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.)

"…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.

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.

"... 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).

"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.

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.

Title of the Week!

"Strobing Brain Thunders: Functional Correlation of Extreme Activity Events" by F. Lombardi, D.R. Chialvo, H.J. Herrmann, and L. de Arcangelis, appears in the journal "Chaos, Solitons & Fractals."

April Showers Flower-Blogging.

(tulips)

"Caveman."

From the Washington Post interview with former National Institutes of Health Director Elias Zerhouni, on the sequester:

"Q: That answers one possible defense of the cuts, which is that the scientists could just go work for private industry instead. 

A: That’s ridiculous. That’s the most ridiculous, caveman statement I’ve ever heard. That’s not the way science works. Science works with bright young people who are attracted to science. ... Research is an investment, it’s not an expense."

"Today, our scientists are mapping the human brain to unlock the answers to Alzheimer’s."

"Now, if we want to make the best products, we also have to invest in the best ideas. Every dollar we invested to map the human genome returned $140 to our economy – every dollar. Today, our scientists are mapping the human brain to unlock the answers to Alzheimer’s. They’re developing drugs to regenerate damaged organs; devising new material to make batteries 10 times more powerful. Now is not the time to gut these job-creating investments in science and innovation. Now is the time to reach a level of research and development not seen since the height of the Space Race. We need to make those investments."

-Remarks by the President in yesterday's State of the Union Address.

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)

"Ideas flee the prison of the mind ..."

Escapism? I think escapism is healthy. Every time you cast a thought forward or look to the sky, you're escaping. I don't think of escapism as something outside of yourself; it's something natural and fundamental, like breathing. Everything we have was "escaped" into creation, right? Ideas flee the prison of the mind, become real. I believe in it as much as I believe in riding my bike or lying in the grass or digging in the dirt or eating bread or drinking water or skinning your knee. It's key.

- from the interview with Brian Chippendale in the July/August 2012 issue of the Believer.

"Science."

What little we have ever understood
is like an offering we make beside the sea.
It is pure worship when pursued
as its own end, to find out. Mystery,
the undiminishable silent flood,
stretches on out from where we pray
round the clear altar flame. The god
accepts the sacrifice and turns away.

"Science" by Ursula K. Le Guin, from Finding My Elegy: New and Selected Poems 1960-2010.


h/t: The Writer's Almanac

Applied what?

I plan to show this slide at the upcoming Applied Brilliance Conference:

A special opportunity to get something for yourself, or ...

I've written here before about Adorama's offerings of "refurbished" Nikon cameras and lenses, but this week's bounty appears unrivaled, both in sheer numbers, and in variety — they've got wide lenses and long lenses, prime lenses and zoom lenses, SLR cameras and mirrorless cameras...

(some of the 145 refurbished Nikon items currently offered by Adorama)

If you already have a full-frame Nikon camera and you're looking for a lens, I recommend, once again, the lovely little 35 mm f/2.

If, on the other hand, you're looking for a gift for your favorite NeuroCooking correspondent, I'd recommend a perspective control lens (either 24 mm or 45 mm) for me, or a V1 camera kit for Thaler. Though I wouldn't turn down a 200 mm f/4 macro lens.

Sometimes when you look out the window you see something that makes you say, hold on, I need to put down what I'm doing and go outside right now to shoot this.

(click image for full-screen)

Mid-August Back-Yard Flower-Blogging!

(click image for full-screen)

"Art is the big yes."

"Much of our lives involves the word 'no.' In school we are mostly told, 'Don't do it this way. Do it that way.' But art is the big yes. In art, you get a chance to make something where there was nothing."

- Marvin Bell

h/t: The Writer's Almanac