Soma-Sema.com

Window of Opportunity

danbaxter — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:06:25 +0000

This photograph is of my oldest friend with whom I have since had to part ways. I have known him since I was two and half, or three years old, and he is essentially a third brother to me. In all the nearly 20 years we have known each other, this is the only photograph I have personally taken of him. But, while at a cottage with him and his family, and while cleaning my equipment with a dust brush, I could not resist taking this shot, much in the same impulsive way as with Arias.

He has always been and always will be an inquisitive soul. He is never satiated by what he knows of the world, and constantly seeks new information to stimulate his mind. We used to find so much trouble when we were kids. And yet, if you leave him be, if you let him live as if nobody is expecting anything from him or watching his movements, he will explore the world around him. Give him light, he reads a book. However, we know not what he reads, what he’s learning; it is a secret, locked away, like whatever is behind the reflective glass cabinet doors, which echo the nostalgic scene outside, much like the smile on his face is a reflection of the pleasure of discovery.

I used a 28mm Nikon lens, hence the angling of the lines yet the correct center of gravity on him, and a sepia filter mounted on my cokin filter system. The sepia filter creates the feeling of older times, and he very much lives his life according to an old code. The kind of code you will find in Steinbeck, Hemingway, Orwell and other authors’ work. The kind of code that defined men before there were suits to put them in. Thus, the sepia filter was a another crucial choice in capturing the essence of him.

King Mountain

danbaxter — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:01:42 +0000

This is a photograph of another friend that I would not say has had a usual life, and so her story is not easily estimable; nevertheless, the elements in this photograph capture some of the places she’s been, but more of where she is now, and of where she is travelling in the future. Like the mountain air itself, in which only wind can be heard, that natural rhythm of energy as it circles the earth, she is a quiet person, simple, but in no way dull or shallow, the way wind is but moving air, and yet is so absolutely more complex behind what cannot be seen. She has been gracious enough to have given me a vision or two of the ethereal that dwells beneath the flesh, and I am grateful for it, and was thusly inspired to capture her in this photograph.

She was born in New Jersey, but, verily, she has been on the move since she can remember. She spent enough time in Arkansas to leave roots there, settling down pieces of her heart in memories of country friends and wilderness. Though it was one of the few places in which she’d spend any significant amount of time, her time their was, nevertheless, all too brief. She moved with her family to Canada, to Toronto first, and then outside of a small town called Cobourg, which is on the skirts of Toronto. Once again, She found wild places and new memories, and of the finite pieces of a mortal heart, she left another in those woods, on the shores of the lake behind her house, and with the people with whom she shared her time. The small subdivision nestled right against the Gatineau hills is reminiscent of her small-town heritage, and the simple people among whom she grew up and flourished despite constant transplanting.

But she is more than just some common country girl: she has climbed mountains in Korea, and of these are many of her most cherished and beloved memories. I hazard to say, I think that, on those mountains, in the jungles enclosing that temperate place of her dreams, she would have left all the rest of her heart there. I have absolutely no doubt that she’ll be back there, one day soon enough, sitting on another mountaintop watching another sunset. We all come back to that place that most feels like home. That place we return to when we need somewhere quiet to sit, calm ourselves and think. It can be anything, anywhere. For her, it is those mountains, and so I saw no better setting to take her portrait.

She has obstacles to face in the meanwhile common to aspiring young women. A university degree at the University of Ottawa in the Bio. Med. Faculty in not an easy prize to achieve, and requires full-time attention with only so much room for error, and that not a very generous amount. Again and again I’ve watched her stress over her grades while I attempt, and half the time fail, to quiet her. She can be as stubborn as the rock on which she sits, and perhaps it is the immutability of those jungle mountains that is part of what she finds of such irrepressible desire to return there. She has the new task of worrying about money, too, like all of us poor university kids. Out for ourselves, now, we learn what it was that our parents did for us all these years. We reflect on all the places we’ve yet come from, but more importantly ponder how it is we’re going to face the brunt of what is still yet to come. And, unfortunately for Her, she is of the type that will not readily reach out for a helping hand when it would do her most good, for she is used to being solitary in her struggles. She faces, with the rest of us, the very real truth that the successful achievement of our dreams and goals depends entirely on our ability to fulfill the requirements of each step along the way; and, like us all, she must gaze into the blazing ending of her childhood and try to remember how to get home once the darkness settles in.

