miscellaneous building reflections Green Glass

I recently reshot this with my D200. Much more detail!

Apologies to those who commented on my now deleted first version

(especially Salvatore)

Highly fluid '5 x 4' ; interesting patterns - lost myself in there for a while.

I like this a lot. I was wondering what it would look like in a square crop. I keep imagining it as 4x4 but maybe that is too simple (and obvious).

 

The way you have presented it there is no direct link from corner to corner, but there is a 2x3 center with a complete border. The 4x5 layout seems to make me want to scan the photo trying to detect a pattern. In a way I think that makes it more dynamic than my idea of a 4x4 layout. Frames within frames makes for a very interesting image.

 

I am wondering what the overal response has been to this series. What size(s) are you printing these? These are not in the exhibit?

I just printed it out at 12 X 16 and might even pay for a larger version at some point. I'm very much enjoying the crop factor of the D200 which converts my 100-300 to 150-450. The slide from the first session was noisy for some reason and was lost en route to A&I in Hollywood, so it didn't get it back in time for the show. Good thing, because a second session with the D200 produced much better results.

 

The response to the show has been very good. It's interesting to see who is drawn to the more traditional compositions as opposed to the harder to read abstracts. I got a lot of questions about how they were made - or more accurately how they were seen - so I put together a short power point sequence that showed this location with different lighting and at various focal lengths.

 

The idea with this shot was to allow the viewer to find a pattern within the pattern, in this case an inverted green 'L'.

 

I have another tighter composition which I'll upload next.

 

Thank you both for your comments. Good to hear from you, Seven.

Once when I was at the Smithsonian (or was it the National Geographic) they had a display about the Sistine Chapel in Rome. In that display they printed photos of the chapel ceiling on translucent plastic panels and hung them in the 2x2 ceiling grid in place of the normal tile to recreate the entire Sistine Chapel ceiling. It was also back-lighted so it was almost like looking at a giant overhead slide show.

 

This particular photo would lend itself to the same treatment, creating an 8 foot by 10 foot photo display on the ceiling. That would be rather expensive but it would be impressive. You need to either find a corporate sponsor with deep pockets, or become famous and then die (the choice is up to you).

 

I am glad to hear the exhibit has gone well. I wish I could be there in person to see it.

 

A nice reflection with some nice colors. 6/5

Apologies accepted, seen the result!

 

Again, I gather the same feeling than the previous overall shot, that is restricting it to a square and imagining a "15" puzzle, shuffling the single squares around hoping to make sense of the drawing.

 

For some reason, the red shape in this re-shot suggest me the classical Japanese arches you would imagine in the archetipal temple-cum-water shot. I did not get this so strongly the previous time, dunno why.

 

Again, I rate this among your best reflection shots...it might be due also to the limited choice of (complementary) colours.

These go great with "Hendrix" playing in the background :-) More great colors and warped realities. Wonderful shot

Glass. There is an ongoing debate among matter state physicists on whether glass is a solid or an extremely viscous liquid material. One theory is that it actually represents a third, intermediate state. In solids, molecules are ordered in a regular lattice (crystal). In fluids, molecules are disordered and are not rigidly bound. In glass, molecules are disordered but are rigidly bound. The classical example we read in textbooks, that window panes of old churches as well as ancient and roman glass specimens look like they have flowed, is no longer considered as good evidence that glass is fluid. The transition from liquid to solid state, ie from disorder to order (or vice versa), is a thermodynamic one (function of temperature). In fact there are several chemical types of glass; some are more like solids and some, closer to liquids.

 

Liquids flow. Flow has also a characteristic transition from order to disorder. Mathematicians trying to explain this transition found a kind of functions that discribe well the flow of water from a tap, for example, from regular dripping to orderly flow and, then, to turbulant flow as the flow rate increases. In mathematical terms this disorder (turbulance) is called chaos. A chaotic function is a mathematical function with unpredictable results depending on the initial parameters. Whether glass is a typical fluid and flows or an intermediate matter-state between solid and fluid, it can be considered as a symbol of a dynamic transition from order to disorder/chaos and back.

 

Chaos theory has revolutionised scientific thinking in the late 20th century and is now applicable to a vast number of natural phenomena, from Katrina to the mechanism of biological evolution. According to some, it may even explain the very origin of biological organisms from inorganic matter. So, you may imagine the importance and the social/cultural impact such scientific theory may have when it will accumulate a critical mass of evidence.

 

You, as an artist, may express (and you are expected to express) your personal experience, feelings and views on questions that matter.

 

Experience on glass? You have! Since you capture glass so well. This photograph is an accurate study of glass shape and topology. The paterns are a sound description of the shape of the glass of the window panes at that particular momment. Imagine if you left the camera there (no thives around) and you returned and made another shot next day at exactly the same time. Would you get the same reflections? Probably not, you will tell me, because the sky may be cloudy or the sun a millionth of a degree further to west. The temperature would not be exactly the same either and, like all materials, glass as well as its frame material change volume, shape and their other physical properties (eg reflectability?) with temperature.

 

Experience with chaos? You, therefore, have. By changing the initial parameters of the photograph such as temperature in this case (and I don?t mean the apperture of course) the result will be unpredictable. So you, as a photographer, you have not only experience but also evidence for chaos. But this is now quite common and trivial knowlage: weather is chaotic and influences all our activities.

 

So let us isolate ourselves from this chaotic environment and do the experiment again in a studio, carefully controlling the light and temperature and screwing the camera and the window to the concrete floor and walls. Would the reflection patterns be the same irrespectively of time? The theory can predict: if glass is a solid, then Yes; if it is a liquid or at a dynamic state, then No, the patterns will change and the changes will become measurable at due time. I expect from you, the artist, to express your feelings and views with the language of photography that you master best.

