Harry and Argy's Story

April’s transition from winter to spring often brings photographic opportunities, especially with early morning fog which seems to cling to open water.  With a long lens, from about a quarter mile distance, I watched this man load his fishing gear and his dog in a rowboat and head out onto the Cross River Reservoir into a fog so thick you could almost taste the pea soup. Why on earth would anyone do this? Here’s their story.

Turns out the man’s name was Homer, and his dog was Argos.  

You can imagine how many unkind nicknames Homer endured growing up, and in the sixth grade he just started calling himself Harry, and by high school most everyone went along. Harry was the only child of two college professors, his father an astrophysicist, and his mother taught classical literature. Obviously, his mom held more sway in his naming.  Totally absorbed in their ivory tower pursuits, the parents were kind of distant with Harry.  Kind and distant.  There was no TV in the household and so for entertainment, Harry’s mother would regularly recite tales of the ancient Greeks and Romans on summer afternoons to Harry and some of the neighborhood kids.  

Harry didn’t have a lot of friends as a kid – his best friend being Argos, a 50-pound mutt of questionable heritage.  Argos was Harry’s constant companion, gladly following him everywhere an adventurous ten-year-old could go in Westchester, NY.  As a matter of fact, Harry always had had a dog named Argos, from earliest childhood, all the way to now.  Sometimes a girl pup, sometimes a boy, but the dog was always named Argos – not Argos the second, or Argos the fourth, just Argy for short.  Current Argy, equally loyal and smart as all his forbears, was rescued from a shelter up in north central New York near Ithaca.  And, as was always the case saving incarnations of Argos at shelters, the dogs always picked Harry, rather than the other way around. While all the other mutts were barking and wagging, Argos would sit calmly in his or her cage, catch Harry’s eye, and, never wavering the canine stare, Harry would be smitten.

Harry’s fishing gear was decades old but looked like it was new out of the box.  When Harry and Argy went fishing together, rarely was the equipment put to use.  And even more infrequently did a fish leave the water.  Fishing was more a time for pondering the issues of their lives, big and small.  Harry ruminating, or talking out loud, about the twists and turns of life and Argy offering his point of view with an encouraging dog smile, eyes intently meeting his human’s, ears perked, and head tilted, trying to translate Harry’s mental meanderings into dog dialect.

Today Harry was thinking about money.  The markets were substantially down, and customers were ringing his phone off the hook with their worries and questions.   Harry was good at reassuring his clients. Harry’s talent was to make sure his clients’ risk tolerances were clearly identified and managed, but it was still the kind of work he didn’t enjoy.  What was really preoccupying Harry was not the markets’ current direction, but his own journey, the twists and turns, the choices and inertias that had landed him here and now.

How could a child who loved The Odyssey, Beowulf and especially Milton and Shakespeare, how could someone with a doctorate in classical literature wind up being in charge of investing hundreds of millions of dollars of other peoples’ money?  Looking back, Harry could see it was true what the poet said, “that way leads on to way,” and it was clear that you rarely ever come back to remake a directional decision.  With regret, he always knew he’d taken the road more travelled.

At this point Harry looked over at Argy who was fixing him with a meaningful doggy stare, mildly chiding him for this habit of spending so much time in the past.  Then Argy got up from his perch in the rowboat, nails clicking on the aluminum flooring, sat beside Harry and rested his substantial head on Harry’s knee.  Argy gave out a deep sigh, closed his eyes and with immense patience and understanding, let Harry know that all was well, right here and right now.  

Less Resolution in the New Year?

I’m not talking about foregoing personal betterment goals in the new year – though most of those have been at best ephemeral, for me.

No, I was thinking more about experimenting with less photographic resolution in 2018.  Stronger, softer color and less detail and with gentler lines, going after a feeling or impression of a scene rather than its meticulous, sharp representation. 

Like the image above, taken in Southwest Harbor, Maine last October. And which, I might add, was captured with some serendipity.

Here’s the backstory.  Early cool and windy morning, October, Southwest Harbor, Maine. 

I was rushing out from our farmhouse rental to capture what I knew would be a dramatic scene, given the reflective sunrise glow on the bedroom ceiling.  I had overslept.  Grabbed my camera, trying to remember if I’d charged the battery after yesterday’s shoot.  No time to set up the tripod. Almost tripped on the cleats that were there to stabilize your steps going down the slippery wooden slope of the dock. 

Must have been hundreds of gulls in the harbor and they took to flight in a rolling wave at my arrival on the scene.  Ready, fire, aim, as they say.  In a raucous moment, the birds were gone but I had gotten off a couple of shots.  I was hopeful of a good image – the scene was beautiful with a few sailboats and other craft still moored on the harbor late in the season.  The distant mountains were covered in a blanket of fog but were almost as blue as the water’s surface in the morning light.

