Cubist, but operational.

Last night, a train pulled into the Forest Glen Metro station just as I was rotating my iPhone to take a 180-degree "panoramic" photograph of the platform:

Here's a closeup of the train:

I boarded that train and can report that in spite of its shattered appearance, it ran just fine.

Okay, one more crop:

(Click any image for full-screen view.)

"OAK, RED"

(seen this morning in Rock Creek Park)

The Bucky Variations*.

Heraclitus said that "Everything changes and ... you cannot step twice into the same stream."

If, however, you take several photographs of the same stream – or dog – they may not look all that different.

But what if you use different lenses?

Here is Bucky standing at the top of the stairs, as seen through three different lenses** (click any image for full-screen):

Fuji X100S***, 5/28/14.

Nikkor 105 mm f/2 "defocus control" lens****, 8/9/14

Lensbaby LM-10*****, 8/12/14.

And there you have it: Three different views of Bucky at the top of the stairs.

I admit that these may not reflect three different ways of being, a la Heraclitus, but instead may depict three different ways of seeing, a la John Berger. But, for most of us, ways of seeing are ways of being. And, as for me, I am grateful to Bucky, who has taught me new ways of being, and of seeing.


__________________________
        *  With footnotes.
     **   And cameras.
   ***   Built-in 23 mm f/2 lens (35 mm equivalent focal length = 35 mm).
 ****  On a full-frame Nikon digital SLR.
***** On an iPhone.

Correction of the Week!

(from yesterday's New YorkTimes)

Sun, & Autumn.

Two analogies from the Mountain Goats:

"...the sun peeks in like a killer through the curtain..."
-from "The First Few Desperate Hours" from the album "Tallahassee" (2002).

"...Autumn came around like a drifter to an on-ramp..."
-from "In the Hidden Places" from the album "Get Lonely" (2006).

Is the black-and-white flower the prettiest?

(Bucky backyard on 7/24/14; click image for full-screen)

"…the pictures come to you one by one and you look at them, some of them last longer than others…"

"I'm beginning to lose it, you're afraid of how weak you are, that you can't get her all back into you again and now the whole thing is going out of your body and it's more in your mind than your body, the pictures come to you one by one and you look at them, some of them last longer than others, you were together in a very white clean place, a coffee house, having breakfast together, and the place is so white that against it you can see her clearly, her blue eyes, her smile the colors of her clothes, even the print of the newspaper she's reading when she's not looking up at you, the light brown and red and gold of her hair when she's got her had down reading, the brown coffee, the brown rolls, all against that white table and those white plates and silver urns and silver knives and spoons, and against that quiet of the sleepy people in that room sitting alone at their tables with just come chinking and clattering off spoons and cups in saucers and some hushed voices her voice now and then rising and falling."

-from "Break It Down" by Lydia Davis.

"If you can't have the [static magnetic] field you love, love the [static magnetic] field you have." - William A. Edelstein

Ever have an MRI? If so, you benefited from many inventions by Bill Edelstein, whose passing, earlier this week, is mourned by many.

Under the influence.

Heraclitus said that you can't step into the same river twice, but sometimes I wondered whether I was photographing the same dog twice, thrice, and more.

I like to photograph Bucky. Sometimes, though, I found that I would take a photograph of him, and it would look very familiar:

(July)

(October)

(November)

(Click any image for full-screen.)

Old dog, new photo. If you photograph the same dog, repeatedly, how different can any new photo be...?

Last weekend, I visited the Yousuf Karsh exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery (USA). In spite of my familiarity with some of Karsh's truly iconic images (his portraits of Churchill & Hemingway, for instance), looking at his prints moved me. Wow. What exquisite compositions! What use of light - and darkness - to frame, and to highlight!

After visiting the exhibition, I took these two photos (click any image for full-screen), indoors, by available window-light; I think they are different from all my earlier photos of Bucky:

Thank you, Mr. Karsh!

And thank you, Bucky.

A pair of pairs of pears.

(click image for full-screen)

Such ugliness should be an opt-in, not a secret vice. (An open letter.) [Puzzling color corruption in uploaded images turns out to be Google "auto-enhancement."]

Dear Google, please consider making the "auto-enhancement" of uploaded images an opt-in choice, rather than a hidden default.

