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Monthly Archives: January 2009
Apparently magical moments are hard to come by. I have plenty of pictures taken this month that I like (and plenty more that I do not – hello recycle bin!), but precious few have jumped out as “magical” much less “moment”.
However, there was a picture I took while I was visiting my sister for her baby shower (triplets on the way) that I felt might be one of those magic moment type pictures. Of course, I couldn’t be certain until I returned home and was able to view same on the larger screen afforded my computer, but I think it came out as a magical moment.
This is my sister’s dog Bun. Or Baby Bun. Or Buns of Steel depending upon which nickname is in favour at the moment. She is playing up her role as lap dog (she is a miniature dachshund) and resting quite comfortably upon my sister. That is my sister’s pregnant belly you see there. Trust me: triplets make for a large belly rather early in a pregnancy. When I first saw Bun laying there I was struck by the serenity of the moment. A wonderfully quiet moment between a pregnant mother-to-be and her little lap dog. This effect was probably made more poignant by the fact that this was taken the same day as the baby shower party, which had ended some hours early and had been quite crazed and busy.
In hopes of finding another such moment, if one can “find” such moments, I took to the roads yesterday after a night of snow in hopes of finding something…..anything….that one might consider appropriate for this month’s theme. Alas, I ventured to a number of locales, but the results were meager at best. There was the dog Zipp, who works at the Cox Arboretum, who followed me around while I alone took pictures in the gardens while the snow gently fell. But it didn’t seem quite magical in the way I imagined it may.
Having given up on such matters I guided my valiant steed (also known as my Honda CR-V) towards home and what I hoped was a house fairly warmer than the outdoors in which I had been venturing for the preceding few hours. As I made my way past some rather large corn fields not far from my home I noticed large gatherings of Canadian geese resting in the now barren land. For a lark (and armed with my 100-400mm monster Canon lens) I turned round, pulled off the road, trained my camera onto the flock in the field and prepared to press the shutter release, when suddenly and without warning swarms of said geese took to flight.
Both the sight and sound were incredible. Even from my vantage point approximately 150-yards away the sound of their wings beating was as clear as if they were only feet from me. The began their trademark ‘onk cry and made their way towards the sky.
As you can see from this collage (certainly better viewed large at Flickr) they took off, gently prescribed an arc to their left and headed east towards destinations unknown. Besides the hundreds that had gathered in this particular field there were still hundreds more in other corn fields sprinkled all about this area. As I trained my eyes towards the south and east I could see huge formations of geese; lines and v-shaped groups alike.
It was, if for only a few minutes, absolutely awe inspiring. Certainly more inspiring than these pictures.
Tonight, driving home after a fun day out, I spotted this beautiful sunset in the passenger side mirror. I had to stop and shoot. I think I pissed off people behind me…oh well, who cares!
Tam,
I had great trouble in finding a magic moment but, last Monday while walking across the River Severn in Shrewsbury, in the county of Shropshire, I thought, yeah, this is a kind of magic moment ‘cos it’s all blue and li’ll bit special.
The first one is more of an “I’ll be damned” photo than anything!
Obviously, I watched President Obama’s inauguration today. Call me crazy, but I snapped while watching and listening to our new President’s speech. It was great. I am truly excited about his first term.
While going through the snap shots this evening I came across this pic. It struck me funny. I laughed. It’s not a spectacular photo, but it’s one I really like. Check out the guy behind President Obama and former President Bush. HA HA!
Even if I wasn’t in DC for the swearing in, it was truly a magical moment for my family.
Being a bit preoccupied with my trip to Florida, I had tried not to give too much thought to this month’s topic; the magic of the moment. Not that I intended to forget about it altogether, but had simply attempted to placed it upon one of the back burners of my mind. Unfortunately, this had the effect of making me worry about this month’s topic all the more and left me pondering what was I going to shoot in its honour. This, strangely enough (for me), eventually brought about a rather startling question on my part: How does one plan for a magical moment?
