It’s… literature

Al Denelsbeck

Walkabout podcast – It’s… literature

By the time I finish this post, the article making the rounds may have already died its internet death, in which case I’m either resurrecting it or in denial (I’ll let you judge.) I’m referring to 20 Books You Pretend to Have Read, a post over at Book Riot regarding well-known works of literature that, apparently, carry more cachet than allure. The title says it all; for whatever reason, people are worried that others will think less of them for not having read some book or other. The comments, both there and in other places where the idea has been repeated, often consist of bragging about actually reading most of the list, interspersed with claims of failure to slog through some of the titles. It’s a reflection of our culture’s peculiar views on literature.

I’ll put this right up front: I’m not going to go into how many I’ve read, except to say that it isn’t many, and I couldn’t give the slightest damn what anyone else has. Read whatever you want, and do so for whatever reasons you want – but my suggestion is, do it because you want to, not because you feel obligated by someone’s impression of how important it should be.

Writing is just another art form, which means that certain styles will appeal to certain people, but not everybody. No one should have any reason to be self-conscious about their personal taste, and it bears no reflection on their intelligence or social graces. Somehow, though, we’ve developed the idea that certain books represent an ideal of some kind, the right way to write. This is especially amusing in regards to anything in English, which is such a bastard polyglot that guidelines for spelling and pronunciation are violated almost as often as they are followed, and the few truly original words are often frowned upon by those with more pomposity than sense. English classes, at least in the US but I suspect in Great Britain as well, have been the slowest in abandoning a ridiculous structure wherein there is a supposed authority to be followed – occasionally fostered by the arbitrary pronouncements of self-professed experts. We’ve been bombarded with platitudes over Shakespeare and Hemingway, Bronte and Fitzgerald and Tolstoy, to the point where we believe that if we don’t like these authors there’s something wrong with us – we’re uneducated Philistines or lacking in good taste or some such rot like that. We get the impression that we should at least appreciate such works, if not strive to emulate them as much as possible.

What utter pungent horseshit! Appreciation is an emotion, not a skill. While it is possible to provide insight into how some writer approached their ideas, and thus generate an interest in their style, attempting to coach someone into the ‘proper’ emotional reaction to anything is not going to end well – indeed, there is no shortage of resentment from being “made to read that shit in high school,” which is almost guaranteed to produce exactly the opposite of an appreciation of books.

One can argue that the goal of English Lit classes is only to introduce students to authors with an accomplished sense of style, but the bare facts don’t support this very well. Not only is it the same handful of authors every time, all of them from more than five decades ago, the attitudes plainly displayed by so many literati (and even the existence of that word) illustrate the stunning classism of the field – and a great example of the ‘art snob’ effect. By speaking of their appreciation of the classics, they pronounce their superior intellect and taste to the world at large, the judgment accelerating down the slope of their noses to reach the filthy masses so far below. Even the lengthy and especially turgid tomes bespeak the fortitude of these conquerors, as if traipsing through dismal swamps of prose is commendable rather than indicative of someone who has remarkably warped views of reading. If it’s a chore to get through, perhaps you should be in search of an author that actually holds your attention? Maybe, you know, that could be considered a mark of a good writer, even if “good” is strictly a personal judgment?

There are many cultures that resist change (says the guy sitting in North Carolina,) but none so adamant about it than the subculture of literature. While language is ever-changing, and with it the writing styles and usages of current authors, English classes perpetually harp on the ‘proper’ approaches, as if there was some authority to be found, and dare to grade students on how well they follow structures that will never again see use outside of the classroom – even if the student becomes a successful writer. I will readily admit, there is a lot to be said for making sentences flow smoothly and being able to communicate to the reader without confusion – communication is, after all, what language is for. Which is why weighing it down with rigid structure and byzantine rules is exactly what no one should engage in. Historical usages are fine, for anyone who has an interest in them, but people also used to shit in pots and dump them in the streets; we changed for good reasons, and clinging desperately to past practices from some vague sense of propriety is both pointless and counterproductive.

It used to be that reading was the mark of an educated person, still expressed in the phrase, “well-read.” This was before there was any other source of information dispersal, save for the lecturer or storyteller who was challenged to travel and experience as much as books could communicate. But this is a time long past, as old as many of those ‘classics’ of literature, and we have numerous sources of information available to us now. Reading can no longer be claimed to be the sole path to greater wisdom and thus a prerequisite for knowledge – admittedly, it still rates quite highly, but it’s quite possible to eschew reading altogether and yet produce a significant increase in understanding (it is as I type this that I realize I have to produce this one as a podcast.) And it must be noted that reading was always also a source of entertainment, of provoking the imagination and carrying us away. This particular aspect has long been known as the prime motivator in instilling language skills and writing ability; enthusiastic immersion in books solely for entertainment value still breeds the style and flow found therein, more than any lecture or required reading can do. The emotional involvement in the story attaches to the structure as well – which is again why required reading of ponderous works is precisely the wrong approach.

Being concerned over what anyone else thinks of our reading matter is exactly the same as dressing in the latest fashions: placing insecurity higher than sense, comfort, and entertainment. Read, instead, because it’s fun, or enlightening, or escapism. Drop the story that cannot hold your attention – such things deserve to be ignored. And never hesitate to treat the literature snob with pity, because they fail to grasp what reading can really do for us.

* * * *

The title of this post comes from Mr. Pinsky in Throw Momma From The Train, but you certainly recognized it and didn’t need me to belabor the reference. And you undoubtedly caught the book on the coffee table at the end.

I meant to do that

Al Denelsbeck

IntentionalYeah
Yes, of course I chose this particular focus – anyone can focus on the bee, but using the bee as a backdrop, that takes creativity!

Okay, I lie, this was a missed shot handheld during a breezy overcast day, but I realized I liked the effect with the flowers. While I don’t encourage hanging on to less-than-ideal shots “just in case,” sometimes they can be repurposed by considering them from different criteria.

Alien psychology

Al Denelsbeck

I feel slightly guilty about appending an ‘astronomy’ tag to this, because it’s going to seem not just distantly-related, but wholly out of place to some reading. Yet, there really is a legitimate bearing, as I hope to demonstrate. So let’s take a brief look at the history of extra-terrestrial encounters, because sometimes it helps to know the perspectives of the time.

