You may recall from the hit musical “Auntie Maime” that Maime’s husband dies while they are on their honeymoon because he backs up too far while climbing the Matterhorn to get a picture.  It stands as an important literary reminder to photographers everywhere that they should be careful when taking pictures.  Yesterday I almost fell with my camera because I backed up into a rock on the ground.  The photograph is not worth your safety.  Tell that to war correspondents everywhere!

Case in point, is Pakistani photographer Atif Saeed, who captured this absolutely incredible image of a snarling lion at a wildlife park outside of Lahore.  He had slowly crept out of his car’s open door. Wait a minute it was night time, you know dinner time for the lion family.  Mr. Saeed sat on the ground taking pictures at what he called “a stone’s throw” from Mr. Lion and was forced to make a very hasty retreat when the lion saw and sprung at him.  After all that is what lions do.

I have a colleague, Dr. Kenneth Spring, who wrote an autobiography detailing his summers in Onset, Massachusetts, where as a boy he did well crazy boy things, often verging on the suicidal.  Fortunately, for the field of biophysics Ken survived.  He is retired now and building and restoring Small Open Boats (SOB) on Maryland’s eastern shore. His memoirs are titled after what his mother would see when he came home from near disaster. Ken, “What were you thinking?”  So, while I admire the photograph hugely, I have to ask Atif, “What were you thinking?”

The Cranes Are Flying is a  1957 Soviet film about World War II. It depicts in the deepest sense the cruelty of war.  But it ends on a hopeful note when it is observed that the cranes have returned on their winter migration to the arctic. I always have that film in mind, when I watch the great bird migrations, which if we are observant we can see even in a city like Boston.  Species leave in the fall and return in the spring.  It is truly an exhilarating sight, because just as in the movie the point is that, however cruel the human world, nature remains in its consistency.

So perhaps, dear reader, you will find it uplifting to see some wonderful photographs of the 2015 return of hundreds of thousands of Sandhill cranes to Nebraska on their annual migration.  There are a couple of these images that I think especially noteworthy.  The first is an image of the cranes in wild flight against a deep blue sky at dusk by Jim Lo Scalzo for the EPA (European PressPhoto Agency). The important point here is that sometimes you don’t need detail and sharpness to tell the amazing story.  And second is another image also by Jim Scalzo showing the cranes gathered in front of an abandoned Nebraska farm house.  This could just have easily (well maybe not easily or even in color) been taken a century ago.  Therein lies the continuity, and I hope that everyone is just a little bit more relaxed and inspired by the awe and continuity of nature.

Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with my­­­­­­­ love affair with my IPhone 6 as a camera.  It’s gotten to the point that I have to struggle mightily to remember, when I post an IPhone photograph, to say that it was taken with that camera.  Really, why does it matter, and recently I’ve started putting some of my IPhone images up on my YouPic page.

The IPhone 6 camera has gotten rave reviews and in essence you can only fault it for a couple of reasons. First, and foremost, it lacks optical zoom.  So as you zoom in you’re rapidly reducing the number of pixels and ultimately the resolution or sharpness.  Second, it is shooting jpg images; so you don’t have all the advantages of raw.  This means that you don’t have good control over dynamic range and that it is doing all sorts of fancy stuff and not telling you.  But hey, it takes great pictures and it if you’re like me it’s always with you. As for the exciting news, rumor has it that the next IPhone variant will have optical zoom.  I’m starting to wish I had waited!

It should therefore come as no surprise to anyone then, that in the Sony World Photography Awards 2015 there was a category for Mobile Phone Photographs and the winners have recently been announced.  These images have that wonderful spontaneity associated with street photography.  You’re there in the moment and capture the image.  Indeed, you can make believe that you’re checking your phone rather than taking a picture. I was very pleased to see some excellent black and white images among the Sony Awards. The real challenge is to be able to say, yes this was taken with a cell phone. It is really difficult.

