Photographs and thoughts on photography and camera collecting
I’ve posted a picture of this monument before (see: Owen Jones Memorial, Sleepy Hollow Cemetery). In the earlier post the monument is seen in context: on a hill in the distance other grave markers around it. This is a much closer view.
I was walking towards Stillwater Pond in Fahnestock State Park when I spotted this spider web. It seemed to just float in the air with no apparent means of support, backlit by the sun. I liked the original color version, but the brights yellows and greens and greens in the background seemed to distract from the web itself so I decided to convert it to black and white. Unfortunately in the conversion I pretty much lost the spider itself, which was large and a bright red color. You can see it as a dark blob at the center of the web.
I’m not referring to Usain Bolt here (although I do have a picture of him on the blog: see What an amazing photograph of an incredible athlete). Rather I’m referring to the rabbit that has recently started to appear in our garden (see A new visitor) and which one of our granddaughters has named “Bolt” after the famous Usain – I suspect because the rabbit ran so quickly.
I was walking the dog around the lake when I started to think about why I take photographs. In my reading I’ve been advised that it’s not enough to take a picture just because I liked the way something looks. I need to know why I liked it. To know what I was feeling when I took the picture.
For some reason I started to think about why I’d taken the picture of the rabbit. One reason was I thought that it was really cute. A second was that our six year old granddaughter was really excited to see it. A third was that it’s not every day that we see a rabbit in our garden and I wanted to document the occasion.
Then my thoughts wandered to rabbits in general and all kinds of thoughts came flooding back:
I have a clear memory from when I was young of seeing a rabbit with milky-white eyes. It was quite traumatic and I later learned that it was a victim of a horrible disease called Myxomatosis that appeared in the UK in the 1950s and decimated the rabbit population (fortunately rabbits breed – well like rabbits – and they the rabbit population in the UK has since recovered and also developed immunity to the disease).
I also remembered my grandfather, who was a bit of a poacher who would from time to time bring home rabbits for dinner (or tea as we used to call it). I hadn’t realized that rabbits were for eating so this was quite a shock. I was very close to my grandfather and it was nice to have this memory of him return.
Watership Down – a book about rabbits. I started to read it our kids at bedtime when they were quite young. We never did finish it!
Could it be that, unknown to me, these thoughts were hovering around just below the surface and influencing my decision to take the picture?
I had also read that a photograph should be able to stand by itself and should not need words to explain it. All well and good, but I doubt that I could come up with a picture of a rabbit that by itself could conjure up all of these feelings – unique to me – in another person.
Or maybe I just liked seeing a cute furry animal in a place where I didn’t expect to see it?
We recently had a visit from our son-in-law, Colin. I’ve said before that I don’t check to see if anyone actually reads this blog. However, I know from our conversations that from time to time Colin takes a look. This was confirmed during the latest visit when he mentioned that he liked the picture of the F/A-18 in the header. Since I changed the look of the site only in early September (see A new look) then he must have looked at it in the past month.
Anyway I thanked him for his comment, but had to tell him that unfortunately the F/A-18 had now disappeared from the header. Why? Because I’ve decided to change the image in the header at the beginning of every month.
For fans of the F/A-18 it’s still in the blog though: see NY Air Show – US Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet
I came across this Harley in the parking lot of our health club. It’s usually quite crowded, but this Harley was way off at the far edge – all by itself. Obviously the owner wasn’t taking any chance of it being banged.
I’ve never really wanted to have a motorcycle. I find them loud it’s seems to me that it’s far to easy come off them in an accident, or on bad (e.g. icy) road conditions. However, I like old, well made machines so I’m always happy to come across a Harley. Of course it doesn’t hurt that our dog is called Harley – nothing to do with the motorcycle.