I am by no means a serious researcher into the field, and I no longer have most of the books I grew up with for reference, so don’t expect meticulous accuracy here – this is just an overview. Most people agree that the modern concept of alien visitation began with Kenneth Arnold’s sighting in 1947 – a misrepresentation of his account coined the term “flying saucer” (which does not describe what he claimed to see at all.) But we can go much further back, since the idea of life on other planets had been surmised ever since we realized there were other planets – Flash Gordon and War of the Worlds being two good examples. Percival Lowell proposed that Mars had channels created by an intelligent race back in the late 1800s, and this may represent a curious reflection of our attitudes, which will be a recurring theme in this post. Canal-building was a major advancement in transportation and trade throughout the 1800s, progressing to bigger and bigger projects – it’s not hard to imagine the people of the time seeing this as a trait of an advanced intelligence. Bear in mind, too, that at this point the flying machine was yet to be perfected, with at least a little doubt that it ever would. Jules Verne’s account of a trip to the moon took place not with a rocket, but with a giant gun (which would have turned any occupants into a fine paste in the rear of the chamber, but let’s not let physics get in our way.)

World War II brought the invention of the long-range rocket, and the first vestiges of a space age – it also brought the power of the atom into public view. Suddenly, not only was going into space a distinct possibility, so was an enormous amount of energy from tiny sources (at least in theory.) Bear in mind that we still didn’t know a lot about our neighboring planets, nor was genetics very far along. The idea that alien life could actually exist on Mars or Venus seemed not all that farfetched, with a lot of supposition (that continues to this day) that it would be similar in physiology to us – humanoid, at the very least. And projected trends in human evolutionary development, a fairly new line of research with the fossil finds of the 20th century, predicted that we would eventually become smaller, less hairy, with bigger heads and smaller limbs. Sound familiar?

Little wonder, then, that reports of alien encounters from the ’50s (as well as science fiction well before that time) often dealt with visitors from Mars or Venus, and occasionally Jupiter or Saturn, almost always humanoid in nature. It didn’t seem to be stretching the imagination too far to think that nuclear power could carry us throughout the solar system within the next century, or that a more advanced race would use this routinely. UFO reports featured numerous references to ionizing radiation, often testing supposed landing sites for radioactivity (as if any kind of intelligence would be unaware of adequate shielding against precisely this kind of contamination.)

In this same time period, radar was going through its golden age of implementation and development, with its own teething pains, such as how easy it was to get a false return. But in the eyes of the public it was a magic box revealing anything in the sky – helped, no doubt, by the proliferation of Cold War radar stations on the coasts, and air traffic control. The ubiquitous round screen with sweeping radial and the beeping bright dot of a positive return appeared in thousands of movies, generating an impression far from the reality of ground scatter, weather interference, anomalous propagation, and weak returns.

From 1952 to 1970, the US Air Force operated Project Blue Book, which helped cement the term “UFO” in the public consciousness. This was the era of the Cold War, the arms race, and imminent nuclear annihilation. While most people seem to think the military was somehow worried about alien visitations, there were more than enough terrestrial concerns for them to concentrate on – “UFO” does not equate with “extra-terrestrial.” It has even been speculated (to my knowledge, never confirmed as policy or goal) that the military was investigating the potential of a War of the Worlds scenario – the radio broadcast in 1938 that purportedly caused widespread panic (that now seems more myth than fact.) In the same vein as the Nazi blitzkrieg tactics, there was the possibility that military responses could be crippled by inducing mass confusion and fear in populated areas; how hard would it be to produce this with “aliens”? But even without this, there was still plenty of information to be gathered on how effectively radar was working, how many airspace incursions by the Soviets could be found by the general populace, and so on. A lot of what Blue Book discovered was how suggestible people could be, and how easily mistaken. Those that feel that the investigation was too dismissive of many of the cases don’t realize that goal was not to fully determine just what caused some sighting, but whether any sighting represented a serious threat or not – with the potential addition of comparing unpublicized Air Force flights against public notice and perception. Again, this was the military, not a research lab.

By this time we knew the moon was a dry, airless satellite, but it wasn’t until space probes made it to Venus and Mars, beginning in the late ’60s, that we determined they too were ridiculously inhospitable to any life, much less advanced species. Part of my family library growing up still presented speculative illustrations of the species that might inhabit the extremely humid swamps of Venus, before it was discovered that the cloaking featureless cloud cover wasn’t water vapor but carbon dioxide, producing a greenhouse effect that melted landers. Jupiter and Saturn boasted no real surface to walk upon, just the rapidly increasing pressure of gas giants. At this point, the aliens that had been visiting us from these planets halted, apparently miffed that we no longer believed in their plausibility.

By the mid ’70s, of course, the emphasis on extra-terrestrial intelligence had been firmly established in the public eye and would not easily be dismissed, even though the distance a species would have to travel to cut out a few cow tongues had expanded, by a factor of a million (the distance from Mars, at greatest separation, versus the distance to the closest neighboring star system.) Add in that publishers had recognized the public curiosity over ET life and created a whole new genre, with the result that UFO stories became part of the popular media and inescapable. To many, the stories were too numerous to believe that they did not represent alien intelligence, so the obvious explanation was that such life was coming from further away.

Theoretical physics played a part in all this as well. There were questions raised over the speed limit of the universe, and the limitations of nuclear forces – could extra-dimensional rifts or ‘wormholes’ permit faster-than-light travel? Could antimatter or the release of zero-point energy provide the enormous energy needed to traverse space in less than a few hundred years? Such ideas remained theoretical in science, not even remotely supported by experiments, but were happily seized upon by science fiction writers and UFO proponents as ways to rescue the dismal prospects of ever visiting another star system. There arose an underlying attitude that physics did not actually have any limitations; intelligent life, given enough time, could always find a way to violate any such restrictions.

Thus the popular idea of alien visitation managed to get established in a time when it seemed none too difficult for such a race to get here, and received significant support through media attention. As our knowledge increased and the plausibility became a microscopic fraction of what had been believed, the volume of stories served to counteract the solid science involved – “where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” No longer grounded in demonstrable physics, UFO stories now rely on the simple trait that we cannot prove them impossible; like the religious ‘god of the gaps’ argument, extra-terrestrial visitation hinges on the ‘future discoveries’ angle to subvert all of the problems we know to exist. Science, no longer the producer of wondrous new worlds, now stands grumpily in the way of mankind’s Buck Rogers fantasies.

settledA recent xkcd comic illustrated something pointed out for years by those in the field who had a little perspective: with the proliferation of cameras (and even the increasing populations in remote areas,) we should have jumped exponentially in our knowledge of visiting extra-terrestrials, rather than seeing, arguably, even worse examples of ‘evidence.’ Most of the favorite cases claimed to support alien life are between thirty and fifty years old; the days of the scrambled military interceptors are long gone; the patterns of physiology, behavior, and even vehicles that we should be seeing are nonexistent. The most vocal proponents repeatedly flog the same stories from generations past, occasionally with a new interpretation to fill in for the lack of new actual cases. Videos of insects and accounts from “reputable” people in distant countries comprise almost all of the new reports, when they’re not just inexpert photos of kites. Yet, there remains a dogged insistence that the field is as solid as it ever was.

