Technically this is Day 3 of blogging, but as it’s been a month since yesterday the daily count no longer feels appropriate. Events trump days, and along with anything going viral on social media, I would be content never to see the word trump used in a sentence ever again. Players of bridge, euchre, et cetera—it’s time: figure out a new word. Trump is ruined.
This post continues in the spirit of yestermonth’s Spring Cleaning post, but this time it’s my computer desktop getting tidied up. Ideally, much like my actual desktop, there are never any documents left on it for very long. Like a piece of paper left out for me to see, icons on my desktop represent work in progress or reminders of things to finish or follow up with. The idea is I’ll pick up the task and move it along whenever whatever I need to complete it becomes available. Usually this works, but sometimes the icons turn into fixtures and begin to collect companions—the best and worst thing about later is how it never actually arrives. So—for today only—I’ve decided it’s actually tomorrow. Later is here.
First Light
Used during the construction timeline for research telescopes, first light is a marker for when the instrument will able to take its first official image. It’s cause for celebration as it represents the end of years of planning and the start of years of discovery. The first light image is usually of a well known astronomical object, something that will play to the strengths of the new telescope, something that will give a nod to the not unsubstantial undertaking involved in building a new telescope.
I have been saving a little bit here and there for years toward the purchase of a digital SLR camera. And having recently celebrated my fortieth birthday in pandemic‐derived solitude—though the phone calls and messages were more than appreciated—I again decided that later had arrived. Through very fortunate circumstances I have a new‐to‐me Nikon D7100 digital camera. The first image I took with it? In first light tradition, it was of a well known astronomical object:
That’s Luna in mid‐ascent to the top level, not in frame, of her kitty condo—her circle as I refer to it. It was what was happening in front of me at the time I was exploring the camera’s functions. I took the picture quite by accident to be honest, but all the settings happened to be lined up to capture an interesting yet incredibly ordinary image.
Below is quite possibly the most famous interesting yet incredibly ordinary image in all of photography:
Known now as View from the Window at Le Gras, it’s thought to be among first photographs ever taken and is currently the oldest surviving photograph in the world. It’s the view out of a window in Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, France—around 1827. The file above has been heavily processed as the original image was created as a faint negative—or positive, depending on the viewing angle—on a slab of pewter coated in a light sensitive form of asphalt. The exposure is believed to have taken over 8 hours as the sun is seen shining on both east and west facing walls, and some believe it may have taken days rather than hours to complete the exposure. This image predates the first daguerreotype images—a photographic process used during the 1840s and 1850s—by over a decade.
But back at my apartment, more of Luna in a serious studio and then more candid photo:
Sticky slabs of paved pewter are no longer required, but it should be noted: today’s digital cameras are still not capable of capturing as much fine detail as a properly exposed daguerreotype image would have over 170 years ago. That said, I’ll happily record my photographs on silicon chips and skip the vaporized mercury, among other toxins, needed to produce a daguerreotype.
Adventures in Fine Art Restoration
It should be apparent by now that my only other regular mammalian companionship during the pandemic has been a cat. But I’m not going to lie, it’s starting to get a little unforgettable between the two of us. We still share good conversations and quality naps together, yet I sense restlessness, a bored malaise. She’s eaten all of my other regular companions—both the bathroom and the kitchen spiders—so now it’s just me and her plus the plants, and she’s recently started eating those.
One afternoon some time ago I’d accidentally printed an image of Luna on the back side of a piece of photo paper:
The ink hadn’t been fixed to the paper and neither were drying quickly or properly. The effect was striking compared to the intended output, like a freeze frame of a melting celluloid filmstrip. The resulting image changed over the next few hours and the next few days.
So after a few more practice printouts I should be ready to work on Spanish masterpieces.
Seriously—how was this work not checked at least once during the job? Even at the most initial stages it would have been readily, painfully apparent there was a mistake being made. The unfortunate yet hilarious comedic oddness of two—yes, two—separate restorations so outstandingly ill‐performed is only made odder by the work having being performed on a copy of the original—so it’s okay to laugh.
Now it’s been a couple of months later. The misprint continues to change. Almost all the colour is gone:
Perhaps in a few more months the image will resemble the view from Le Gras.
Vindication
Many posts ago I shared a strange day where—among other strange occurrences—I managed to lose a large blue rectangle.
Well—I found it:
A sleepless night with Google’s Street View combined to reveal I totally and completely did see what I had previously convinced myself I had concluded I hadn’t.
I’m still trying to decide if I’m pleased or disappointed with this development. The missing rectangle wasn’t included in my first draft of the post from last year. But the ambiguity of the rectangle’s existence—both real and imagined—added an indefinite interestingness and a certain strangeness to the narrative. The tension created ended up working well, but what made the rectangle alluring is now retroactively ruined through confirmed observation.
Unless it’s been taken down since then. Or maybe it will be later…
Rounding Error
Every now and then I start the day with the local weather in Pedernales. My phone’s weather app will sometimes think it’s in a coastal city in Ecuador instead of with me, wherever I am. I think it has something to do with Pedernales being directly south of here:
That’s not a straight line though. It’s the arc needed to follow over the curvature of the planet’s surface on the complex number line—they just look remarkably similar when viewed head‐on.
Walk With Me
A few weeks ago I took a video during an evening walk along the trail behind my neighbourhood. I was hoping to share a relaxing point of view perspective of what was a tranquil end to a summer day.
I got home and checked the recording: it had been made in portrait mode by mistake. My footsteps peeked out impossibly along one vertical side of the frame, and my attempts to not capture anyone’s face resulted in an unsettling up and down motion of the field of view. The software I found to rotate the video produced a jittery visual experience made only worse by the constant bobbing caused by my walking. Tranquility gave way to nausea, until I realized what I wanted to capture had nothing to do with what I was seeing at all.
It was all in the sound of the place.