I like your picasaweb cloud-based photo-hosting service, which I've been using for years. Recently, though, I discovered that I had a problem: newly uploaded photos had corrupt colors. Ugh. I tried deleting and repeating; same problem. What could the issue be? Was this a color management problem for which I was somehow responsible? Actually, no. Turns out, it was something that you, Google, see as a feature.

A few months ago, I found that it was necessary to upgrade my Google account to a "Google plus membership," in order to attend a meeting via a "Google plus video hangout." So, I did. Turns out that you processed all my image uploads thereafter using a feature that you, Google, call "image auto-enhance." Those bad colors were your idea of "enhancement:"

"ENHANCED"

"REVERTED TO ORIGINAL"

(Idiots.)

I've now cancelled the "enhancement" of those photos (individually, as you gave me no way to do so en masse; I was relieved that I did not have to re-upload everything). And I've also turned off the "auto-enhancement" of newly uploaded photos, going forwards.

In general, I do not alter my photographs. Light goes through a lens, and hits a sensor, and electrons get happy, and a file is written; that is what I want to see. How dare you, Google, presume that you should "auto-enhance" any image that I entrust to you for storage? And how dare you, Google, presume to do so without even telling me?

In closing: Dear Google, without mentioning that you would modify the images I uploaded, you made them ugly. I've fixed this issue with respect to my own image uploads. I respectfully suggest that in order to spare other people similar ugliness, confusion, and delay, that you please make image "auto-enhance" an opt-in choice, rather than a hidden default.

Respectfully,
Jim Pekar
Kensington, Maryland, USA

"... greyen, redden, greyen, redden…"

"Watt saw, in the grate, of the range, the ashes grey. But they turned pale red, when he covered the lamp, with his hat. The range was almost out, but not quite. A handful of dry chips and the flames would spring merry in appearance, up the chimney, with an organ note. So Watt busied himself a little while, covering the lamp, less and less, more and more, with his hat, watching the ashes greyen, redden, greyen, redden, in the grate, of the range."

-From Watt by Samuel Beckett (p. 30 of the Grove Press edition).

"C480782"

I shared on Facebook photographs of Weston model 301 milliammeter number 480782, made in Newark, NJ; acquired by the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering; surplussed by the MIT Department of Physics. Check it out.

Triangle vs. Circle!

If you're going to drive (or even walk) in Germany, you really should know the difference between these two signs:

Do you know the difference? For the answer, click here.

"He's silent, wherever he is." [On metaphorical terrain.]

"By now one more American sheep the shepherds have temporarily lost track of, somewhere in the high country above this ruinous hour, cragfast* in the storm."

-From page 402 of "Bleeding Edge" by Thomas Pynchon.

______
*From the Oxford English Dictionary:

"She finds herself gazing out the window." [Towards the Deseret, a (fictional) apartment house.]

"She squints past roofline contours, vents, skylights, water tanks and cornices under this pre-storm lighting, shining as if already wet against the darkening sky, down the street to where the cursed Deseret rears above Broadway, one or two storm-nervous lights already on, its stonework at this distance seeming too uncleansable, its shadows too many, ever to breach."

-Just one sentence (the prior one provides this post's title) from page 199 of "Bleeding Edge" by Thomas Pynchon.

O Lucky Man!

(self-strangling morning glory; 
no cameras or photographers were harmed making this photograph)

I am very fortunate. 

I recently came upon a Serious Warning in my camera's user's manual: 

"Sunlight focused into the camera when the sun
is in or close to the frame could cause a fire."

And another: 

"When operating the viewfinder diopter adjustment control with your eye to the viewfinder, care should be taken not to put your finger in your eye accidentally."

I am very fortunate! Taking photographs – many photographs – without having heretofore consulted these Serious Warnings, I never set the camera on fire, nor stuck a finger in my eye. I shall give thanks for my good fortune, next month on Thanksgiving, once I get my finger out of my ear.

Is the paint made from crushed pearls, and applied by magic elves wielding brushes of unicorn hair?

Did you know that there's a hybrid car with a $63,000 paint option?

That's not the price of the car; that's the upcharge for the fancy paint.

Really:

Why do you think it's called Fall?

(in the air)

So that's how they do it!

"The building almost seemed to glow from somewhere deep within its base, as if lit by a big pile of burning money."

-from the article "Idealized or Caricature, Architectural Renderings Are Weapons in Real Estate" by Elizabeth A. Harris in today's New York Times.