Naturally, popular media plays a significant part. Never at the best of times very concerned with critical examination of a story, when it comes to the topic of UFOs, anything goes. More than a few authors have included accounts from their ‘investigations’ that have no supporting evidence whatsoever (including a source,) while broad interpretations, suppositions, and unfounded correlations lie so thick on the ground even hip-waders are inadequate. Such stories fall into a peculiar hole, where there’s no victim and no legal recourse, even for outright fraud – any book, any story can easily be a work of pure fiction without infringing on any laws whatsoever, and the few people named are usually those who promoted the story in the first place. Think about it: even if someone were inclined to sue a book publisher for fraud, they’d have to establish a distinct adverse effect on a broad population to get a greater settlement than the cost of the book.

Even outside of sources dedicated to promoting UFOs, news stations and publications know that the idea of “mysterious” garners more viewers and sales than, “a few rubes got excited when they misinterpreted the landing lights of a Cessna.” It’s not in their interest in the slightest to produce objective, experienced investigations. In fact, many ‘journalistic’ sources go out of their way to produce false conflicts, and even just the sound bite from the person with the most extreme viewpoint. Skewed perspectives and ‘false equivalence’ comes into play, when people fail to consider that the quoted source might represent a tiny minority, or is forwarding information long since debunked.

And the final aspect (that I’m going to cover, anyway) is the peculiar psychology of humans. For almost as long as we have written records, we have stories of amazing encounters, fascinating lands, and remarkable creatures – Atlantis and dragons and giants and subterranean societies. Who knows how far back this goes? But it’s so common that it’s probably safe to say it’s a human trait, and not recent or cultural or any jazz like that. Our sense of wonder and discovery seizes onto such accounts, introducing an emotional angle into the topic (and many more besides.) This fascination allows confirmation bias to take a firm hold, and this is easily seen in any UFO forum when skepticism rears its ugly head; should any particular account get torn asunder, those that champion ET visitations will simply move on to the next case, leaving behind the Martians and propeller-driven vehicles and all other former ‘evidence’ destroyed by implausibility, in the hopes that ignoring the numerous fumbles will make the topic more substantial.

A certain percentage of people can see the long history of grave mistakes and cultural influences and realize that UFO accounts have more noise than signal – too much of the evidence in the field is vague and anecdotal; others, however, seek only the fragments that haven’t been debunked, and place great emphasis on what we don’t know, a peculiar trait in itself. The possibility of any intelligence discovering a way to subvert mass-energy constraints to permit interstellar travel is no more likely than the possibility that it can never be done; it is very easy to make a case that the latter is far more probable, in fact. Yet more emphasis is placed on such discoveries being inevitable, and it’s hard to see this as anything other than emotional attachment to the idea.

And so, the topic lives on, hearty and active within its own narrow subculture, appearing sporadically and ineffectually in mainstream media, and completely ignored by the sciences since it has yet to offer anything more substantial than hearsay. While it presents great opportunities to demonstrate how critical thinking works, such efforts primarily reach those who desire the perspective the least. Does this translate to “deaf ears”? Perhaps – but the results from not making the effort are pretty obvious.

Harken back

Al Denelsbeck

This is a revisit of a post from a few years ago, partially because I always wanted to tackle the images better, and partially because this is the season for it. But at the same time, this post is aimed in part at the people with a fear of spiders, because it just might be a factor in getting over this phobia.

If you go outside in the early evening, just as it’s gotten fully dark, and hold a strong flashlight up as close to your eyes as you can while aiming it around the yard, you stand a pretty good chance of seeing something like this, a bright star in your lawn:

FallenStar2
This pic doesn’t even do it justice, because the color is a distinctive blue-green. If you’ve waited too long and the dew has formed, you can differentiate it because dew will go through a color shift with a slight change in position, often producing an orange reflection, while your target does not change color (but may disappear with the shift.) Keep your eyes and light on it as you get closer.

GettingCloser
Eventually, it will disappear, but not before you’re close enough to know the position where you lost sight of it. Keep going. What you’re seeing, if you’ve gotten the right subject, are the peculiar properties of spider eyes, which are remarkably reflective. But they require a very narrow angle between light source and your eye, so your flashlight (bright LED lights do this the best) needs to be as close to your eye as possible, and the headlamps that shine from your forehead work very well.

StillCloserI didn’t quite have focus nailed for this one, so I’m not showing it any larger, and typically by this distance you would have stopped seeing the reflection. The various species of wolf spiders are the easiest to find, because they tend to be very active at night and their eyes possess this characteristic the strongest that I’ve found, able to be seen from several meters away, but I’ve produced the effect from many other species as well, including black widows. It’s just the structure of their eyes. If you’re creeped out by spiders, this can be a bit sobering, as you realize how many might be found in your lawn; at the same time, it’s always been like this, and no harm came to you, right? Most spiders are actually very shy and avoid any kind of contact – I often have to be cautious in my approach for photos because many species try to hide. Wolf spiders are more mellow, and often don’t care how close you get, nor are they the least aggressive. This little exercise is actually a great way to start getting over a fear of spiders, since you can see for yourself (at whatever distance you like) how little they affect anything. Then, if by chance they run across you, you can shrug it off as easily as you might a bird flying through the yard.

TelltaleHeart
Even this close, the lighting method I used produced a faint vestige of the reflection from one eye – I think, anyway. I’ve seen this in my images numerous times before, but have never determined if it’s an artifact of my lighting angle or an actual physical trait of the spider subjects, like how snake eyes turn cloudy and bluish when they’re coming due for a molt. And yes, I’d recently mowed an overgrown lawn, so grass clippings were everywhere, but this reduced the dew and made the spiders easier to find.

