human qualities, if we will only listen to our own inner hearts.

Aurora Borealis

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Figure 1 - European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst posted this photograph taken from the International Space Station to social media on Aug. 29, 2014.

Figure 1 – European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst posted this photograph taken from the International Space Station to social media on Aug. 29, 2014.

I found myself Friday night – Saturday getting up groggily several times, staggering across the darkened bedroom, and scanning the night sky looking for the promised aurora borealis.  Never did see it.  The sky was a bit overcast. and I am told that this intermittent search was not the righty way to do.

I have seen them several times in the past, particularly from the coast of Northern Maine and it leaves an amazing impression.  It is something truly magical, a subtle array of glorious dancing color.  And even an understanding of how the rain of solar particles streams in and interacts with the Earth’s ionosphere does nothing to diminish the glory.  Indeed, for me understanding just increases the awe.  And the Northern Lights is an effect that brings back shared primordial sensations of unbridled wonder.

Well, I’d love to share with you an image that I took on Friday night.  But I have none.  I do want to mention however, that here is a case where digital photography with its increased sensitivity with reduced gain and immediate feedback offers an amazing advantage.  Still I would recommend studying up on just how to do it correctly. There is an excellent detailed resource on the web by Patrick J. Endres.

So Saturday morning I scoured the newsmedia in search of images that other people took all around the world and there are some really amazing ones.  And then there are the images like those of Figure 1 taken from the International Space Station showing a top down view of the Aurora Borealis.  This image was posted on social media on August 29th by European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst.

So I encourage you to go out and look for these iridescent curtains of light, especially if you live at a high enough or low enough latitude and where the lights of man have not obscured the glory of the Milky Way.  They never ever disappoint.

Other worlds of the mind

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In the mood for other worldliness I was struck last week by this dreamy photograph by Jim Urquhart for Reuters showing a scene from this years “Burning Man Arts and Music Festival” in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada.  The art installation shown is “Pulse and Bloom.” Once  a year tens of thousands of people descend upon the desert to create an arts city o:f art, community, self expression, and self reliance. A week later they depart leaving no trace of their having been there.

As for the picture, the dusty redness of the scene and of the clouds transports you visually to another, perhaps a Martian, world.  The indistinct but looming figure in the background evokes so many science fiction movies and thus creates a certain element of for foreboding.  Where do we go next? As our own world becomes so strange and mean, we all perhaps, begin to yearn for an element of utopian other worldliness.  This image, at least, gives us that escape.

 

 

British Wildlife Photography awards for 2014

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It is time for something beautiful and fortunately for us the British Wildlife Awards have just been announced for 2014.  There is a lot to choose from among this year’s awardees, but if forced to make choices I’m going to vote, as “best of show” for the truly gorgeous and impressionist image by Peter Cairns, winner in the Wild Woods Category, entitled “Autumn Jewels, Woodland, Cairngorms.”  And then there is equally magnificent image, both the overall competition and the urban wildlife award winner, of a grey goose on the River Thames by Lee Acaster from Wortham in Suffolk.  The tonal quality and mood of the image are just wonderful, and you almost get the sense that the goose is just a bit confused by his very urban surroundings. Really wonderful! Note also the beautiful way that the light comes in from the left side. Oh, and really for fun take a look at Alan Price’s highly commended black and white image of two Jackdaws stealing wool from an all-knowing and amused sheep  in Gwynedd, Wales.

So here’s my suggestion.  First, get through your work day.  Then take a few moments to visit the competitions website and see all of the winners and commendations.  It will make for a good end to your day.