civilized ku # 2867 / diptych # 123-24 ~ off topic but with pictures - hop in the Cordoba, baby. We're going bowling*

ice rink / grilled cinnamon roll/bun ~ Plattsburgh, NY • click to embiggen
post 4 pt. game dinner / locker room with sometime line mate, McKensie (zie?/sey?) ~ Plattsburgh, NY • click to embiggen
ice rink / locker room ~ Plattsburgh, NY • click to embiggenAn all-hockey weekend started Friday evening past with an early evening game - the first of 4 in the Roadrunner Rumble Hockey Tournament - and didn't end until late afternoon on Sunday. Saturday was a nearly 10-hour hang around the rink (actually 2 different rinks) interrupted by a brief escape for a late afternoon restaurant dinner. As is often the case, Hugo camped at our house so the rides to the rink would be much shorter than from his house (50+ miles from his team's home rink) which allowed him to get more rest and spend far less pre-game time in a car.

Logistics aside, the weekend was a great success. His team, the Plattsburgh Roadrunners, went undefeated and garnered the championship trophy. However, it wasn't an easy task. The tourney was stacked with some of the best regional teams from Vermont and downstate New York. Against the best of which the Roadrunners had a 0-4-1 record earlier in the season.

After getting through the round-robin part of the tourney (wherein Hugo amassed 7 points - 4 goals / 3 assists - he was beating goaltenders like rented mules* and their coaches didn't know whether to cry or wind their watches*) - they made to the semi-finals on Saturday night against a very good team from St. Albans, Vermont (to whom they had lost 2x and tied once).

After regulation and overtime, the game was tied 1-1 and it went to a shootout. Hugo sealed the victory with the game-winning shootout goal - Hugo was smilin' like a butcher's dog* - and they advanced to the Championship game - get in the fast lane, Grandma, the bingo game's ready to roll*.

In the championship game on Sunday, the Roadrunners ran into a very excellent downstate team which had beaten them 2x including a 1-0 loss in a recent Vermont tournament championship game. While Hugo's team played pretty well, they nevertheless were 2 goals down going into the 3rd period.

Shortly thereafter, Hugo jump-started the team's comeback with a beautiful assist from behind the goal to a team mate in front making it 3-2 and all I wanted to do was scratch my back with a hacksaw*. Hugo then scored 2 goals to wrap up the victory - and ladies and gentlemen, Elvis had just left the building*.

When all was said and done, Hugo ended up with a tournament-leading (by a wide margin) 10 points + a game winning shootout goal. And as Mike Lange* often remarks, you'd have to be here to believe it*.

BTW, the top picture in this entry is of the guy at the rink snack bar who insisted I take his picture after he had prepped a grilled cinnamon roll for me - a food thing of which he (and most others) had never heard. All you do is slice a cinnamon roll like a bun, slather butter on both cut surfaces and grill it until the buttered sides are slightly crispy and the topping is warm and slightly melted - mmmmm good. FYI, the guy offered to serve it to me with a cholesterol control pill.

Anyone care to venture a guess why Hugo wears # 88?

*Mike Lange-isms - Lange is the longtime NHL Hall of Fame announcer, tv and now radio, for the Pittsburgh Penguins. You can hear most of his Lange-isms HERE.

Update on Monday, February 9, 2015 at 06:09PM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: In his comment, Markus Spring wrote: "...Ah, Mark, in the U.S. the 88 seems to have a different connotation than in Germany: : Here, those inhabitants of the shallow end of the gene pool who still believe in Hitler's supernatural greatness and miss their 'Führer', use the 88 as a not so secret identifying mark: the 'h' is the eigth letter of the alphabet, and 'Heil Hitler' is the greeting they are now forbidden to use in Germany. Therefore, the 88 has to do.

My response: That is most certainly NOT why Hugo wears # 88. But, on a Chinese cultural note, the number 8 is a 'lucky' number for a number of reasons. Therefore # 88 is a very lucky number. While this cultural connection is also NOT why Hugo wears that number, at least it does not have the negative meaning / connotation as it does in Germany.

Thanks to your information, Hugo will never wear that number if he plays in Germany. Doing so in China is probably not a bad thing.

kitchen life # 64-65 ~ reinterpretation of objects

Bonhomme and morning window light ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
kitchen sink ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenIn her Juror's Statement for the Marvelous Things: The Art of Still Life exhibition Aline Smithson wrote:

I love still lifes. In this era of mounting distractions, the still life genre allows for slowed down time and consideration. I love the meditative process of creating something special out of a group of objects that are often considered mundane and lackluster. I love recognizing the still lifes that surround our daily lives, whether it be a tableau on a dresser top, a single flower elevated through light and composition, or a pile of discarded objects along side a road. Many of the photographs that I selected for the exhibition look at still lifes with a unique point of view—made fresh by the reinterpretation of objects, seeing ordinary things anew, considering new subject matter to be used in a still life, or simply by bringing a level of excellence to their image making.