Now once again, here’s why ringflashes aren’t the best lighting method for macro photography:

RingflashSurprise
You have to appreciate the expression it seemed to create, especially since there’s even a suggestion of raised eyebrows, but overall, it’s not an ideal image because of that effect. I was using the ringflash specifically to produce the eye reflection photos, though, because it’s the easiest way to get a light source as close to the lens as possible. One of these days I’ll experiment with an angled piece of glass in front of the lens, reflecting a light source perpendicular to the lens axis. The light will be able to go almost straight to the subject from the lens center, bouncing back and through the glass to the lens and shutter – look at the diagrams of a teleprompter to get the idea. I do know this will reduce contrast a bit and I’d have to be meticulous about preventing stray reflections, so it’s one of those projects that will likely wait for a serious demand.

Now, I mentioned above about conditioning oneself to get over a fear of spiders, and I can imagine the scoffing. But I offer myself as an example, because I grew up with a fear of spiders, seriously creeped out by them, and in fact there’s still a vestige of it hiding just under the surface. Over time, I got more used to arachnids, and let the rational part of my thinking processes overcome the part conditioned somewhere in my childhood – you know, where I developed emotional responses based on wildly misleading information within an impressionable, naïve mind. And yes, it helps to remind yourself that this is how it happened, rather than trying to justify a phobia. Children in certain areas of Central and South America hunt tarantulas for food, demonstrating pretty distinctly that we’re not born with a fear of spiders (or snakes, or dogs, or commitment… wait; not sure about that last bit.) It can be overcome, with less effort than you might imagine, and seeing how innocuous they are helps a lot.

Blends in nicely, doesn't it?
Blends in nicely, doesn’t it?
I have to relate another story. Orb weavers are a type of spider that often appears at night to spin a ‘wheel’ web in likely areas for insect meals, dismantling them in the morning and finding a hiding place nearby. Some of them are quite large, hairy or warty or spiky, and none-too-cuddly. But if you actually go in and watch them, you’ll find they’re usually very shy and easily spooked, running up an anchor line and hiding in a handy corner until the big scary human goes away. However, our encounters with them most often involve blundering through their webs, convincing us that they’re now crawling on us and heading for our jugulars. Sometimes the first part of that really is true, but not the latter – they’re just trying to get to safety.

While biking down a sidewalk under the trees late one summer night, I rode through a very large orb web, feeling the strands distinctly from my wrists all the way to my chin. Had I been inclined to panic I would have crashed the bike and had a long walk back with whatever injuries, but I’d overcome the phobia by this time and merely cursed, continuing to ride until I got under a streetlight. There, I brushed away the copious webbing and the occupant of the web, the diameter of a dime, who had crouched fearfully on my shoulder with no way to find safety. I wasn’t bitten, and in fact am not sure I’ve ever been bitten – even a suspected black widow bite has now been thrown into serious doubt. I’ve walked through more webs than you can imagine (my guess is over a hundred a year, from doing nature photography out in the woods,) plus I’m always poking around in ideal habitats. There’s just no reason to be afraid of spiders. Even the strongly venomous ones present far less risk than driving on a road daily, because the chances of encountering one are minuscule, and of getting bitten smaller still.

So if it’s necessary, tell your emotions that the rational mind now has control, grab the flashlight, and go see if you can spot the phenomenon, the next night that permits it. It’s really a pretty cool thing to see.

Advice on advice

Al Denelsbeck

If you came to this post by following one of the links under “composition,” I’m going to apologize up front, because this isn’t exactly about how to compose photos. Yet, it does have some relation, so stick with me for a second as I explain.

Last week was a busier one for me due to photography students (which is just fine,) but it repeatedly raised something I’ve noticed before, worth a little attention. Some of the students brought up some definitive bit of advice they’d been given earlier, in a photography class or from retail store staff or read in an article, and asked if this was correct; in two of the cases, it was in direct contradiction to something I’d just said myself. So let me get this right out in front: there is no “professional” way of doing things, and almost no advice at all that should be treated as a hard-and-fast rule.

snowswingPhotography is an art form, not in that it’s pretentious and spiritual (necessarily, anyway,) but in that it reflects the approach of the person behind the camera – it’s expression, and the rules are strictly your own. Sure, there are a few physical traits that apply to everyone, mostly in how light behaves, but that’s it really. Everything else remains just preference. Even the term “professional photographer” has no real meaning, except that someone is making the bulk of their income from taking photos – it reflects no level of education or certification, and believe it or not, no particular level of skill; I worked with one photographer who did not actually know how aperture applied to depth-of-field, despite routinely hiring himself out for weddings.

(Since you’re too polite to ask but dying to know anyway, no, I do not consider myself a professional; do with that what you will.)

All of this might be frustrating to the beginner who desires firm guidelines in learning photography, but it’s far better than believing that “every part of the frame should be filled” or “your first lens should be 35mm focal length” – I’d actually received the latter chestnut more than three decades ago from a wedding photographer, and while I may have found this more useful than a 50mm (the old standard lens before zooms took over,) I’d have been gravely misled if I’d been interested in doing portraiture. There’s no shortage of people who like to impart advice (ahem,) but this should always be regarded as opinion, not fact. Perhaps my interest in critical thinking has made me aware of things like confirmation bias and conditional results, so I’m sensitive to inappropriately definitive statements, and there are a lot of them out there.

Also note that it can be easy to misinterpret advice, sometimes from translating it mistakenly, but just as often through the adviser not explaining things adequately – something I occasionally run into myself. I personally tell people to “be aware of every part of the frame, and try to make it all work for your image,” but that’s not the same as, “every part of the frame should be filled” – sometimes, it’s the empty space that conveys the idea you’re after. Succinct advice is a nice thing to strive for, but it occasionally comes at the cost of greater understanding.

I’ve been on forums where several very successful photographers gave their critiques of submitted images, and they were all over the map; rarely was there complete agreement over the strengths of the photo or the ‘proper’ approach. I’ve seen multiple photographers tackle the same subject, displaying a wide variety of styles and techniques. It’s all opinion, so never be afraid to let your own direct you.

UnhelpfulYesterday I briefly tried out a new piece of editing software, and noticed that the ‘crop’ function handily provided real-time guidance lines for the rule of thirds. It’s this kind of jazz that gives entirely the wrong impressions, because there’s nothing mathematical about composing images, and inducing someone to meticulously hew to the guides rather than obeying their “eye” is only likely to make them more clinical and less able to use the elements within the frame to good advantage. Don’t overthink it – much of photography is about mood, subtle influences, and immediate impressions, so let the subconscious have its say.

