Interwar Postcard

It’s not far, just close by, through an open door, by and © monkeytime.

Going home, going home,
I’m a-going home.
Quiet-like, some still day,
I’m just going home.

It’s not far, just close by,
through an open door.
Work all done, care laid by,
going to fear no more.

Mother’s there expecting me,
Father’s waiting too.
Lots of folk gathered there,
all the friends I knew,
all the friends I knew

Morning star lights the way,
Restless dreams all done.
Shadows gone, break of day,
real life just begun.

There’s no break, there’s no end,
just a living on.
Wide awake, with a smile,
going on and on.

Going home, going home,
I’m just going home.
It’s not far just close by,
through an open door.
I’m just going home.

  

Athena and Golem Zeus: Today in Herstory, by and © Michael Zara.

A recent Strobist post involved how to shoot a person who’s not too keen on “having my picture taken,” and discussed the use of a shoot-through umbrella combined with on-axis fill flash. So, after dinner Saturday, we tried out some lighting ratios in a loose and, uh, eccentric atmosphere.

This is lit from about 45° camera left and high, using a Canon Speedlite 580EXII with a shoot-through umbrella. I added some fill on the right side using the 580EX on-camera (but off-axis to the right, camera vertical) with the Omnibounce, dropped 2 stops.

 

Train Coach D, by and © St Stev, used under a Creative Commons license.

It would be difficult for me to care any less about U.S. pro football, but I’m fascinated by sports photography. Via Scott Kelby, I read David Bergman’s write-up of a recent trip to shoot several football games, including some emphasis on Brett Favre after he was traded to the Jets. Most interesting is that Bergman’s tale is essentially one of logistics – how to get his full kit, and himself, ’round the country and arrive in shooting shape. He seems to be a master, embodying the old military proverb that “Good generals study tactics. Great generals study logistics.”

I shot this on the day that Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama for President. Powell supervised one invasion of Iraq and helped gin up another. Obama, when he had real votes to cast, voted more funds – more and more – for Powell’s second Iraq misadventure.

The title is from Laurence Binyon’s poem, “The Fourth of August,” which conceived the First World War in the noblest of terms:

Now in thy splendour go before us.
Spirit of England, ardent-eyed,
Enkindle this dear earth that bore us
In the hour of peril purified.

The cares we hugged drop out of vision,
Our hearts with deeper thought dilate,
We step from days of sour division
Into the grandeur of our fate.

(more…)

   
Jackson’s View, by and © monkeytime.

After reading Mark Alberhasky’s post on not missing great shots because of either waiting for the greater shots just around the bend or putting off shooting until one has one’s best gear in hand, I made sure to have my beat-up Canon SD450 charged and in my bag before leaving today for the office. (H/T to Imaging Insider.) Lucky that I did, because the skies over Santa Monica were damn near photogenic at quittin’ time. This view from my colleague Jackson’s window was made with the SD450 on full Auto mode.

For my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as an hearth, by and © monkeytime.

I seem to have decent luck shooting pelicans. Perhaps this makes me a crypto-Catholic. The pelican figures prominently in some branches of Catholic mythology as a model for Christ, piercing her side and feeding or resurrecting her young with blood from the wound. This lore of the pelican apparently predates Christianity.

Interestingly enough, the pelican also appears in Christian writing (and perhaps Jewish writing) as a metaphor for isolation and desolation. Psalms 102 says (verses 3-7, King James Version):

For my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as an hearth.

My heart is smitten, and withered like grass; so that I forget to eat my bread.

By reason of the voice of my groaning my bones cleave to my skin.

I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the desert.

I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house top.

It is not clear that the original writing actually referred to the sea-bird we know as the pelican, but most English translations seem to use the word pelican (notably, the New International Version does not). The Vulgate appears to use the Latin equivalent, and the Septuagint the Greek.

Get my good side!, by and © monkeytime

Over at Strobist, David Hobby cuts through the non-essential numbers (aperture, shutter speed, ISO) and focuses on the core of balancing ambient light and flash. 

Lloyd, above: I dropped the ambient two stops and shot on flash, ungelled. Nyahhhh!

It’s kimodo, by and © Derek Chatwood, All Rights Reserved.

Having either mounted a 600 mm super-telephoto lens to his Rolleiflex or crept up really close, Derek Chatwood has an intriguing quartet of black-and-white, medium-format animal portraits shot on film at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo. The Komodo dragon photograph above is accompanied by two of a gorilla and one of a leopard, both animals similarly in some form of repose. (more…)