I mean….aren’t the notions of planning and magic of the moment rather incongruous? Do not magical moments just sort of happen and that is, in no small part, what makes them magical? Honestly, for the first seven to ten days of the month this question had never arisen in my mind. I had spent the first third of the month wondering how I was going to create a magical moment such that I might photograph it.
I ask you: Could I get any dumber?
Now that you are done nodding your head in vigorous agreement (and I hope you didn’t hurt yourself):
To be frank, I managed to recognize the folly of my thinking while still in Florida, visiting my family during my sister’s baby shower (she has triplets on the way). It was during a mid-afternoon photo op with my sister that I suddenly realized I was neck-deep in a magical moment. She was just sitting there, chatting on the phone, with the mid-afternoon light streaming through her bedroom window.
Lovely. Magical. A moment. However, the above picture is not of my sister sitting by her bedroom window, while chatting on the phone. You’ll have to wait for that picture. Instead it is a picture of my daughter taken while she “rocked” playing her latest video game. Regardless, it was that particular moment which helped me realize the error of my ways. In addition, it became quite clear that in an effort to capture a magical moment I would very likely have to shoot an awful lot of pictures just to find that one-in-a-million. However, I’m not certain I actually have any from my trip to Florida other than the afore-described. But not all has been lost….
Yesterday evening my daughter demanded that I take her, her various gift cards from Christmas, and her best friend Ashley (above picture) to a local store so that she could acquire her latest dream video game for the Sony PlayStation 3: Rock Band Special Edition. As a dutiful father who has no interest incurring the wrath of a teenage daughter, I did dutifully transport her, her gift cards and her friend Ashley to a local store where said game was purchased.
Once home they set up the game and equipment and began playing and I, almost instinctively, grabbed for my camera and flash and headed into the t.v. room so that I might capture the fun that was to ensue. Honestly, I hadn’t really thought of this particular moment in time as being one that would be magical, but it turned out that way. I have previously taken pictures of the two of them playing Guitar Hero on the Nintendo Wii, but this was different. They were really getting into things and even deigned to cooperate with me by occasionally striking a suitably rock-and-or-roll pose. Heck, they even had me play for a while and I suck….no…..completely and utterly suck at video games, including this one.
The evening was about as magical as things get around here and while I cannot claim to know whether that is a good or bad thing I can state that it worked well enough for me.
Now I’m not exactly what you’d call a novice at all this digital technology lark.
I have, for example, been messing around with computers and computer-related stuff since the early 80s. Not just using them but also adding bits to them, modifying them, writing programs for them, and finding ever new ways to break them. Which of course means getting them going again. Well, sometimes.
Then there was the CD revolution… music CDs I mean. Got my very first CD player virtually as soon as they became affordable for the ordinary consumer (ah, those were the days… when I had money). The first in a long succession.
Plus there’s all the other digital gadgetry with which I now appear to be surrounded. Not too sure how I’ve accumulated it all, but I’ve now got practically an entire room full of the damn stuff. And I know how to use it all. Wow!
Then there’s wireless technology.
Well, radio’s been floating around in my life all my life. I remember as a kid, no more than four or five, I used to listen to the “wireless” (as that big wooden box with the bakelite knobs was called, sitting conveniently there on the sideboard… and not leaving much room for anything else) on weekends. Billy Cotton’s Band Show, Desert Island Discs (or was that later?), The Archers… yep, I remember them all.
Then, as a teenager, I had one of those little portable radios in its own leather case. The ones with the internal ferrite rod aerial and the external telescopic aerial that never seemed to make any difference at all. Spent absolutely hours in the evenings, earplug stuffed in ear, listening to the fluctuating static that masqueraded as Radio Luxembourg.
In fact, I’ve just remembered that I also had one of those do-it-yourself radio kits that provided all the bits necessary to build your own crystal radio. Which I did. Marvellous.