When it comes to composition, the most I ever provide are various elements, what they do and how to use them. Any of them may provide benefit to someone’s particular style, or they may have no application at all; tastes vary. And remember that it takes no skill or education whatsoever to know what you like in an image – appreciation is accessible by everybody. What anyone learns is how to express themselves more effectively, how to provoke a desired response, and how to manage the conditions and camera traits. Only the last part is definitive; high contrast is high contrast, for instance, and you either use various methods to combat it or learn to live with it. But deciding how and when to incorporate it is all your own.

Perhaps the best advice I can offer someone about following advice is to avoid blindly accepting something, instead openly asking why? What’s the reasoning behind this, why this and not that? It stands a greater chance of providing meaning and context, and can help us to understand when not to follow the advice, or why it doesn’t apply to our own style of photography. Just never believe that anyone at all can tell you the right way to pursue photography.

Extreme HDR

Al Denelsbeck

MoonSpica
“HDR” stands for “high dynamic range,” a photo editing technique used to combat the increased contrast that all standard photo methods are prone to – see a greater explanation here. Sometimes it’s used to produce unrealistic images with light levels that really can’t exist naturally, but other times it’s an effort to present more what we see with our highly adaptable vision. This is one of the latter cases – for the moment, anyway.

Tonight, a first-quarter moon (or “half,” don’t ask me why astronomers have this thing about “quarters”) was accompanied by a very close companion, easily visible even with the humidity of the evening. The brilliant blue star Spica was overcoming the typical glare that makes it hard to see stars close to a bright moon – this is because it’s one of the brighter stars in the sky, and among the brightest along the path that the moon takes in its orbit. Out of curiosity, I checked with Stellarium to see just how close they would pass (or if I’d missed it already) and found that they would appear within the moon’s diameter of one another – if I was a few time zones further west. The moon would be well set here in North Carolina as it occurred.

That image above is a composite. Even as bright as Spica is (magnitude .9 or so,) there really isn’t any useful way of capturing the wide disparity of light between it and the moon. The exposure to capture Spica was 1/2 second; the moon’s was 1/20 second. In the world of photographic exposures, that translates to the Spica exposure being 3 1/3 stops greater than the moon’s, or about ten times the light level (it progresses exponentially, halving or doubling every stop, so increasing one stop doubles the light, two stops is four times, three is eight.) In the original image that provided the bright Spica used here, the moon was blown out into a featureless white semi-circle. As I said long ago, even getting clouds in the image requires special conditions.

What’s also difficult is finding a way to identify the features you see in moon images such as this. Partially lit moons are more interesting than full in many ways, because the lower light angles throw shadows from the terrain and enhance the geography. [Momentary side note: I paused just now to wonder if “geography” was a technically appropriate word to use for the moon, and realized that it was probably okay, while “terrain” wasn’t.] But the distinct craters visible here along the terminator (the border between light and shadow) are much harder to make out when lit directly from above, as is the case with a full moon and virtually every method of displaying the moon’s features that can be found. I was trying to determine if I’d captured the prominent crater Tycho, right on the shadow line near the bottom, and this took a lot more effort than you might have thought. The crater, by the way, isn’t Tycho; it’s close neighbor Maginus. To find this out more distinctly, I resorted to a sneaky trick that produced the following image.

Earthshine2
While, in certain conditions, it is possible to see something vaguely like this, it’s rather shamelessly a Photoshop job. The shadowed portion of the moon really does get some illumination from sunlight bouncing off of the daylight portions of the Earth, known as earthshine, but it’s nowhere near this distinct. I did, in fact, try to capture it tonight, but it took exposures so long that the ambient light from the sunlit side was scattering through the lens, like fog, and the moon was showing visible movement anyway. So this is actually a portion of a full moon image from years ago, patched into the shadow area and tweaked to look a little more realistic. It also shows that Tycho was receiving just the first contact of sunlight with its eastern rim – you can just make out the rays pointing to the dark circle in near-contact with Maginus on the border. In another few hours Tycho would be seeing sunrise, and this would take a while, too, since days on the moon are two weeks long. It’s all part of that “tidal orbit” thing which keeps the same side of the moon facing us all the time. We see the moon rise and set each night, because the Earth rotates, but the moon goes through phases because of its own orbit, which is also its rotation – one orbit every 27 days, always facing Earth. That means a day/night cycle on the moon is the same amount of time. Luckily the astronauts did not have to adapt to this schedule while there…

If you think that the editing job wasn’t perfect and the moon seems a bit oblong or football-shaped, you’re right. This is because the tidal orbit is not perfect and the face of the moon wobbles as seen from Earth, over the period of its orbit. Since the pics were taken at different phases, the moon was actually facing different directions, and matching the terminator required shifting things a bit.

The full moon image I used is actually the same one appearing here, which has another connection to all of this. That post mentions how it was believed that Tycho and the dinosaur-extincting impact here on Earth might have been caused by the same source, an asteroid called Baptistina that broke up 160 million years ago. A few months after posting that (but which I did not find myself until just tonight,) NASA nixed this theory, since their Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission determined that the remnants of the Baptistina asteroid are too young to fit the bill; the chances of it breaking up and making it from the asteroid belt to Earth/Moon orbit in that brief time are minuscule. “Brief time,” in this case, means only a few million years – stuff does not fly around the solar system the way that we might imagine. While it remains possible that both Tycho and Chicxulub have a common origin, it is probably not Baptistina. Two craters once again in search of their parents…

Just for complete confusion, I have to mention that there’s still some question about the Chicxulub impact being solely responsible for the KT extinction event. “KT” used to stand for “Cretaceous/Tertiary,” the two periods separated by the event, but is now being referred to as the “Cretaceous/Paleogene,” or K-Pg. I’ll go into all of this in another post someday, but if you can’t wait, search on those terms and throw in “Deccan Traps” too.

Just because, part 10

Al Denelsbeck

JuneInMoonArrived early to meet with a student, spent some time investigating what the park had to offer. I just happened to like this one, largely because of the focal plane capturing two separate subjects so well. And there’s something about the marvelous shape of the buds.

