Pondering The Universe

The dog looks at me and wonders what I am up to. He does his best to

tangle himself in the light cords and tripod. He offers no creative

input so I tell him to get lost. He just looks at me and yawns as if

to say that photography is not a real art form anyway.

Great tought, nice composition and outcome! 5/6

Well what do dogs know ? . . .

 

I like this image for a very strange reason. It confronts me with the tension I'm feeling more and more as a viewer trying to understand what the image is about and as a photographer trying to figure out how you did it. Maybe this is the problem we all have on this site, turning to photographers for feedback, rather than someone off the street (who hopefully has some artistic sensibility.) I find that my wife serves this role well for me because even though she understands some of the technical issues, she is somehow able to ignore them and focus on the bigger picture, so to speak.

Anyone who supposes themselves to be good at something will always deluge you with useless details about the subject. Photographers and Beer Drinkers are two prime examples. Photographers always want to discuss equipment and specifications, using numbers to make one thing seem more important than some other equally meaningless thing. Beer Drinkers love talking numbers too, usually about how much beer they drink and the many stupid things they have done when they were drinking beer. Stay away from both groups and you will have a happy and productive life.

 

I found it interesting that at least two photos using a similar technique were posted at nearly the same time I posted this one. Go figure.

 

Finally, the dog is not only a bad judge of art; he is totally useless when it comes to the technical side of photography. His idea was to take soft focus shots by licking the front element of the lens. I won't even tell you what he was doing right before that. He considers his technique to be avant-garde. Stupid dog...

 

Well, I don't know what to say except if you ever publish your pictures you have to do it in context of an extended commentary. Your illustrated meanderings are really quite entertaining, a sort of endless, cosmic, shaggy dog story. Perhaps that shaggy dog is the one you refered to...or is it, as the old punch line goes "no, I'm afraid mine's not quite that shaggy." Hmmm, perhaps in this case those lost marbles may be mine.

Let me describe my dog for you; and remember that when I say "my dog" it is in the context that I am the one person in this house who did not want a dog but here he is and on many days we are the only ones in the house. I'm not a dog hater, it's just that I had my own dog when I was a boy and consider that dog to be the best dog ever, making all other dogs pale by comparison.

 

My current dog can best be described as a drunk in a white suit living in a mining town with dirt roads and no sidewalks. The translation of that metaphor is that he was born with a white coat but delights in rolling in the mud while at the same time distaining the bath and brush.

 

When my oldest daughter comes over once in a while to brush the burrs out of his hair she reminds me that the only thing that disqualifies him as a show dog is a small light colored patch on the end of his small nose (he smiles smugly whenever he hears this). My idea was to hit that spot with a little magic marker and then sell him to the first traveling circus that comes through town. Sadly the female population of the house voted against my idea. They are never around to feed him so I'm not sure why they still get to vote anyway.

Wonderful !!!

I like the idea, and I think your dog was wrong as far as its judgement about photography was concerned. But leaving this aside, I'd first say that I would be incapable of technically puting a successful shot of this together. It seems you played around (in circles) with a torch light or such, right ? Light painting, in other words...? Well, that quite a task for such a subject : transparent balls ! Anyway, I'd say you did well, but perfect is better. :-) What's not perfect (to my eye) is mostly the dark central ball in its dark spot. But perhaps that's part of the meaning you wanted to pass over to us ? And anyway, I have no suggestion as for how to make it better, and it's so much easier for me to tell you what I don't like. :-)) Cheers.

I think in my experimenting I erred in both directions but most often by letting the light linger too long in the center of the shot and blowing out the details there. I guess in this one I settled for the idea of a black hole in the center pulling everything towards it. To my eye the marble on the far right is turned in the wrong direction throwing my artificial universe into chaos. The fact is there is no order in this universe and the light shows it is spiraling out of control.

 

These were about 8 or 10 second exposures and lots of experimenting. If I was doing this again I would probably use some colored lights. But why would I do this again, I'm not sure why I did this to begin with. I did just have an idea to move the marbles instead of the lights...

Interesting explantions, thanks. As for marbles moving "instead" of light, we'va both seen the moving snooker balls shots, but in the universe, EVERYTHING (including light) is moving - all at the same time ! So it's quite a task to illustrate this in a photograph ! I guess shaking the camera in circles might be the most accurate in terms of concept, but who'd care for such a picture !? :-)