On the way back to the house though, my hopes were dimmed by the realization that my camera still had a polarizing filter attached and was set to aperture priority.  Translation: the filter would allow less light onto the lens and the camera would choose a slower shutter speed to compensate.  The image would not be sharp.

Back home, reviewing the images from that morning, it was clear that my captures were not.  The hand-held camera produced a lot of blurring with a shutter speed of half a second.  But I was intrigued by the image, with the collective pattern of bird flight, the texture of mountain fog and the suggestion of wind, and rocking movement of the boats and throughout the image.  In short, my impression of the scene was better captured by the pixel imprecision.  My only regret was that I didn’t have a sharply focused, detailed image to compare and make a clearer decision about all this.

Turns out a google search shows there is actually a school of photographic impressionism.  Its proponents offer suggestions on how to achieve these softer, more abstract images through intentional camera and zoom lens movement, longer exposure and selective focus.  There are even special lenses and adapters you can buy.  Or just smear some Vaseline on a filter to distort your image.  The goal being to create a visual feeling of a fleeting moment, rather than a detailed photographic record.

Also turns out I had gone down this path before in a different way by zooming in very close on moving sunlit streams and waterfalls, exemplified in my Impressions gallery here.

Didn’t really know I was wandering into a sub-genre with my camera …

In the end, it appears to me that it’s all about trying to find new ways of seeing.  And maybe trying to keep the brain from being too efficient.  This important information processor does try to be resourceful by saving neuronal time and energy.  Like when you see a scene laid out in front of you of a meadow or mountain, you don’t have to take in all its detail and complexity because the brain already knows what a pasture or peak is.  But by being intellectually efficient, you just might miss out on what this particular scene has to offer.

Maybe that’s why impressionistic art works.  It stops the brain in its tracks – the lack of detailed form and softer, vaguer lines of an impressionistic subject requires the mind to stop and pay attention, be purposely present. 

Or as the iconoclastic Tim Burton reminds us: “it’s always good to see things in a new, weird way."  Emphasis on new, not necessarily weird. 

What Can We Agree On?

It’s pretty obvious that there’s little we all agree on. In politics, science, religion, news reporting, moral issues, the role of government in our society.  Today, one person’s facts are just an opinion to someone else. 

Well, a little research on google suggests there’s one thing we all like – universally across all cultures and throughout millennia – flowers.

And perhaps one of the most remarkable specimens is the Iris.  The image below was captured at the Presby Iris Garden in Upper Montclair, New Jersey.

Iris comes from the Greek word for rainbow.  Some other colors in the Iris spectrum can be seen here:

Iris Vignettes

OK, flowers smell good and are pretty to look at.  But sometimes the things we most take for granted, and the reasons we accept for their being, hide the real question: in this case why do flowers appeal to us in sight and fragrance and why do they make us happy so universally. 

Maybe it’s just that flowers are perfect and our lives aren’t?  Such speculations tend to generate more opinion than fact, more heat than light, etc.

There’s another intriguing theory that flowers are the harbingers of fruit, as in sustenance and survival. For that idea to resonate one has to accept two other possibilities.   That eons ago in our pre-supermarket hunter-gatherer days, we associated flowers and blossoms with sustaining fruit to come.  And that such ancestral memories, laid down deep in our brainstems, survive today, bubbling up in delight from the unconscious in the presence of blooms and blossoms.

Still another possibility is that flowers remind us of a strong procreative force.  During pollination, there’s a lot of sex going on in the flower world of carpels and stamens.  Birds and the Bees, etc.  Valentine’s Day.  I’ll stop there since my blog is PG rated.

Here’s some floral history.  Flowers have been around for about 130 million years, a long time but not so long in the grand scheme of things.  Scientists believe that in an hour of earth’s geologic existence, flowering plants have only lived in the last 90 seconds.  One geneticist suggests humans have been cultivating flowers for about the last 5000 years, beginning with sparing them as they cleared the land for agriculture. Another plant historian goes back further some 14 thousand years, claiming ancient burial pits in Israel show evidence of stems and flowers.  Egyptians placed them in vases while Greeks and Romans wore them in garlands and wreathes.

Now, specifically about Irises – there are some 300 species of these complex beauties.  And most are specifically designed vis a vis their fertilization structure to avoid self-pollination.  That is, the flower’s apparatus only allows the deposit of new pollen from the carrier insect while entering, and the removal of the host’s pollen when leaving.  Ingenious.

Some Irises have been used to clean up ponds and streams because their roots absorb pollutants but at the same time they can be so invasive as to be banned from this purpose.

There is some controversy about whether or not the Iris or the Lilly (two different flowers) is the source of inspiration for the ubiquitous fleur-de-lis symbol in coats of arms, country and state flags, or even as part of the scouting traditional attire.

Irises have been used in perfume and medicine and most importantly for martini aficionados, in Bombay Sapphire Gin. 

Finally, as most art lovers know Irises were a favorite subject of Vincent Van Gogh, the most famous of which was painted in 1889 just before he died while in an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France. 