If someone’s not familiar with any of the species herein, they could be drastically mistaken about the scale – everything seen here is jumbo-size, in relation to what’s usually visible in North America. The beetle is roughly 30mm long; the blossom, over 150 across. Which means this whole frame spans the length of your hand…

Frustrations, part 11

Al Denelsbeck

DewNot
The dog fennel plants that provided so many photo subjects last year, visible in the wide image for my last ‘Frustrations’ post, are now taller than I am, and routinely examined for interesting subjects. This evening I noticed some suspicious dewdrops, suspicious because they were not uniform throughout the plants, and because they had more volume than dew normally does. Since I’d spent no small part of the day trying to capture a particular behavior, I started looking carefully, and soon confirmed my guess.

BreadcrumbsThe culprit is a type of leafhopper known as a sharpshooter, in this case a broad-headed sharpshooter (Oncometopia orbona.) Colorful and rather large for a leafhopper at over 10mm for an adult, they get their ‘sharpshooter’ appellation from their habit, which has been a source of frustration to me for a few years now. Like most of the Cicadoidea superfamily to which they belong, they feed on plant saps obtained through a needlelike proboscis, and process it in large volumes. That which is not needed is expelled from t’other end with the exuberance of a suddenly-diaper-free infant, leaving copious amounts of sticky/oily residue everywhere that the arc reaches. I have to admit to some jealousy, since with an extra glass of iced tea I can spell my entire name, but I’ve never been called a sharpshooter. Broad-headed or otherwise…

BroadHeadedSharpshooter
Here’s a better look, which not only gives the barest peek at the proboscis (which appears to be projecting from the chin area between the elbows,) but the habit that’s been the source of frustration to me, compounded again today – well, yesterday now, as I type this past midnight and feel some stupid reason to honor the date technicality. Visible at the hind end of my subject is a bright spot, a globule of exudate immediately prior to its launch into the air. One might get the impression that this droplet would be recognizable for a fraction of a second before release, and one would be very wrong – the action is fast enough that, in the right light conditions, the only thing seen is a momentary reflection, so brief that the sharpshooter appears to have a flashing taillight like an aircraft. Seriously, the effect is very distinctive, even when you know what you’re looking at – so much so that I just went out a few minutes ago to do a lighting test to see if the composition of the sharpshooter wee made it more reflective/refractive that normal water. Results: not that can be seen in my photos. There goes my honorary doctorate…

sharpshooter1A few years back I’d seen the same thing, only this time with a glassy-winged sharpshooter (one gets the impression that whoever was naming these was tired and not trying for originality anymore, but anyway, the scientific name is Homalodisca vitripennis.) Even in open shade without direct sunlight, the flash is plainly visible, and I spent a lot of time in the botanical garden where I’d spotted it, trying to get an image of the effect. Let’s put it this way: the effect lasts less that 1/15th of a second, probably closer to 1/100th if I’m any judge. Shutter speed is 1/200th, strobe duration less than 1/1,000th. Human response time is way too slow to trigger the shutter upon seeing the effect, so it’s all up to timing (of a semi-sporadic behavior) and dumb luck. That’s all I’m going to credit for this image, which actually caught a droplet in midair, albeit with a bit of distortion. For a while I didn’t even realize that I had, since I was skimming through a stack of images looking for the flash itself.

Today/yesterday/Monday/whatever, I figured I was on top of it enough that, when I found a collection of sharpshooters on the vine climbing the front porch, I could set up shop and capture the effect in detail. With the right angle I could actually see the wee arc, so capturing this in an image should have been within the realm of possibility (that’s called, “foreshadowing.”) Yet none of the techniques I tried worked out even remotely decently, save for one. I tried just timing, like above, to capture it by luck, and the multiple-burst strobing effect of the Metz flash, 10 blinks per second for two seconds, and using a black background, and even reducing the ambient light for a long exposure with a neutral-density filter (basically a tinted lens to prevent overexposure with slow shutter speeds.) In one frame I did actually catch a sequence of droplets, but they virtually disappear against the minimal reflected light from the backdrop I used – I really need to find a surface with as low reflectivity as possible. Maybe a piece of scrapped stealth aircraft…

The only thing that produced something noticeable, without getting up to an image to be proud of, was a 1/6 second ambient light exposure, with an LED flashlight to provide a little additional reflective quality…

weearc
… and for that, I had to boost contrast a bit because a long exposure of shadowed subjects doesn’t get any better with time. You’ll notice that, even in a mere 1/6 second, both insects produced multiple drops that traveled completely out of the frame, demonstrating the momentary nature of the effect. I finally decided I’d try to capture this at night, when no ambient light had to be compensated for and I could use only strobes; the light wouldn’t reach to the lawn in the background and the droplets should have shown very well against the darkness. This does, of course, require that the sharpshooters are actually feeding at night, so you can figure out how this failed.

I have no useful way of doing video, and believe me, this has entered my thoughts before. What’s stopped me, besides the expense, has been that much of the work I do here is with strong flash assistance, very often freehand because setting up a tripod is out of the question (I’ll go into this in greater detail in another post.) And the focus range is very, very narrow. So not only would I need a set of powerful constant-output lights, I’d need to run power cords since no batteries can handle that kind of wattage for very long. And then, what would likely result is nausea-inducing clips wandering in and out of focus as I attempted to hold tight on the subject while leaning awkwardly over the plant it’s sitting on. I reckon I have enough frustrations as it is.

Nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure

Al Denelsbeck2 Comments

Despite the fact that, just this past weekend (as I type the first draft anyway,) friends of mine have made disparaging comments about debates that take place on the Intersnarl, I return once again to the fabled Fountain of Free Will, a topic sure never to die because philosophy has taught us nothing if not how to continually fail to “get it.”

This time around it’s a post on Why Evolution Is True regarding a mathematical approach to free will. Right off the bat I’m rolling my eyes, since math is entirely, and undeniably, an abstract – it is nothing but how any value relates to another, and does not “prove” anything physical in the slightest. The very best that we can expect is that, if we have a firm and unquestionable set of values for any given physical object/property, we can predict a certain result with math. The problem, as can be seen, is how rarely we have a firm and unquestionable set of values for anything physical, most especially when down at the subatomic level, things start to get very dicey (a ha ha, that was an Einstein joke, oh you can’t hope to compete.)

John Horton Conway, the mathematician with the Free Will Theorem, hasn’t established much of anything, if the interview linked from Why Evolution Is True is any indication at all (pdf download.) Conway starts from a premise that remains unsupportable, in fact forms the very basis of free will arguments, and uses this to postulate his proof. It’s philosophy at its worst.