A true, non-fictional portrait of a person captures at least something of the story of that person. The human mind makes many implicit associations when given any kind of sensory stimulus. By including various elements with the person into the portrait, you direct those associations into forming an unconscious history of who the person in the photograph is, where they’ve been, and/or where they are going. This particular photograph was taken spontaneously on a precipice on King Mountain while She and I were watching the sun setting into the west, listening to the groans of the cattle echo up the rock walls and pointing at lazy turkey vultures riding the thermals across the valley while songbirds found mischief for their curiosity in the thickets behind us. The elements in the photo speak of her story in whispers from all over the composition: from the streets and houses below, the bowing sunset on the horizon, the deep blue, the wide valley, the wind in her hair, the stone beneath her, the forest like thick moss all over the rock, her posture and her gaze into the ending of the light. Paying attention to detail is crucial in capturing the essence of a person in any non-fictional portraiture.

Day Lilly VII

danbaxter — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:11:16 +0000

This is a photograph of a Lilly, one of seven such photographs. Each one of these was taken with my Nikon FM2 using Kodakrome colour positive slide film (100 ISO) and my Sigma 70-300mm apochromatic macro zoom lens. I had to use a tripod for this shot because both flowers were in the shade of a very large oak tree. In order to get the second flower in any degree of focus, I had to use a smaller aperture for greater depth-of-field, which requires a slower shutter speed to compensate. Combined with the fact that 100 ISO film is about as slow a film speed as you can buy (though they can go down to 50), I was working well below hand-held shutter speeds. It is important for young photographers to remember, one shift in shutter speed, film speed or f-stop is equivalent to doubling of halving the light hitting your film. That is, if you shift from f/8 to f/16, or from 1/125 to 1/250, you are halving the amount of light hitting your film. In reverse, you’d be doubling the light. Thus, if you shift aperture, you should compensate by adjusting shutter speed when possible, or on digital cameras you can adjust film speed instead.

Arias

danbaxter — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 03:24:51 +0000

Unfortunately, none of the portraiture I’ll be posting on this site will be for sale. I am posting them so that I can discuss how to do well made portraits that capture a person’s personality and history in a frame.

Arias is the angel of sweet smelling herbs (though, also considered a demon in some sects of occultism, as outlined by Voltaire in Dictionnaire Infernal and Gustav Davidson in A Dictionary of Angels). Knowing that, it is probably no surprise that I named this photograph as I did; however, there is more depth beneath that reflective surface.

Jane Evelyn Atwood is a personal favourite of mine in the art of documentary portraiture. She would be involved with her subjects for a long time (half a year to years) in order to properly capture exactly who the person(s) was/were. Her website can be found at http://www.janeevelynatwood.com/. Her works have helped the blind (for which she won a prestigious award), refugees, women in prison, and other individuals and groups in abounding numbers.

This photograph is of a close friend of mine, who is an earth-grown hippie child if there ever was one. Although she does not always have the foresight she wished or thought she had (everyone still loves you Paige; you’re like Pandora without the epidemic and tragedy), she makes up for this with her benevolence. She is submissive to those around her because she wants to help them, wants to assist them, and simply waits to be asked or told what to do. Her down-turned eyes display her submissiveness and humility; but, she is happy as she is, and would not be any other way if the world burdened her in solidarity to do so, for she knows this is the way to be to help things live, not help them die. Thus, she smiles as she submits and shows us humility need not be a painful experience wrought with suffering and envy. She knows she is part of the greater system of the Earth, and the only legacy is its continued existence. The red of her shirt adds just a few strokes of colour, and reminds us of the flesh beneath the skin, while the plants in the background and the ghostlike appearance of Arias tie everything into the greater Carbon Cycle.

I had wanted to take her picture for some time before this, but had always held off because there was just nothing around her that matched her the way I wanted (when I had a camera with me). That is, until I thought about it while she was wandering and pondering a garden with me and her now ex-boyfriend.

