Favorites

It's getting close to the end.  In celebration and thanks, I'm sharing some of my favorite photos that I've taken over the years.  It's a rare opportunity to share some moments of great light - and just plain great timing.  I've tried to keep an eye out for interesting lighting scenes.  Please comment and share your thoughts:

I chose this photo because, in a way, it tells a story of light.  Mike appears almost as a ghost.

This is also Mike.  Hi, Mike.  This was taken before I really understood concepts like digital noise, but, at the time, I was struck by the redness of the photo and the lonely feeling it evokes.

An example of what I might call "creative lens flare," this was taken in the Adirondacks of upstate New York.

This picture really shows a separated light spectrum, and it's obviously a happy mistake.

A cool stage design by Daniel Hiudt, a Full Sail graduate and successful lighting designer now working for Papadosio on tour.

Who wouldn't love this picture?  A lot of color.  And there're Teletubbies in the background.

A friend of mine and her sun, this, to me, shows that color isn't needed to evoke happiness and warmth in a photo.

Whoa.  Adorable.

The world is calling.

I almost died getting this photo, but since I didn't I'll say it was worth it.  Not so sure it would have been worth dying for, though.

A foreboding scene, this picture of Blueberry Hill in Rockport, Maine could be framed a bit better, but, I think, it almost asks the viewer to reframe it and pulls in by doing so.

A nice sunrise in Fort Myers, Florida.  The light was just right.

Three AM in Naples, FL on a moonlit night.  It doesn't make much light to get a decent photo.

A summer afternoon in Naples.  Although this couple is kayaking, only darker colors are visible, giving the kayakers the appearance of floating.

A cool shot of a laser at a rave.  Or something like a rave.  I was just there to take pictures.

 I like the way the shadows unfold behind these friends of mine.  Picture was taken from a tree, and the photos make the contours of the rock really stark.

When I said earlier that some photos are really just about great timing, this is what I meant.  This photo, while relatively unremarkable in its lighting, captures the sculptor and sculpture in almost the same pose.  The picture wasn't set-up - the sculptor was giving a speech about his work and I happened to snap a photo when he accidentally happened to give us a glimpse into his mind.  This picture really shows how the mind and spirit of an artist is captured in his or her work.

A change in the light...

       As this class comes to an end, I've been thinking about some of my past pictures in a new light (puns are fun, hehe).  This picture has always caught my eye…..it's not so much that I like it as I'm stuck by the difference between the scene as it was translated in my eye versus how it translated in the lens of the camera.  When I took this photo, I was relatively unimpressed with the view before me; the light was dull and dreary, it was raining lightly, and the building that takes center stage is abandoned and dilapidated.  The picture, though, seems to be well balanced.  I'm not sure why this picture stands out so much to me; I think it was an "ah-hah!" moment, a moment when I realized all that a lens can do for a scene.  The end result with this picture is a scene of relative calm and balance….the light seems to be more vibrant than I remember, and the building has lost its sense of foreboding.  In my next post I'm going to post some of my all-time favorite pictures and hopefully they will demonstrate an eye for more interesting subjects and landscapes.  This picture, though, is a reminder of how light can change the feelings and emotions evoked by a scene.
      Of course, it could be my memory that has been changed by the light as with the mice in my previous post.  Hmm….

Light and Memory

      I'm not sure if this qualifies as "observing light," but there's an interesting article in today's (August 31st, 2014) Naples Daily News (NDN) about using light to change memory - i.e, to make a good memory a negative one, or vise versa.  "The findings in the journal Nature," says NDN, "show that memories can potentially be modified without drugs or extra training - simply, if that's the word, by breaking the memory into its components in the brain and rewiring the faulty connection."
      Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) exposed two separate groups of mice to either a positive experience (spending time with female mice), or a negative experience (light electrical shocks to the feet).  After exposure to these good and and bad experiences, researchers would expose the mice to a bright blue light.  The mice who received the electrical shocks ran and cowered from the light, apparently fleeing memories triggered by the blue hue. Conversely, the male mice exposed to the female population (a good memory) basked in the light, again seemingly reminded of their experience by the strange-colored light.
      Here's where it gets cool: now that our mice have an association with blue light and either a positive or negative memory, can we switch or reverse their reaction to the blue light?  The answer seems to be "yes."  Using the mice exposed to the females, researchers now exposed the mice to electrical shocks and blue light simultaneously.  The result was somewhat expected, and very-thought provoking: the mice started to associate the blue light with their new, negative experiences, despite being exposed to the light for roughly the same amount of time in both positive and negative situations.  The researchers could then reverse the memory a third time, a fourth, a fifth, and in each group equally.
      The implications, then, are that memory is malleable.  We can, at one point in time, positively associate something in our lives that, at another time, might terrify or enrage us.  This suggests that our memory is not linear, like a movie, but is rather like a lump of clay that can be reshaped and remade over, and over again.

For Show Pro Mafia News, I'm Aaron Golly.

The Lady in Granite

All of these pictures are from Penn Yan Cemetery in Penn Yan, New York.  This tombstone, or rather the entity inside the tombstone, is known as the "Lady in Granite."  The face-like blemish on the granite appeared several years after the tombstone was placed over a female murder victim and her husband-turned-murderer as they lay side by side.  As a result of the "eyesore" created by the blemish, the tombstone was replaced with a new piece of rock.  This rock, complete with blemish just as it's always been, is the new tombstone.  It took about two years for the blemish to reappear.  In exactly the same place as the old one.  

Although the sky looks orange in these pictures, it was actually a moonless night.  The shutter had to be open for several minutes to capture these images, and we used a little help from our flashlights.

 Here she is: the Lady in Granite!  Most say her mouth is open, as if screaming, and can be seen in the bottom left area of the blemish.  Do you see the face in the light?

 A very bright star-lit shot.  The shutter was open for over 4 minutes!

This is the one where I turned into a zombie and took pictures of myself.  The light went right through me.  Literally.  

Hehe. Lights and Laughs.

A 450 nanometer photon walks into a bar.  The bartender says, "hey chum, why so blue?"

A Photon walks into a bar.  The bartender says "what'll it be, sir?"  The Photon says, "light beer, please."

A photon in a hurry takes a second to read the sign on the door of a bar.  It reads: NO LIGHTSPEED TRAVEL.  A photon walks into a bar….

Showing movement

I really like using light to show movement.  In the first picture here, Steph is apparently really interested in Mike's face and is examining it.  And, thanks to a few trapped photons (really, trapped LEDs that give us the illusion of a trapped photon) we can see her story of curiosity laid out behind her.

In this second pic, Steph has jumped into Mike's arms, and we can see most of the action.  The low light coming from the visible lamp in the picture allowed the lighting conditions around us to use some ambient light in capturing these short long-exposure shots (1 - 2 seconds, I believe).

Laughin' at Photons. Silly Photon.

A Photon checks into a hotel.  The bellhop walks to the Photon and asks, "do you have any bags, sir?  The Photon replies, "No. I'm traveling light."  HA!