If we make reasonable assumptions, including the assumption of free will, this one thing tells us that the little elementary particles are doing their own thing all over the universe.

And that right there demonstrates that everything relies on his ‘reasonable assumption,’ which is far from reasonable and has yet to be demonstrated in any way. He goes from here to pointing out that, since the quantum superposition of subatomic particles remains undetermined until observed (by humans possessing free will,) then particles possess free will too!

Suppose there is only a very tiny amount of free will in humans: you can press either button A or button B in a manner that is not predetermined. That is a very tiny part of what we normally consider free will for humans. And if we have that tiny amount of free will, so do the elementary particles, in a sense that a particle in response to some experiment can choose which path, C or D, that it follows. It has free action. It chooses C or D in a manner that is not a predetermined function of all the information in the past history of the universe.

Unless, of course, the very part he assumes, the free will of humans, doesn’t exist either and remains a predetermined function, whereupon his entire case only supports determinism. Feel free to look over the entire interview, because he repeatedly and unashamedly brings up that we believe we have free will, so this supports the assumption that his entire theory rests upon. Sheesh.

[Side track to explain, skip this if you already know what quantum superposition is. At the hard-to-observe subatomic level, any particle like a photon or electron is said to exist in all of its possible states until something interferes that forces a particular state – generally, this is any interaction at all outside of quietly hanging with an atom. Trying to see this in effect, however, requires interfering, so the superposition (sometimes called the probability curve) disappears and we can make a distinct measurement of property. Yes, this begs the question of how we could possibly know about superposition when trying to find it makes it go away, and I’ll explain in a later post when I’ve been able to understand it myself. The other part that Conway misses is that interference does not need to come from any living thing and usually doesn’t, so the idea that this has any connection to free will implies that free will is all of physics. I guess it’s okay if, like in religious apologetics, you change the definitions to suit your conclusion…]

Moving on, there’s a (perhaps common) misconception, one that I’ve had far-too-long discussions about before. One of the main arguments against free will is that, in a universe of deterministic physics, there is no place for will to exist or spring up; given enough information (the proper scientific term for it is, “a goddamn fuckload more than we’ll ever be able to grasp in a billion years,”) the position and reaction of any atom could be predicted, and with it, everything that relies on atoms, which is everything in the universe, including our minds and where my recently-charged camera batteries have gotten to this time. Thus, deterministic physics means that the eventual fate of everything is set and always has been.

The argument against a deterministic universe is the ‘observed’ weirdness of subatomic particles, and things like vacuum energy, quantum tunneling, and entangled particles – shit gets freaky when outside the nucleic classroom. And, to be perfectly honest, I have no argument with this. Except… there’s no actual way of determining whether something truly is random and chaotic, or if we simply haven’t puzzled out what physical laws are at work at the subatomic level. There are three major problems with the claims that things can be completely random: first, that physics corrects randomness above this level very quickly, becoming very predictable again; second, that we see no evidence of such randomness propagating upwards in a “butterfly effect” or “chain reaction,” even when supposedly, every subatomic particle is inherently unpredictable; and third, that if this were true, half-lives couldn’t actually be different (or do not demonstrate the random property they are often claimed to possess.)

[Side track to explain, skip if you already know what a half-life is: radioactive decay, or ionizing radiation, the stuff that makes nuclear power and weapons and all that, takes place in an almost unpredictable manner. For any given amount of material like plutonium, half of the atoms within will have decayed into a stable state in a given period of time – this period of time is a half-life. In the following half-life, half of the remaining has decayed, and on and on. It means any particular atom may decay within a millisecond, or not for a few million years – but in a large group, there is an average that is so dependable that we can run atomic clocks and age ancient materials and all that jazz. Yet, half-lives are different for every element, which means something is governing its behavior physically – it cannot just be random decay, because then all radioactive elements would behave the same and there would be just one half-life for them all.]

Now, with all that said, the bit that a few too many people keep missing: while deterministic physics trashes free will, it is not the lack of determinism that allows it (some have even gone so far as to believe proves it.) Randomness does not fit the description of free will any more than rigid predictability does. As I’ve said before, imagine if we performed some random action while driving down the freeway. Would we feel great about that kind of freedom? No, we’d be even less in control, (and more pissed off) than at the idea of being inherently predictable. It’s kind of startling that I’ve had to argue this with anyone, really.

So now, what does this leave us? We have Option One, which is Physics Is A Law – that doesn’t leave room for free will. We have Option Two, which is Physics Can Be Random (in whole or in part, doesn’t matter) – that’s not free will either. The only other option is Option Three, which is Our Evolved Minds Made Up Of Simple Proteins Able To Be Found Everywhere On The Planet Can Somehow Defeat Common Traits To Alter Physics As We Please – if you like, use the term “Magic” here as shorthand if you really don’t like OEMMUOSPATBFEOTPCSDCTTAPAWP. Because not only is that the only other option that could be present, it’s exactly the case that anyone arguing for the inane concept of free will is making. We are not beholden to physics, but able to transcend it to decide on a Big Mac or a Three-Piece Combo for lunch. Seriously.

But, what if it’s not us doing the magic, but a supernatural being? Nope, that’s what free will was created to counteract, to make us responsible for sin and not mere puppets in the creator’s game.

But what if it’s just an ability to put quantum indeterminacy to use? That would mean either going with the random option again, or selecting a state when it occurs (acting only when the collapsed superposition is what we desire,) in which case why would we need any quantum input at all?

But, what if it’s a special, as-yet-undiscovered property of our minds (from whatever source) that produces such an effect? The first part of the answer is, “What effect?” We can’t even demonstrate where or how it departs from common physics. The second part is, how and why should our brains, so ridiculously similar to other species on the planet, suddenly get a new property? When did it occur, why us and not goannas, are there levels of free will, and can we break this down to the subatomic level where it takes place?

Or, are we just ridiculously mistaken over a concept without a decent definition or measurable effect? Call me crazy, I’m going with the evidence that it’s just an ego trip because we evolved to desire control.

*     *     *     *

Okay, now on to part two, because that last statement begs its own question. If it’s true that we evolved a desire for control, but there really is no such thing because everything is deterministic, how would the process of natural selection produce such a trait? Wouldn’t it be pointless?