I think we can get pretty much total agreement that this is a beautiful work of art.

Moving in Closer: Marcescence and Mother Nature's Modern Art

Unless you’re a botanist you’ve probably never heard of marcescence. Well, it’s a fancy, somewhat unpronounceable word to describe deciduous trees that keep their leaves normally shed in the Fall.  Here’s an example below from a recent walkabout in Pound Ridge Reservation. You might ask yourself, as I did, why this happens – or doesn’t happen. Maybe it’s just the exception that proves the rule: Fall is when leaves fall?  Apparently, no one really knows the reason for marcescence but some experts speculate that keeping dead leaves is a defensive measure to deter hungry deer from a meal of soft twigs and buds.  Who knew trees were so smart?

Speaking of rules, photography teachers suggest that the better image is often had by moving in closer to the subject.  I do agree and must own up to the fact that, sometimes in post image capture processing (sharpening, cropping, etc.), I find that part of the picture I took is more interesting than the original.  Like the one below which moves in closer by cropping, i.e. using software rather than footsteps.  I prefer the second image but it’s debatable which best illustrates the marvel of marcescence.  What do you think?

I also mentioned Modern Art at the outset of this ramble.  What’s the connection? 

A bit indirect but it turns out my marcescent tree was growing next to a stream which, while not strongly coursing, was flowing along nicely and rolling over some semi-submerged rocks.  How about shooting a close-up image here?  Since walking on water is not one of my talents, the answer was a long telephoto lens, 400 mm to be precise.  

The object of moving in with the big lens here was to let Nature attempt some art on her own – modern, abstract art, something nonrepresentational, where no one need ask: “What is this a picture of?”   Mother Nature just wanted to capture some shapes, colors, textures and lines into a composition independent of things in the real world.  I assisted by turning a few camera dials and getting in tight with the telephoto. With apologies to Mr. Pollock, Mother Nature especially liked this result below:

More of her work can be found here: 

https://charles-daviet.squarespace.com/abstractions/ 

Stopping Time during a Quiet Morning on Eagle Lake

You think time can’t be stopped?  It can. And there are better ways than stomping on your watch.  One surefire method is to find a place on earth that is itself timeless, claim the spot alone at dawn and let yourself be absorbed into the stillness of the scene.  That was my experience a few years back on an early December morning in Acadia as time adjourned, and the only conscious reflection came from light on the water.

Time passing is concern for many of us.  But evidently, it wasn’t for Einstein because he discovered time is just an illusion we have because we move so slowly here on earth.  And Groucho Marx didn’t take it very seriously, saying: “Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.”

I do think about time, especially my last years in retirement where days and weeks can rush by quickly.  Don’t think Yogi was specifically referring to retirement, but it can get late early out here. 

One of the antidotes to time for me has been looking for, and capturing, scenes like the one above. But the very concept of photography slows me down as well when I think about it.   In effect, I’ve been stopping moments of light and freezing them onto a digital sensor inside a magic box.  Stopping time (which experts agree doesn’t exist) by capturing light which in itself is something quite inexplicable according to scientists, because it is both a particle and a wave at the same time.  Tell me thinking about this stuff wouldn’t slow your day down.

And then there’s ruminating about the process whereby we use our eyes to see color.  Sunlight is colorless but the specialized cones in our retinas process the reflected light from an apple to get the brain to “see” red.  Didn’t your brain decelerate a bit, dawdling around such thoughts?  Pausing, getting caught up a bit in the wonder of how things work?

Slowing time as a goal became more apparent when I started thinking about some of the themes in the images I've selected as my favorites.  Photos I’m going to print and frame for an upcoming exhibition. Even though these pictures were quite disparate in content, what they held in common was the effect I hoped for on the viewer – the story behind the photo that might cause someone to pause and extend a moment.   

For me as a photographer, I have two things in mind presenting an image to viewers.  First, to snag your attention by showing you something you probably haven’t seen before.  I say probably because, although you may have seen the scene or the object before, hopefully I’ve gathered and recorded its reflective light in such a way that’s new for you. 

The second objective is a bit loftier and far more challenging. To provoke an emotional reaction, a sense of wonder, perhaps stirring your own reflections on the what, where, why, and how of things. Picasso put it best, in far grander words: “The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.”

I have selected nine other images in my collection of favorites.  They don’t share a topical theme – though half of them were taken in Acadia National Park.  In the field what they all had in common for me was a visceral grab for my attention, a vital visual connection, maybe even best described as a confrontation.  Each of them had a way of slowing down time for me by making me stop and wonder about the story behind them.  Some evoked feelings of timelessness and some of time passing. Others had a comfort in their constancy.  Still others revealed incredible complexity or inexplicable natural beauty that captivated me for a time.  And for one or two it was just the surprise of previously unknown detail that prolonged a moment. 

Click here to see my favorite images.  Upon reflection, I hope you see them in a similar light and hope they might even suspend time for you, at least for a little while.