We are, at the smallest level, a contained system of atomic energy. Our neural impulses are merely electrical pulses sent through neurons — some coated with a myelin sheath for extra speed (the muscle nerves) and some without (the grey matter and inner brain nerves) — by the stimulation of active sodium ion pores and the flooding of the neuron with negatively charged sodium ions. When the current reaches the end of the axon, the final pore is activated to pump a positively charged calcium ion (Ca2+ or some other sort of neurotransmitter) into the neuron, which causes the release of neurotransmitters being contained within a vacuole in the neuron through the cellular membrane, a process called exocytosis. These transmitters travel across the synaptic gap on carriers and activate the axon of the next neuron. They do so by their chemical structure, much in the same way as we smell, or the way seeing a person’s face will cause one to recall their name (as long as its been previously recorded in memory). When the neurotransmitters have done their job, they are broken down by enzymes and recycled back into the originating neuron. In fact, everything thus described in the procedure happens at the molecular level, and is caused by the presence of a specific charge, ion, or molecular structure. The structure is a key that matches a receptor site on the dendrites of the neighbouring neuron (drugs are just impostors on this receptor site, chemicals with the same molecular structure, or similar enough; others pretend to be carriers and keep the neuron firing by never returning the neurotransmitter; and, there are other drugs with other methods of messing with the mind). Thus, when it comes down to it, our thoughts are simply the transmission of electrical signals, of energy, between molecules and atoms and ions. These molecules are parts of hundreds of systems that serve a larger system, which is itself a sub-system of an even greater system, and so on and so forth. Eventually, the workings of just a few molecules are the mechanics of the system that regulates the entire Earth. The world does not belong to man; we are part of the earth, like the organelles of a cell. The organelles are small systems in themselves, but they serve the cell as a whole. The cell, the most basic life form, in multitudes of trillions and trillions, function within all the levels of systems combining to form a human. The people, or, more generally, the animals, and the plants, and the rocks and soil, all life and non-life are part of one goliath cell, the Earth. Nevertheless, the Earth is just a spinning electron in the orbit of a large proton (the sun), a molecule that is part of the greater system of our Milky Way galaxy, which is but a spinning particle lost in the vastness of the universe waiting to collide with another galaxy, implode with the rest of the universe, or do something no one has yet conceived.

For more general information on the Carbon Cycle, as well as detailed pictures and equally in-depth explanations of the nature, impacts, and modern problems with the Cycle, visit http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/CarbonCycle/

For ore information on the neuron’s structure, function, types, and abilities, visit http://science.howstuffworks.com/brain1.htm and scroll through the available topics in the “Table of Contents” window in the upper center of the screen.

For more information on the universe, its origins, projected futures, and current systems and subsystems, visit Stephen Hawking own lectures online at http://www.hawking.org.uk/lectures/lindex.html. This site has lectures directed at both the general public, and at the more deeply educated and advanced astronomy enthusiast that are geared at the university level.

This photograph was created using the technique of multiple exposures. For information on how to make a multiple exposure, visit my Day Lilly and Scarlet Lychnis photograph by clicking on this link http://www.soma-sema.com/category/floral/page/17/.

The Mystics of the Stones

danbaxter — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 03:22:45 +0000

The Trespass

danbaxter — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 03:21:38 +0000

This shot was taken with a Cokin filter system red filter on a 50mm Nikon e-series lens and 400 ISO print film with my FM2. I used a shutter speed of 1/125 bracketed through to 1/1000 at f/8-f/16. I had to sacrifice some over-exposure in the sky to bring up the right level of contrast on the stones to give shape, texture, and depth.

For my personal interpretation of this photograph as part of a series of Stonehenge photographs, I invite you to take The Journey of the Stones for which I will soon be posting a link on here.

The Seduction

danbaxter — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 03:20:06 +0000

This photograph was taken with the same set-up as The Trespass: my 50mm 1.8 Nikkor, my cokin filter system and my red filter. I kept the aperture small (f/22), my shutter high, and underexposed by a stop.

For a metaphysical interpretation of this in a series of Stonehenge photographs, I invite you to take The Journey of the Stones for which a link will soon be posted here.