With that judging criteria in Aline Smithson's mind, I was honored but not incredibly surprised, although most certainly pleasantly so, that she chose one of my pictures for the exhibition. Not surprised inasmuch as her thoughts, re: the making of still life pictures (and pictures in general) are very similar to mine.

civilized ku # 2866 ~ they give us those nice bright colors

fresh snow ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenMy attention was recently drawn to the picturing idea of blue snow - the blue snow as seen in the shadow areas of sunny day winter pictures. The instigator of my eventual rumination, re: blue snow, was a picture article in our Sunday newspaper regarding the chance that winter offers "to marvel at a palette of colors...".

The author of the pictures and article is a staff picture maker (if such a thing exists anymore) or, at the very least, a picture maker whose byline appears quite often on pictures in the newspaper. With his pictures, he was encouraging people to get out and "... look for those purples and blues that make the snow rich in color...".

To be certain, his pictures area quite "rich" with vibrant blue snow. And, I am quite certain that he came by that color honestly, which is to write, without any Photoshop tomfoolery. I am also quite certain that most of the viewers of his picture will like them, in no small measure because they are quite vibrant / rich, color wise (not a criticism, just an observation). However, I am equally certain that, if those viewers are moved to go out and "look for those purples and blues that make the snow rich in color", they are apt to be quite disappointed.

As any astute picture maker knows, both film and digital sensors (more so than film) are able to "see" light in the Ultra Violet wavelength spectrum. So do butterflies, reindeer, some species of birds, and even sockeye salmon, to name just a few. Consequently, unless those seekers of purple and blue snow have some sort of mutant vision, all they are going to see is white snow. The exception being snow which is lighted by direct warm late day sunlight.

In the good ol' days of film, many a picture maker employed a UV filter to reduce the influence of UV light when making a picture. I assume the same could be done in the digital picture making domain. The digital picture making domain also has the capability of adjusting White Balance when making a picture - the cloudy day setting significantly reduces the blue color to be had on cloudy days and in shadows. However, that setting may also move the color balance in the direction of too much warmth in other areas of the picture.

In my case, I make white balance adjustments when processing a RAW file and subsequently fine tune the picture in Photoshop. I leave a fair amount of blue in the picture at the RAW processing stage and, by the means of making a selection of the blue snow shadows and the use of the Hue and Saturation tool, I move my pictures toward what the human eye perceives rather than what the camera "sees".

This adjustment / correction procedure does not mean that I eliminate all of the blue color to be seen by the camera in the shadows. However, it is reduced significantly, because, in some cases and under some conditions, my human vision is able to see a small hint of blue in the shadows. Although, that usually takes a fair amount of concentration directed specially at looking for the blue color.

In any event, my intention in reducing or in some cases totally eliminating "blue" snow is to reproduce a more faithful / true representation of the real.

kitchen life # 63 ~ don't know how much more of this I can take

trash can ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenIn a recent essay, Responsibilty and Truth in Photography, Jörg M. Colberg - founder and editor of Conscientious Photography Magazine - wrote:

You can take a photograph in such a way that even though it is a complete artifact (all photographs are), it will look like an objective depiction of whatever was in front of the camera’s lens .... This is territory that many people find hard to navigate. If a camera is a little machine that faithfully records what is in front of it and that displays just that, then obviously it’s the photographer who screws up if there is a problem. Now, a camera is not at all just some little machine that does that. It never faithfully records what was in front of it, and the many steps that lie between the pressing of the shutter’s button and the display of the resulting image (in whatever form) make the connection between reality and picture very, very difficult.

While Colberg tends to be of the same mind as I am, re: (his words) "photography theory sounds really good, at least on paper (assuming, of course, it’s not the usual academic drivel, with terms taken from semi-nonsensical French philosophy thrown in for good measure)", he nevertheless can't help but to delve into the whole "never faithfully records", and, "the many steps that lie between the pressing of the shutter’s button and the display of the resulting image" thing , both of which, according to academic theory, results in making "the connection between reality and picture very, very difficult."

Sure, sure. A picture of something is not the thing itself. Sure, sure. A picture maker can employ many steps in the making of a picture. However, IMO, drawing from those facts the conclusion that a picture can not faithfully, in fact never, record what was in front of the camera is pure flapdoodle and green paint.

Sure, sure. Many different interpretations can be had from the viewing of a photograph, as many as there are viewers, but, despite the number of differing interpretations / understandings / meanings to be had (many of which may have little relationship to the picture maker's intentions), that in no way means that the picture from which they are made is a not faithful recording / depiction / representation of what was in front of the camera.

A factual / accurate depiction of a chosen referent and the interpretations / understandings /meanings deduced from it are two entirely different, although related, domains. One involves seeing, the other involves feeling and thinking.

That written, there are always viewers to whom a picture is just a picture and there are those who must turn a picture into an academic critical analysis, intellectual labyrinth, psycho-analytical exercise. Those who prefer the latter seem to be those with an surfeit of art education who seem to need to convince themselves that they got their money's worth, student loan / education wise. They never give it a rest.

Although, even one of the all-time greats (art theory writing and speaking wise), Jeff Wall seems to have given it rest:

I think the process of deconstructing photography as a rhetoric has reached a point of exhaustion.

Amen to that.