Figure 1 – The Cyborg, Natick, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2018

I’m offering up today Figure 1 that shows a fellow I encountered recently at the local mall. I took the image with my IPhone.  We may call him The Cyborg – a cube man – enhanced to be super human. The fact that he averts his eyes and looks down is meant to suggest that he is up to, or contemplating, something threatening – you know,  like taking over the world and annihilating all human life on the planet. That after all is what malevolent supermen do. There is, for instance, the Borg continuum and the Incredible Hulk. As for the cubes, well, they are the building blocks, the elements of malevolence.

“But it is true that I am a wretch. I have murdered the lovely and the helpless; I have strangled the innocent as they slept and grasped to death his throat who never injured me or any other living thing. I have devoted my creator, the select specimen of all that is worthy of love and admiration among men, to misery; I have pursued him even to that irremediable ruin. There he lies, white and cold in death. You hate me, but your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself. I look on the hands which executed the deed; I think on the heart in which the imagination of it was conceived and long for the moment when these hands will meet my eyes, when that imagination will haunt my thoughts no more.”

Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus

Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley

Figure 1 – Dragon fruit or pitahaya, Natick, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2018.

Figure 1 was taken with my IPhone at the local market. It shows the dragon fruit or Pitahaya. Of course, there is a legend associated with this edible form of cactus. The story goes that the fruit was created millennia ago, needless-to-say by fire breathing dragons. When the dragon is slain in battle the last thing to emerge would be the fruit. This fruit was collected and presented to the emperor as a great treasure. To me this fruit looks like something that Siqourney Weaver might avoid in some cavernous place on an alien planet. The combination of reds and yellow claws are reminiscent of some horrible teratoma perhaps. But the effect is chromatically spectacular, and I am most appreciative of the shoppers that were patient with me as I set each of the fruits to properly compose the image. In particular there must be no sign of price tags if we are to properly achieve and Edward Weston like effect.

Figure 1 – IPhone photograph of a gray tree frog on a black door using available incandescent light, Sudbury, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2018.

Figure 1 is an IPhone photograph of a gray treefrog (Hyla versicolor)found clinging to my friend’s door. My friend was not happy to find this frog there. It represents, after all, an invasion of the human space, a reminder that we are not alone. The frog was also not so pleased to have my cell phone shoved in its face. I tried for a better angle, one that would reveal more of its eye, but this was really the best that I could do. In the end, I gave the frog a gentle tap to send it on its way, thus making my friend happy that the frog was gone and the frog happy to have my cell phone out of its face.

Fogure 1 – Heard Farm, Wayland, MA in the heat of summer 2018. (c) DE Wolf 2018.

I went for a walk around Heard Farm in Wayland, MA last weekend. It was hot and it was humid and generally miserable. So Figure 1 is meant to capture that sense of heat and humidity when everything glazes over and fades into an atmospheric haze. What is most striking is the sharply defined height of the grass – all the same. I am thinking of the same timeless scene perhaps a century ago; so 1918. That was a time when one could not seek the relief of air conditioning, which adds a kind of desperation to the moment. But the scene itself would have been generally the same, captured on a dry plate or on film and printed, perhaps, on albumin.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 87 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/4000th sec at f/7.1 with -1 exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – Sequins. (c) DE Wolf 2018.

My theme and Figure for today is “sequins.” The photograph was taken as a close-up of a designer dress with my IPhone and was meant to be like an impressionist abstraction. The incredible ability of the IPhone’s camera to take close-ups is here demonstrated by the sharp focus of the individual disks.  I commented to the store clerk that it must be difficult to prevent the sequin disks from falling off. Seems to me that it is like scaling a fish every time that you bump into something or someone. But I was assured that the very expensive dress was only meant to be worn once – like a kind of transient beauty. This led me to wonder about a deeper meaning involving a very materialistic society. However, I choose instead to focus on the luminescence the sparkle and the color in abstraction.

Figure 1 – Animal faces # 11 “Mophie,” Weston, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2018

I went this past Sunday with my son and his dog to Cat Rock Park in Weston, MA. The trail ends at a waterfall, and all the dogs head for the water. We ran into this fine fellow, still somewhat happily soggy from his adventures.It has been said that “the eyes are the window to the soul.” If this is true then is this fellow, whose name by the way is “Mophie,” lacking, or is it just that you have to dig deep to find his eyes. He was certainly as sweet as the soggy face suggests.

I looked briefly into the question of who first said that “the eyes are the window to the soul. Without getting too deeply into it. The Roman philosopher Cicero (106 BCE – 43 BCE) is credited with the remark,  “The face is a picture of the mind as the eyes are its interpreter.” In  Matthew 6: 22-23 we have that, “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”

I first encountered the phrase many years ago in art class in a discussion of ancient Egyptian art. Any connection between a hot Sunday in Massachusetts and art class so many years ago would seem to be purely coincidental. But this photograph is the eleventh in my series of “Animal Faces,” and, really, it is the very question that I set out to raise with the series: what goes on in the mind of these animals and how does it relate to us. And against these questions it would seem that Cicero echos my meaning best.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 140 mm , ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode 1/250th sec at f/7.1 with -1 exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – Norhern water snake, Sudbury, MA, August 4, 2018. (c) DE Wolf 2018.

Today we went for a stroll in the woods. I am told that anything short is not a walk and anything not uphill is not a hike. So I have concluded that it was a stroll. We came upon this Northern water snake, Nerodia sipedon,by one of the bridges. I do wonder why snakes , given the whole forest offered up to them, defiantly taunt you, dogs, and children by positioning themselves by the side of the path. This one was in no hurry to beat a retreat. Perhaps it is seeking to remind us that there is only a thin and imagined veil between us and the wild.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 200 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode 1/80th sec at f/7.1 with -1 exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – Texture on the surface of an urn. (c) DE Wolf 2018.

Figure 1 is not an “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Unlike John Keats’ urn, it does not reveal forms and figures frozen in beauty and time. Rather it is a study of the texture in a more modern vase. The IPhone camera is a perfect tool for this. The eye starts with the urn itself, but the camera draws us inward to a point, where rather than shape texture becomes predominant.

I love these little sojourns of vision. It is the magic of the photograph, where a simple, perhaps inconsequential, object in a store window reveals an inner beauty at a more intimate level. It reminds me of a Japanese Garden, where beauty functions on all levels, much like fractals are random walks regardless of scale.

In Keat’s words, themselves made timeless by the passage of time:

Figure 1 – Ruby throated hummingbird, female, July 30, 2018, Sudbury, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2018.

I have been waiting for the sublime moment when the ruby throated hummingbirds (Archilochus colubris) returned to our feeders. And finally they have arrived. There so many species of hummingbirds in the Americas. But east of the Rockies we have only the ruby throats.  These magical little birds can annually migrate as far as Costa Rica to Canada, Figure 1 shows a female hovering in mid air by my feeder. They also love my mandevilla with its conical flowers. I have positioned my camera with my birding lens so that it is ever ready for the moment.

Canon T2i with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens at 260 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/800th sec at f/7.1 with -1 exposure compensation.