Imagineering

It is said that when a motorcyclist wears a helmet, he drives faster and takes more risk. That in a controversial way, protection makes us feel more immune, leading perhaps to more reckless behavior.

It can be said that youth is also like that protection—that we start worrying about our organs, our joints and our dreams when youth is gone.

… And yet, we cherish dreaming about what has not yet been dreamed about. We reward people who take risk; even promote exploration knowing well that there is no exploring without taking risk, and that there is no dreaming without waking up!

When it comes to photography or artistic expression in general, I have always favored the risk taking. Not necessarily by going beyond what others had done, but by not doing what others had done. Of course there is no discovery without risk taking, but can there be discovery without exploration?

Take for example my obstinate (and according to many colleagues silly) desire to use film and old mechanical cameras when I could get a wonder machine for the price of film I use in a few months and take thousands of pictures a day. Then, with just pressing one button, erase 999 of them and start again. I do not think that I am exploring, nor taking risk. Instead, I am rediscovering and celebrating a form of expression in its original form. When I expressed this idea to a colleague, he put down his Nikon-can-do-it-all digital wonder box and replied “Then why don’t you mix some blood and vegetable dyes and paint on the walls of a cave?”

But we reward risk taking, and especially dreaming. My favorite term for it comes from Walt Disney Corporation where their design and development arm is called Imageneering. How wonderful a word that is! It is applying the principles of discovery, design and application (engineering) to the introduction of an idea that others had neglected or not thought about.

There is also a term I had hoped was my own discovery but alas, found that it has existed for a while now… It is Imagineering, which is a technique used by groups of people trying to guess how things would be (outcomes, processes, designs) if there were no restrictions to making them happen.  To me, that is the ultimate in risk taking as it ignores all contexts and surrounding.

… I chose three pictures to reflect on these ideas and concepts.

First, a cloud formation that reminded me of jelly fish and the ocean. It was not the formation itself that attracted my attention, but the speed at which all changes in a split second. Indeed, seconds after I took this shot the jelly fish were gone, so was the ocean. I was left with cotton clouds, blue sky and an ordinary day.  Yet, for that short space in time, I could smell the Atlantic!I was dreaming, perhaps ‘Imagineering’.

The second picture is from a Veterans’ Day parade. This veteran, sitting in a 1940's Jeep, was challenging the premise that others are supposed to take pictures of the parading veterans. Instead, with his point-and-shoot camera and that wonderfully seasoned look, he took pictures of the crowd.  I cropped the picture to tell the story at the expense of losing definition and detail. Yet, when I look at it, I wonder what he was thinking. Perhaps that he was trying to capture the expressions of the crowd. Or in his mind, he had just swapped the machine gun on the Jeep for a camera!

Finally, would this motorcyclist look good in a helmet? Given the gray hair he so abundantly displays, he has been biking for a while. Did he take risks? I am sure he did. Yet I found him and his bandanna perfect as foreground to the “Devil’s Pantry. “

I was watching a video about the Amazon region and a Brazilian saying stayed with me:

                 “The Amazon has answers to the questions we have not yet asked.”

Can it be that risk taking and dreaming are the answers to the questions we will eventually pose?

December 6, 2014

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2014

Foreground Optical Effect

I was reading a recent article by researchers from Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) School of Science, The University of Tokyo about how supernovae and other structures of our universe can fool us!
This finding was about how one can misjudge the size and nature of a supernova if by some cosmic realignment a vast object (say a galaxy) finds itself between the supernova and our observational field. According to the team of researchers, which include 2011 Nobel Prize winners in Physics , “a massive object between us and the supernova bends light rays much as a glass lens can focus light. As more light rays are directed toward the observer than would be without the lens, the supernova appears magnified.”

Wow! That means “run-of-the-mill” supernovae may be mistakenly considered to be bigger, brighter and especially new discovery.  The Authors call the behavior of the galaxy as ‘gravitational lensing’ and the resulting misleading a “Cosmic Illusion”.

… For me, optical illusion is sometimes key during photography. Not to deceive the observer, but to give the picture the illusion of depth on a two-dimensional plane that is a photo (at least on paper, under the 1950's enlarger in my darkroom.) And with careful positioning, one can give illusions regarding relative size, and playing with the shades can transform a morning shot to a midnight bathing in a full moon or hiding under dark clouds.

So, I went back to my street photos to find an illustration. Here is my earthly interpretation of what happens when a ‘galaxy’ gets between a ‘supernova’ and the photographer! 

Of course I laughed  looking at the picture as I had certainly not thought about such an interpretation when I took it. I suppose every artist has such moments: a poet writes a line hoping to use it one day; a painter sketches a thought believing it will find a context soon; and a musician hides his many incomplete music sheets under “May be one day” pile!

But, the idea of the illusion and this picture made me think about more daily reactions we all have regarding the past. Would this young girl look just a young girl without the well-seasoned persona of the man? Can one look at this picture and think of the man as the passage of time and therefore somehow embellish, romanticize the past? Is it an illusion when we think that the ‘good old days’ were better than now? If so, is it because of the passage of time that serves as the ‘gravitational lensing’ giving the illusion that all was grand and lovely in the past? While Bing Crosby sang “Love is better the second time around”, why do we still remember our first love, and often with tendresse?

Is it all an illusion?

.. And I laughed again remembering how a friend of mine, who grew up on a farm, used to reply when someone used the old adage of “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence”. 

His quick response was:

“Yes, it is greener because there are sheep there that leave copious amounts of droppings. Try to walk barefoot on the other side of the fence!!!”

  

Robert M. Quimby et al.  Detection of the Gravitational Lens Magnifying a Type Ia Supernova.   Science April 25, 2014

December 3, 2014

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2014