The answer is simple: there is no ‘point’ to natural selection – it is an emergent property, a basic algorithm of what works best. If it worked better for humans to possess a desire to make reasoned decisions (to a certain extent anyway,) then we got the trait, regardless of whether we actually had the ability to make decisions or not. As I’ve said before, it’s not the freedom that we really get all worked up over, but whether or not we’re happy with the process. By our nature, we’ll be happy if we believe we’re at the helm (or if we realize the decision-making process involves results that might ultimately be predictable, but only with information far beyond our grasp, so we’re still able to enjoy the experience of life itself.)

There’s a hidden kicker in here. The evidence really is against free will, in that our brains are simple matter and run on known physical properties, demonstrating nothing that’s transcendent – at least, to those unafraid of facing the facts. Yet, the debate over free will demonstrates that the desire for control, for the decision-making ability, remains a very important part of our thoughts, so much so that it often overrides what evidence tells us. This, all by itself, is an interesting avenue of both research and philosophical consideration. How necessary is it for cognitive function, how many other species have it and to what extent, how does it evolve? And even, how far astray does it lead us when we’re unaware of the bias it produces?

Going back to the physics end of it, let’s not mistake what determinism really is. It’s not that there is an ultimate goal involved, a particular end result that is intended or fated or whatever, but an artifact of the rules of matter and energy: given this set of operating parameters, stuff is only going to behave the way the parameters allow. It is the ultimate manifestation of dependability.

(You can have a lot of fun with the religious folk who proclaim a major benefit of faith is that god has it all under control, by pointing out that physics does too – moreover, in a way we can actually see. The old “plan we mortals cannot comprehend” is present too, in the bare fact that we could never grasp all of the information needed to fathom the ultimate fate of the universe, or even just tomorrow’s fate. Presumably, this would meet with no argument, but that won’t ever be the case, because it’s not the dependability or even the mystery they treasure, but the personal state of specialness that they’re assured they have.)

I feel the need to point out that I am not completely sold on determinism being accurate, precisely because of the aforementioned shenanigans of subatomic matter – it remains possible that there are truly random influences within physics, ones that largely cancel out to give us the laws we use every day, but occasionally produce something odd. Yet as I said above, the difference between “truly random” and “as-yet-unknown cause” is academic, not demonstrable in any way – so we’d never really know. Which also makes determinism an abstract idea unable to be proven without omniscience, to be honest.

But there’s also the idea that most manifestations of this randomness are within very narrow parameters. Radioactive decay is a toss-up between two states: temporarily unstable (retaining energy and particles,) and stable (having released them.) There’s nothing else; no regaining them, no changing them, no increasing or decreasing their energy – just two states. It seems a bit odd to call something so rigidly defined “random” solely on the basis of when the state changes.

And finally, it should also be noted that the concept of free will existed long before any vestige of quantum mechanics was even suspected; unlike DNA and heritability, QM didn’t serve to explain an effect we’d been observing, but has been used to try and salvage the inherent problems with the entire concept, some of which are presented by physics itself. Cute, isn’t it?

Lost in your eyes

Al Denelsbeck

LostInYourEyes
ParsleyScaleOn Saturday, I was chasing bug pics when I got an expected call to meet with friends, and snagged one frame of some amorous flies on the parsley flowers before I had to put down the camera (sacrilege I know) and head off. I couldn’t see these eyes in the viewfinder (for the reason illustrated at right,) so the surprise came much later when I unloaded the memory card.

Now, the big question: why do the eyes look like that? What function could this possibly serve? And the big answer: I DON’T KNOW. (Sorry, that was the only way I could make such a wimpy answer “big.”) No source that I’ve uncovered yet has the faintest explanation for why Orthonevra nitida should have such a pattern.

So the amateur naturalist in me starts to speculate ignorantly and wildly in lieu of contacting as many entomologists as I can find in the hopes of uncovering something reputable (that’s the kind of mood I’m in right now.) And so, three things come to mind:

  • It has a camouflage function;
  • It is a sexual display;
  • It provides some specific function to sight, unique to this species.

The first seems a bit suspect, insofar as finding any pattern like that elsewhere strikes me as unlikely, plus the idea that the eyes depart radically in appearance from the rest of the body. The second is also questionable, since this is not a sexually dimorphic species – males and females appear the same. It might, however, serve a purpose in differentiating a compatible mate from similar species, such as O. bellula and O. flukei, both of which have patterns but not this pattern. The biggest problem with this is it supposes the species diverged enough to create distinctive genetic variations that were beneficial (such as favoring plants indigenous to the different geographical areas where they had spread) but not enough to prevent intermingling of the separate species that had developed. Those are mutually exclusive.

The third option, so far, is the one showing the greatest evidence. In a paper by H.L. Leertouwer and D.G. Stavenga, it’s been demonstrated that pigmentation in the upper layers of the eyes affects what wavelengths of light are reaching the optical sensors below – in essence, color filters for portions of the compound eyes. No particular surprise, yet what this would mean is that portions of the compound eyes would have different functions – basically, vision in certain directions would be different from others. Vision straight up might be adapted to avoiding predators, while that nearer the mouthparts could be dedicated to identifying food.

Which doesn’t help much with this funky pattern. Horizontal lines, for instance, may help with horizon sensing for flight, while a radiative/starburst pattern might assist in helping an insect “zero in” on a target. About the only thing I’ve come up with, so far, is that the pattern presents numerous areas of near-equal spacing, which might provide some kind of measuring function. Compound eyes are peculiar things, essentially a collection of tubes radiating out from a common point. They have fixed lenses at the top and each tube can see only a tiny portion or the surroundings, so the optical nerves at the base of each tube give “object in precisely this direction” information to the insect’s brain. Lateral motion is easy for them to differentiate, but something moving directly towards their eyes only becomes obvious when its increasing size impinges on more of the tubes. So for a “measuring” function to be valid, it would have to be in a situation where the proximity to the subject was known, alighting on a flower head for example, and then the fly could determine which stamen or whatever was the ideal size to provide food. All of this assumes that the pigmentation really does provide a specific difference in optical transmission, which it may not. Mysteries of the ages…

Arachnids, on the other hand, have eyes with moving lenses that are much more similar to our own than compound eyes are, so the subject below was likely quite well aware of how close I was looming, but the slow advance wasn’t right to trigger her instincts to seek cover – I’ve seen the difference between hasty movements while much further away and the gradual increase in proximity I used for this image. Then again, maybe she just preferred a full-face shot or liked the ominous effect. Either way, I have to be careful when picking the spearmint…
MyMint

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