 

You can do this ether the scientific way, ie actually do the experiments and publish the photographic results together with precise measurements of the patterns against time; or, rather, the artistic way: selecting a frame of window where (or why not manipulate the image so that) the patterns are orderly (to evoke solid crystal order); or the patterns are chaotic (evoking disorder, fluidity and turbulance); or - which would be even more interesting - a frame evoking a transition from order to chaos (you have done this very successfully, though perhaps unconciously in your immediately previous posting - see Salvatore's insightful comment). Then I, the viewer and potential buyer, could have found in your picture an answer to MY important question. And say, this artist has a view on things that matter, even if you did not know what I was talking about. It would not matter to me if your artistic view came out of knowlage or intuition. All that maters is MY question, evoked by your photograph and MY answer also evoked from your photograph.

 

I emphasised MY because I will, most of the time, be alone with your photograph and you will be not around to explain me what you ment. This is why (I repeat) art is subjective, depending on the culture of the viewer (unless if you believe that art has nothing to do with present and future viewers and it is only the creators? business).

 

Instead, what are you telling me this picture represents? An inverted L. What does the L stand for and why is it inverted anyway? Is L pretier than M? I personally find S more curly and ellegant. Nonsense. I do not think there is anybody in the world, Carl, that is interested in an inverted L or any of my irronic (please allow me) questions. The French call this Intellectual Masturbation, meaning useless (to others) intelectual activity. Artists frequently fall in this trap. Please try to escape because you merit it. The golden rule is to never write down or speak out your interpretation of your works if your are not sure that this will be of some general interest. Let the viewer think that he/she understood your message and explain it proudly to others. And never take your viewers/buyers as stupid even if you disagree with their interpretation, or else you will die poor.

 

The people attracted to this photograph are genuinly interested by patterns and look for THEIR answers to THEIR proper questions. Some may just like the aesthetics of this chaos (and chaos can be very beautiful, still uninterpretable, you have an example here). Some may have found that a different composition might better fit THEIR answer to THEIR proper question (in which case they may suggest modifications). Some did not find any answer in your photograph, which is equivalent to saying that your photograph evoked to them no question in the first place. That is obviously not the fault of the photograph, or at least, not the fault of the photograph only. They may be ignorant of, or genuinely indifferent to, windows, glass physics, chaos and random/neaningless paterns. Those latter would have left, leaving behind a nasty comment (crap), a 3/3, or - if they had some knowledge of the mechanics of communication through art - nothing at all (as you say, would not waste their time).

 

I hope you have not totally wasted your time reading this comment. I am sorry for its length. I am in 9-hours jetlag, it is night here and I had the time. Please do not consider this as a lesson of any kind; it is only my views about your beautiful and meaningful photograph and about photography. Also excuse my english which is not my first language

 

And because you seem to be a professional photographer: Neither you nor any of your visitors may use the idea of the experiment nentioned above; neither you nor any of your visitors may reproduce this text, or any part of it, in any form, electronic, printed or oral, without my written permition.

I?m a bit confused by your observations about glass and your proposed experiment. In my experience, the properties of sheet glass don?t change once they have reached a solid state. How glass is formed varies, of course, as does its reflective properties according to viewing distance, primarily.

 

Your discussion of chaos is interesting in that it is quite central to what attracts me photographically, yet you also raise concerns about my imposing my views on the viewer. In this photo critique venue, I think all kinds of analysis should be encouraged, including self analysis, precisely because this forum is so different from the usual viewing opportunities in the real world. My reference to the upside down ?L? in the composition is not related to the motivation for shooting the composition (although I realize it may have been interpreted that way) but rather to simply point out a compositional element that may not be obvious to some viewers who are focused on the patterns within each square, something like the patterns that people use to test for color blindness.

 

Incidentally, I derive most of my income from servicing pianos. Why would you assume I?m a professional photographer?

Indeed, to the common experirence like yours and mine, glass is solid. However, glass manufacturers and material physiscists study glass properties in much more detail because glass has been one of the commonest materials for everyday life comodities such as windows, containers, electric bulbs or reading glasses and for precision instruments such as telescopes, microscopes or photographic cameras. The theory that glass is fluid is an old one since I have learned it at school. It originates from an observation that old church windows standing upright for centuries were thicker at the bottom than at the top; this implies that, given sufficient number of millenia, a window pane would collapse horizontal like mayonaise. The theory of an intermediate state is more recent (well summerised here) and seems to me more convincing, though less romantic.

I accept your explanation about the L being an after thought on the composition rather your initial motive (although your first statement was too short and not as clear) and I admire your metaphore to a color blindness test. Indeed, there probably is variation among humans in our capacity of perceiving and identifying patterns as there is known variation in colour perception. (You see?, this may be yet another reason why different judges may rate the same photograph differently - and this has nothing to do with intelligence, expertise, experience or photographic quality). Your title, Green Glass, does point to that direction in a subtle way. My difficulty with this concept is that although I can see the vertical part of L, the horizontal part is, I guess, not long enough and/or running on 1.5 series of panes. Also, an inverted L will be more difficult to recognise than an upright one. Are you interested in rotating the image? By the way the very first think that stroke my eyes, and I cannot remove them ever since, was that horse at row 2 column 4.

I thought you may be a professional photographer, firstly because of the quality of your photographs and, secondly, because you frequently (and here) mention shows, exhibits, large prints etc. also, you have a rather sophisticated technical vocabulary. I do not know if PN comments are covered by copyright laws like photographs are. But I felt that comments more complex than 'nice colours', 'wrong crop' or 'crap', developed beyond a certain length and with some effort, should be somehow protected.

Interesting link you've provided. Glass is more complex than I would have imagined.