Category Archives: Reviews and Critiques

The crying baby contest

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OK, so it is Friday after a long week and it’s been a while since I carefully, or even, haphazardly, searched the online sites for the best of the best photographs of the week.  Well, it’s not going to be the US elections today or even anything particularly profound. But, really what is more fun than a sumo wrestler and what’s more photogenic than a baby?

There is a Japanese proverb that “Naku ko wa sodatsu”, which means that “crying babies grow fastest.” Hence, we have the Nakizumo festival, where amateur sumo wrestlers compete to see who can make a baby cry the loudest and the longest. Some Japanese parents believe that the event brings good health to their children, although this might seem contrary to convention. I think that part of the appeal here is that the babies remind us of sumo wrestlers or maybe it is the other way around. It definitely brings smiles to people’s faces – although not so much the babies’.  There are lots of wonderful pictures of this year’s festival, held at the Sensoji Temple in Tokyo. I particularly like one by Kiyoshi Ota for the EPA where the baby is wearing little yellow horns, clinching its fists, and crying it’s heart out. The nerve of some sumo wrestlers!

The World Press Photography Winners for 2016

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The World Press Photography Winners for 2016 were announced today. So take a break from inane and endless election coverage and depress yourself all over again with the tragic events of 2015. Well maybe that’s an overstatement. These are not just images of tragedy, and even when they are there is often an attempt to capture an essential element of humanity. This year’s images are amazing and it is really hard to pick favorites. I’m going to settle on two favorites and let you decide the rest for yourselves.

My first pick is Matic Zorman’s “Waiting to Register,” showing a child’s face covered with a plastic raincoat as she waits to register at a refugee camp in Presevo, Serbia. The bars speak for themselves and the distortion of the child’s face by the raincoat creates a Kafkaesque surrealism. This is marvelously crafted.

My second favorite Rohan Kelly’s “Storm Front on Bondi (Sydney, Australia) Beach,” a sunbather reads a tablet, oblivious to the looming clouds. I suggest an alternative title: “At the beach for the Apocalypse.”

As always these press photographers do something amazing. They capture just the right instant, “the decisive moment” that tells the entire story. It really speaks to a magic element of photography – the ability to reduce time to a single instant.

Can gravity be unreliable?

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As a physicist I take a certain sense of certitude in such phenomena as gravity. So the question with gravity can be unreliable seems very threatening. As a result I feel compelled to share this image/video from the Scottish Isle of Mull in Scotland where gale force winds from Atlantic storm Henry caused two of the island’s waterfalls to flow up last week. This video was taken by a local and shared online.

What next?  Shades of Macbeth:

“I pull in resolution and begin
To doubt th’ equivocation of the fiend
That lies like truth. “Fear not, till Birnam wood
Do come to Dunsinane”; and now a wood
Comes toward Dunsinane.”

Thunder snow from space

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Figure 1 - A massive snowstorm churns over the East Coast of the United States on Jan. 23. Scott Kelly / NASA

Figure 1 – A massive snowstorm churns over the East Coast of the United States on Jan. 23. Scott Kelly / NASA

The recent east coast snow storm brought us another great image from space that I cannot resist. Astronaut Scott Kelly who recently marked 300 days on the International Space Station tweeted: “Rare #thundersnow visible from @Space_Station” along with the awe-inspiring image of Figure 1.

Thundersnow is as you might expect snow accompanied by thunder and lightning. It happens when the atmosphere is especially unstable. That is like a monster storm spanning most of the east coast of the United States.

 

Snowzilla

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Figure 1 - Night image of blizzard bearing down on the East coast of the United States NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite snapped this image of the approaching blizzard around 2:35 a.m. EST on Jan. 22, 2016 using the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument's Day-Night band. Credit NOAA/NASA.

Figure 1 – Night image of blizzard bearing down on the East coast of the United States NASA-NOAA’s Suomi NPP satellite snapped this image of the approaching blizzard around 2:35 a.m. EST on Jan. 22, 2016 using the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument’s Day-Night band. Credit NOAA/NASA.

As Hati and Skoll goes to press – so to speak, people along the East coast of the United States are awaiting Snowzilla 2, which is already hitting the southern states and threatens to dump as much as three feet of snow in Washington, DC. The Boston area happily, is not expecting for than a dusting.

But significantly the NOAA and NASA have just released the spectacular image of Figure 1 showing the massive storm ominously hovering over beautifully illuminated cities. I could not resist the post.  Stay safe and warm eastern readers and have fun in the snow – just remember to use a little positive exposure compensation if you take photographs.

 

Hilarious wildlife awards

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Hmm. Is it really possible that there are Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards. Well, it is apparently so. They were founded by wildlife photographer Paul Joynson-Hicks, and if you are in the mood for something a bit different, something on the verge, of the forbidden “Cute and Cuddly” check out their website. Yes, of course they have a website and even the animals are laughing! Or so it would seem.

 

Best news pictures of 2015

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I realized today that it is over two weeks into the New Year, and I have not discussed any of the “Best Photographs of 2015” lists – and there are a lot of them. The problem is that 2015 was filled with so much human misery that one feels superficial if you like and make a big deal over any of the happy ones. That said I am going to begin with something glorious, ringing in the New Year with London’s Big Ben. Is this a celebration of what is possible in 2016 or a celebration of the passing of 2015? Still we are told that there will ever be an England – and there is some solace in that.

I was pleased to see in some of these lists some of the images that I have discussed previously. Nilufer Demir / DHA / Reuters photograph from this past September of a Turkish police officer cradling the body of drowned migrant child Aylan Kurdi is there, as is both NASA’s photograph of the discovery of water on Mars and photographs of a starving child in Syria. These images represent the two extremes of human endeavor. But the spectrum is much more complex.The CBS News website has a set of “Best of 2015 Photographs” that prodigiously comes in at 101. It is as if they have avoided the difficult choice.  I think that Philippe Wojazer of Reuters image of Parisians observing a moment of silence at the Trocadero in front the Eiffel Tower in tribute to the victims of the attacks of Paris, Nov. 16 is a poignant reminder of 2015’s end. France will always stand as well. And this seemingly simpole photograph is an image for the ages.

There is Drew Angerer of Getty Images’ photograph of same-sex marriage supporter Ryan Aquilina protesting in front of the US Supreme Court on April 28. And then there is a disturbingly gorgeous but apocalyptic image from September 8 by Suhaib Salem of Reuters, showing a Palestinian boy sleeps on a mattress inside the remains of his family’s house, which was destroyed by shelling during the 50-day 2014 war in Gaza. This dichotomy of the beautiful mixed with the terrible is also to be found in the stunningly haunting image by Aris Messinis for AFP/Getty Images showing Syrian refugees covered with life blankets upon arriving to the Greek island of Lesbos.

On a lighter side there is Johannes Eisele of the AFP’s image of Pope Francis wearing a bright yellow plastic poncho last January as he waved to well wishers in Tacloban. And finally we have Jacquelyn Martin of the AP’s March 9, 2015 photograph showing President Obama crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the historic civil rights March across that same bridge.

These are all, of course press photographs. They remind us of the complexity of the world and of its possibilities. Maybe the last photograph offers up the hope that the world can change – I do not know.