The Cleansing

danbaxter — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 03:18:16 +0000

I took this shot using a circular polarizer, a cheaper variety of Kodak 400 ISO print film at a shutter speed bracketed between 1/500 and 1/2000 of a second, a 28mm lens and my usual Nikon FM2. The polarizer was angled for maximum effect (90 degrees from the angle of the sun’s light, giving a 2 stop decrease in exposure for which I compensated with an aperture of f/16). As well, I underexposed the shot by a stop (dropping down to a total of f/22). I could not eliminate the human presence in the shot, but since they are only silhouettes, one can imagine them to be the ancient druids of tale, perhaps the very ones who brought the stones (depending on which creation theory you subscribe to); however, unlike Exodus, the people are not a predominant element of the composition. Most of the first private people to whom I showed this photograph gave a delayed reaction of “oh, and look at the little people down there”. The colours direct the senses, rather, in this shot. The lighting pouring down from the sun onto Stonehenge alone is white as a preacher’s collar, but the rest of the sky is a either a surreal, stone blue or the shadows of the tumultuous clouds. The triangular shape of the light beaming on Stonehenge leads the eye to the sun, and is from there spread unto the rest of the sky and then the mind begins to take in the full composition as a whole. It is only after they have surveyed the sky that the eyes come back to the silhouettes that began it all, the stones, and then the tiny marching people to the side.

I have titled this one The Cleansing because of the experience that I had while visiting the UK with my cousins and seeing Stonehenge. Here is an excerpt from http://www.stonehenge.co.uk/ceremony.htm

“Individually, we say our goodbyes to this place of magic and wonder. On the surface, not much has seemed to happen. Inside, our hearts and souls rejoice at the time we have spent in the presence of the Divine, recharging our batteries, rededicating our lives, merging with the Source, at home with Spirit. We make our way back to the cars, cleansed, renewed, smiling, talking in small groups.”

I recommend visiting the link and reading the full passage. It does not list an author, but it was last updated June 6^th, 2005.

If you would like to learn more about the origins of Stonehenge, visit: http://www.stonehenge.co.uk/

To plan a visit to Stonehenge, visit: http://www.stonehenge.org.uk/

Exodus

danbaxter — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 03:15:53 +0000

This is the last installment in the Journey of the Stones series, for which I will post a link soon. Exodus shows us a guiding light leading the ever-silhouetted procession to finally pass out of the place of ancient mysticism and walk renewed in the living, visceral world (note: the procession enters The Trespass to the right and leaves Exodus to the left). We have been tempted, we have fallen, and by this, we have been cleansed of our ignorance and selfishness. Peace, brothers and sisters and all sentient beings, and walk with an imagination never hindered, for only choice separates it from reality.

For another experimental work involving Stonehenge, investigate Laurie Simmons and her Pink Stonehenge. Other similar artists (of a similar photographic movement where propped toys are pantomimes of real people and objects) are Sandy Skoglund and David Levinthal. Skoglund’s Work is a Breeze (which can be seen in the “More of Joy of Photography” listed in the Recommendations page) is a truly ingenious and influential feminist piece, representing the commonplace treatment of women and the paradigm of their places in the workforce, and emblematic of her style as an artist, which is unmistakable, painstaking, and provocative. Though each employs a different style and approach with their props, Levinthal and Simmons both use toys to mimic the artificiality and superficiality of the current human standard, forcing us to conceive of ourselves as pre-packaged, mass produced figurines for the amusement and placement of a governing system. Simmons is quite famous for her handcrafted backdrops and figures, and has even designed her own toy because of her renown.

To learn more of Laurie Simmons, visit http://www.nyfa.org/level4.asp?id=112&fid=1&sid=51&tid=167

To learn more of Sandy Skoglund, visit http://www.sandyskoglund.com/

To learn more about David Levinthal, visit http://www.davidlevinthal.com/

One Winter’s Dawn

danbaxter — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 03:12:52 +0000

In the frozen calm of a mid-winter dawn, after mounting my camera on the tripod and getting all my gear ready, I walk briskly across my driveway and into the southwest corner of the yard. I set up, compose the shot with the available space provided by my 28mm Nikon lens, and calculate my exposure. I have to be right; this is the last shot on the role and I do not have another on me. Thus, I wait until I feel myself in the current of the “flow”, until I know I am in that space I am always in when I make a material photographic image of the ethereal imagination I have in my mind; and then, cable release in hand, I take the shot with the breath held fast in my lungs.