Above the mandala on the floor, is the sky.

National Museum of the American Indian,
Washington, D.C., 12/13/14,
FujiFilm X100S, B&W, 180° panorama mode
(click image for full-screen).

Heraclitus, revisited. (Or, sorry I haven't written lately; what's been happening this month?)

I've written recently about Heraclitus, and my goal of taking photos of Bucky that are distinct.

Sometimes, though, like when he stands in the window-light at the top of the stairs and looks into my portrait lens, images from different days can be pretty damn similar:

(19 October 2014)

(27 October 2014)

So, it was nice to get a chance (at bedtime) to snap a shot that is different:

(25 October 2014)

Thanks, Bucky.

(Click on any image for full-screen.)

"...close to music..."

"The true content of a photograph is invisible, for it derives from a play, not with form, but with time. One might argue that photography is as close to music as to painting."

- John Berger, from "Understanding a Photograph" (1968).

Bucky, December 2010. (Click image for full-screen.)

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.

Spring Flower-Blogging, Part V.

(click image for full-screen)

Spring Flower-Blogging, Part IV.

(click image for full-screen)

Spring Flower-Blogging, Part III.

(click image for full-screen)

Have you ever looked _down_ on one?

"I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth."
– Genesis 9:13

On Tuesday, while flying over the Atlantic, I looked down at a rainbow:

(iPhone photo; click image for full-screen)

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.

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

(It's no wonder that camera sales are falling.)

On a recent visit to south Florida, I took some iPhone snapshots of waterbirds (and their reflections):

White Ibis.

Limpkin.

Tricolored Heron.

(Click any image for full-screen.)

On-The-Move Dog-Blogging! (or, 77 milliseconds in the park)

(Two days ago, in Rock Creek Hills Park.)

"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.

"How impressive you find modern pop Bumpology depends in part on whether you believe that there are a lot of people who still think like that."

"In the same way, even the neuro-skeptics seem to agree that modern Bumpology remains an important corrective to radical anti-Bumpology: to the kind of thinking that insists that brains don’t count at all and cultures construct everything; that, given the right circumstances, there could be a human group with six or seven distinct genders, each with its own sexuality; that there is a possible human society in which very old people would be regarded as attractive and nubile eighteen-year-olds not; and still another where adolescent children would be noted for their rigorous desire to finish recently commenced tasks."

-from "Mindless: The New Neuro-Skeptics" by Adam Gopnik in the September 9th issue of the New Yorker.

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.

Free-Boaters!

When I saw Wilco open for Bob Dylan at Duluth's Bayfront Park last month, these folks heard the concert without having to buy a ticket:

(click image for full-screen)

Your functional neuroimaging update (with study questions).

1. "Graphs are the new blobs."

Discuss. How are graphs and blobs similar? How are they different?

2.  A leading search engine gives no hits on that phrase:

Do you expect this to remain true for long?

April Showers Flower-Blogging.

(tulips)

Lensbaby (2.0) Loves Bucky!

I don't use it much, but when I do, I enjoy my Lensbaby (2.0).

In fact, I admit that, sometimes, playing with the Scheimpflug principle can be irresistible.

I enjoy my Lensbaby, and my Lensbaby loves Bucky:

(click image for full-screen view)