Rope seen as a snake - musings on reality and visualisation

Today as I walked back from the lab to my office I saw a flash of incredible blue on the ground. Thinking it was a really beautiful butterfly I stopped to investigate. It was a piece of plastic... but for a few more moments it still looked like a butterfly - and beautiful too - then the illusion faded and it was just plastic.

I found myself thinking that this was somehow an important message about visualising - seeing a beautiful image in the common-place. But a piece of plastic doesn't hold one's attention for long once one sees through the illusion.

I've been having a discussion on another forum about photography and honesty. Contrary to many, I think photographs cannot lie - but they can fool the stupid - well, the casual observer.

There is an Indian teaching story about a rope that is mistaken for a snake. Nisargadatta Maharaj says - To know that consciousness and its content are but reflections, changeful and transient, is the focussing of the real. The refusal to see the snake in the rope is the necessary condition for seeing the rope.

So is photography a lie? Is it promoting illusion and keeping us from the real?

For me - photography, like all art, is a pursuit of beauty. The rope, the plastic - they are no more real than the snake, the butterfly. The sense of beauty in art is what is real.

Bellows extension

Canna, originally uploaded by The Central Scrutiniser.

Took the Shenhao 54 out in the garden today looking for something to shoot close up. Lit on this Canna seed head.

With the 150mm Nikkor-W 1:5.6 lens I was able to achieve something approaching 1:1 size on the ground glass with a bellows extension of about 9 inches.

Now here's the thing - when the bellows is extended beyond the focal length of the lens, one must increase the exposure to compensate for light drop-off.

Lens focal length in inches = 6. Take that as an f-stop, f/6. Close enough to f/5.6.

Bellows extension measured from ground glass to middle of lens board in inches = 9. As an f-stop, f/9 is close enough to f/8.

f/8 is one stop narrower than f/5.6. So we must increase the exposure by one stop.

This was taken in full sun, using 100ISO film (Fjui Acros), so, using the "sunny 16" rule, we would expect an exposure of 1/100 at f/16 (i.e. in full sun the exposure is 1/ISO at f/16). Increasing that by one stop gives us 1/60 at f/16 - and that's what I used.

It would have been nice to stop down more and get a little more depth of field, but there was a slight breeze and the Canna was moving a little.

I processed the Acros in Rodinal diluted 1:100. I tried to achieve 18 minutes at 20ºC but the developer warmed a little during the process. At 15 minutes it was 20.5ºC so I cut the time short at 17 minutes. The perils of processing film in the sub-tropics.

I like the tonal graduation and the sharpness. Rodinal is great stuff. I normally use it at 1:50 and it gives a bit more contrast but I like this a lot and will stick with it.

Lots of good info on bellows extension factor

And lots of data on film and deevelopers at massive development chart

Difficult lighting

Welcome to Fortress Louisburg, Nova Scotia...



The thing about foggy, rainy, or cloudy days is that they're a pain in the ass to meter for. I mean, here you are fiddling with the knobs on your camera, trying to keep your object of focus from being too dark, while trying to avoid having the sky completely white.

I've found the best way to get around this is to use B&W film... or switch to the B&W settings on your digital. B&W is completely forgiving of all of your photographic screw-ups. People have been trained by decades of old photography to view B&W as ARTISTIC and anything you can't do properly with a camera will always get seen as intentional.

Brilliant stuff. Don't be afraid to do it.




* According to the Laws Of Photography, pure white is bad, you know... Unless it's what you're trying to do, then it's genius. The Laws Of Photography are pretty much as arbitrary as Canada's pot laws.