And somewhere I’ve still got a couple of little FM radios floating around.
Since then, and much nearer the present day, I’ve tinkered with all sorts of other wireless kit and communications devices. Both professionally and in certain of my other… er… “activities”. P’raps the less said about that the better.
Let’s not forget television either. Once again zoom back to childhood, and there was another huge wooden box, with a tiny little screen this time, stuck in the corner. I wonder why I remember watching Sooty & Sweep but nothing else? P’raps that’s all my mum would let me watch. Hmm. Strange that. Watching a bloke with his hand stuck up an animal’s backside is ok, but mustn’t watch anything else. How odd.
Now I’m not a great fan of television. Far too addictive, and it seems to exert a quite amazing brain-deadening effect. That said, I’ve still got a little portable one stuck in the corner of my lounge, and I distinctly remember switching it on last about… oh, let’s see… 2004 I think. And that was to watch a video! Yep, that’s more technology.
Coming right up to date, there’s the internet. Well, I probably spend more time online (both when I’m home and when I’m “working”) than I do off. And that’s including time spent sleeping!
And not just online casually, but actually “doing” stuff.
But then photography entered the scene.
Digital photography of course.
Now I dunno what it is about photography. P’raps it is that for most of my life I’ve been conditioned into thinking of photographs as actual physical objects, measuring 6″x4″ or whatever. That one can touch, and stuff in frames or albums, and sometimes even tear up.
And I know that no longer applies.
So there am I, sat at home in the computer room, transferring gigs of images all stored on those amazing little memory cards (I’ll get to those in a mo’) to my laptop (er… one of my laptops. Did I mention I’m also a bit of a gadget freak? Digital, naturally).
Then I process them. Then I upload them to Flickr or wherever, via my home network that’s connected to the internet (er… when the internet’s not broken of course).
Don’t have a problem with any of that. Don’t even think about it very much. And when I do, well, its all perfectly normal isn’t it? Certainly nothing to write home about.
Then I come to the next stage. Archiving all the images. Which I store on what’s essentially a networked file server. Plugged in to my wireless router. Which is in another room.
Yeah, I know it would make sense to have it in the computer room. Just accept that I’m a bit weird like that.
Y’see, my home network’s a wireless one. Which means there’s no tangible physical connection between my laptop, where all my photos are, and my networked hard drive (the aforementioned “file server”… in another room don’t forget) where, suddenly, all my photos are also.
And finally I reach the whole point of this seemingly endless ramble. For whilst watching these photographs replicate themselves in another actual physical location (um… not watching the photographs replicate themselves as such but actually watching a flickering light on the laptop, sort of thing) I tend to make the fatal mistake of starting to think about what’s happening.
Which thoughts run along the following lines…
“Here I have a photograph before me. Ok, its on the laptop screen. But I know its here. Its an image I’ve taken with a camera. Me, myself, with a camera. A real, proper one (albeit digital). Which was stored on a memory card (I’ll get to those in a mo’. Or did I already say that?). The image that is. Not the camera you fool. How would you store a camera on a memory card? Be neat if you could though. Hmm.
Anyway, stored on a memory card. An actual physical connection y’see. Then transferred (the image, that is) from the memory card to the laptop. No problem there either. Definite physical connection, achieved by inserting one thing into another. (Is it just me, or is there something vaguely rude about that last sentence?) And I see it before me. Here, on my screen.
Yet now, suddenly, as if by magic, its also in a little box in another room.”
And thinking about that really does my head in. It did when I first had the wireless router. And it still does. Even though, as I’ve already explained at great length, I’m not unfamiliar with all this digital technology caper, nor in fact with all this digital wireless technology caper.
Yet, bizarrely, when I see it working (as I know it should and does) in real time and start thinking about the results of the process (one minute there’s one photograph, then the next minute there’s another identical photograph in another room, yet its still here on my laptop… and there’s no tangible physical connection ‘twixt the two) it quite simply amazes and indeed mystifies me. To the point where I have to stop thinking about it cos my brain starts to hurt.