I was struck yesterday by a series of truly stunning “Street Art” or graffiti photographs by in Kathmandu by BBC photographer  Richard Fenton-Smith. As in America graffiti of this sort is officially illegal and is a fairly recent phenomenon on Nepal’s capital city. Lovers of Keith Haring are sure to be delighted by these images, which wonderfully combine the modern with the traditionally mythic.  Consider for instance this image of the Hindu Cyclops deity Bishnu reclining with his IPhone by Deadline or the deity Bhairava, Lord of Destruction, with his own can of spray painting, this a collaborative effort Sadhux, Deadline, and #H11325.

This kind of art, photographs of paintings, raises the significant issue of which is the art, the painting or the photograph.  I believe that the answer is both.  The photograph, drawn obviously by color and form, chooses the details to concentrate on and chose the context in which to take the photograph, dramatically, for instance, in this image which juxtaposes street art with street dog.  The photograph in this case is derivative art, a reinterpretation of the original theme. And besides we have to be grateful to Mr. Fenton-Smith because otherwise most of us would never have seen these images.

A year ago this February I posted about the discovery of the remains of Richard III.  It was so remarkable that I allowed myself a little deviation from photography.  Richard’s death market the end thirty year long War of the Roses, and while Shakespeare was not so kind to Richard history has been taking a turn in his favor.  Well this week we get a whole new set of photographs that I never expected to ever see. Knights “in shining armour” standing guard at the funeral procession (Sofia Bouzidi for Cater News) and perhaps most touching of all is a photograph by Will Johnston showing showing Emma Chamberlein of the First Aylestone Brownies placing Richard’s crown upon his casket.  20,000 people have viewed Richard’s casket at Leicester Cathedral, and he is to be re-interred today.

Richard III’s DNA was identified based upon the DNA of  Michael Ibsen, a Canadian-born cabinet-maker from Paddington in London, Ibsen is a descendant of Richard III’s sister Anne.  In a tender twist, Mr. Ibsen was chosen to construct Richard’s coffin (Suzanne Plunket fro Reuters).

Perhaps this burial of Englands last Plantagenet king represents an unexpected but final conclusion of the War of the Roses.

“Prick not your finger as you pluck it off

Lest bleeding you do paint the white rose red

And fall on my side so, against your will.”

William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part One, Act 2, Scene 4

Figure 1 -= Daquerreotype by John Ruskin and John Hobbs of Venice, c 1851. In the public domain because of its age.

I was excited today to learn that famed Anitquarian Bookseller Bernard Quaritch is to publish a set of daguerreotypes, “Carrying Off the Palaces” owned and many taken by the great 19th century art critic and champion of the pre-Raphaeliltes, John Ruskin (1819-1900).  Much of this work was a collaboration between Ruskin and his valet, John Hobbs. These were purchased by collectors Ken and Jenny Jacobson for£75,000 in 2006. The images for the most part were taken in Italy, France and Switzerland around 1850.

Most of the daguerreotypes that we see are portraits and subjects like landscapes and architectural details relatively rare.  In that regard many of these images are unique and in the hand of a master like Ruskin quite stunning. Ruskin was the leading English Victorian Era art critic, and as such he helped define much of what we now see as “Victorian art and sensibilities.”  But he was much more: an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist, and now revealed to have been an accomplished daguerreotypist.

Today executing a daguerreotype seems difficult and fraught with danger.  But at the time it was embraced and mastered by many Victorians.  Such was the excitement about the process and about the concept that one could “capture the light.” As we have discussed there is something truly unique and magical about the daguerreotype, an amazing level of detail and the “magical” fact that as you approach one and move your head directly over the image it disappears and is replaced with a shiny mirror.  The discovery of Ruskin and Hobbs’ work represents a major development in our understanding of the development of photography, which after all is much more than a set of scientific discoveries, but really a redefining moment in the history of mankind.

It’s been I while since I brought you anything to potentially beat out the Wife Carry Races.  But you can rest assured that I am ever searching the web and the world for the bizarre and eccentric in human behavior and photographs.  So today, the first full day of spring, as February fades into an unpleasant and distant memory, I’d like to share this photograph of the winners of this years “Frozen Hair Competition” at the Takhini Hot Springs just outside of White Horse in Canada’s Yukon Territory.   This is something to think about the next time that you have a “bad hair day,” which is a problem that I never suffer from. I guess that the message is that no matter how cold it is, it could always be colder and you can always have fun if you simply embrace life.