I’ll now deal with those memory cards, and other miniscule storage devices. USB sticks for example. And that’s it… they’re miniscule! How the hell can I store so many photographs on such tiddly little things?
And before some clever clogs starts explaining the science behind it p’raps I should point out the question was rhetorical.
I already know the science behind it. Well, in principle anyway.
But don’t we all just take such things for granted nowadays? How often do we spend time actually thinking about the reality of what’s happening, and how it compares to our normal everyday experience of the world around us?
If, for example, I could plonk my weekly shopping onto a little plastic card (or even a USB stick) I wouldn’t have to lug two (or sometimes more) bloody great bags all the way home every week.
Things occupy space, and have volume (and weight, where my damn shopping’s concerned!). Don’t they? Nope! Not in the digital world they don’t. Yet all that digital “stuff” that almost doesn’t exist in reality can result in actual tangible physical objects practically at the touch of a button.
It may well be that most other folk take all this science stuff for granted. Well, p’raps its simply that my mind is living in the wrong time (like 500 years ago) but I don’t! To me there’s rather more than a touch of Magic about it all.
Which is the reasoning behind yet another contribution from me for this month’s theme. Digital storage, and digital wireless, technology…
Inevitable really that fire should form the subject of one of my contributions for this month.
I’ve always been totally captivated by fire and can simply sit and gaze deeply into the flames for hours at a time. And, gazing into the flames, imagination seems to acquire wings and be transported to distant times and places. Truly magical moments.
And talking of Magic, Fire is of course one of the four Magical “elements” of Earth, Air, Fire and Water (or one of five if one follows certain “traditions”, the fifth being Spirit), as too was it one of the elements of the alchemists of old.
How opportune then that my burning of the fruits of my gardening effort a little while ago should coincide with this month’s theme.
Light… the real “paint” with which a photographer works. And colour, the phenomenally rich palette offered to us by that paint, given to us freely that we may wonder at its splendour.
Light and colour… how many of us truly appreciate them, seeing them as anything other than tools with which to work? How many “non-photographers” are conscious of their presence in their own right?
I’ve often speculated that, were I deprived of any one of my senses, which would I miss the most? And I think, without much hesitation at all, it would have to be sight. Which compels me to pose the next question: do we fortunate ones really appreciate the gift of sight… or just take it for granted?
I remember as a kid (little more than a toddler really) my parents took me to a Christmas pantomime at a town near our village. It was the first time I can recollect ever having been taken out “at night”… of course, it wasn’t really night. Probably late afternoon. But it was dark outside (and it was winter) so it seemed like night to me.
And I remember seeing all the shop lights, the street lights, even the lights of the traffic. And I was thrilled, excited, totally entranced.
Had we never reached the theatre the lights themselves would have been sufficient joy for me. They were truly Magical… or so it seemed.
And even now, as an adult reaching toward the end of the middle years of my life, I still find that ordinary street lights at night, seen twinkling in the distance in their various hues, exert the same fascination for me… inspire the same sense of wonder.
Colour, certain colours more than others, have the same sort of effect on me. As can light and shade.
I remember also the very first time I handled a CD (a music one) and flipped it over. And was held fascinated, hypnotised almost, by the spectrum of colours reflected therein.
I held it to the light, I twisted it, I turned it… I just couldn’t believe how such a seemingly plain object could offer such a rich and vibrant display.
And that such simple things can still evoke that childlike sense of awe and wonder in this cynical old pragmatic and down-to-earth heart of mine is truly Magic!
Thus my second offering for this month’s theme of The Magic of the Moment…
Yingge Pottery Street
It’s very hard to imagine how it look like originally (or it’s just a constantly changing world), is the table ware originally primarily, now many are the new design in the style of “antiquity”.
