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Beware the Fog

I read a science fiction short story years ago about fog and parallel universes. In the story, fog happened when alternate dimensions overlapped, where reality began to blur. And going out into the fog was dangerous, because you could end up in a world that wasn't your own. It was scary.

 

The world changes so fast now that much of the stuff of the science fiction of my youth is either realized or surpassed. Who got Apple right? Who predicted iPhones and digital cameras and Skype? Not Asimov, not Heinlein.

 

Alien technology and alternate worlds! Well pardon me if Photoshop isn't something right out of science fiction. And like the robots in Westworld, sometimes the renderings go a bit funny. Like right here. The young lady has stepped into the fog. She's coming in from another dimension. She's exiting into a different world. And she's here. The software, by accident, is showing us more than expected. For all that, we don't know where she's come from, we don't know where she is going.

 

There's no photo that tells the whole story. We only ever get part of it. We have to chose where to point our cameras, which little rectangular window we will expose. Having good composition skills means you can work in that little rectangle, in that little cage. That's fine, but it is not reality. It's a stylized art form. It has as much to do with the visual world as a haiku has to do with all of human speech, of all of sound.

 

No pixel jockey moi, I play with Photoshop. I wield that mighty tool crudely. I stack my bee shots as prettily as anyone can. But once I am out of doors, I attack the landscape with scattershot frenzy. I could slow down, take a deep breath, and be methodical. I could be tidy. But I don't. I push in to the space with my camera, pressing into it, capturing it as a move through it. The results are bizarre. I've cropped this one to fit the standard rectangular format, but I often leave them ragged. Those ragged edges are another form of visual information for the viewer. But even then, even left whole, they are only part of the story, part of the picture.

 

Same as every photograph that was ever taken this is a slice of time, a fragment of the space, a piece of a whole, a part of the full picture.

 

ODC part of the full picture

 

100 Pictures: 3. fog

 

1. Words: Coffee at JoJo's with Cliff

2. feathered: saddle feathers with chicken-wire shadow

3. fog: Beware the Fog

4. critter

5. butterflys/bees

6. curve(s)

7. eyes

8. fireworks/fire

9. culture

10. hidden

11. architecture

12. light

13. dark

14. perspective

15. roadscapes (road/streets)

16. landscape

17. season

18. still life

19. ungulates (hooved animal)

20. water

21. window(s)

22. sun

23. movement

24. food

25. equipment

26. sport

27. sky

28. bench

29. machinary

30. flag

31. flight

32. celebration

33. color

34. fence

35. love

36. collection

37. flower/rose(s)

38. b&w

39. close up/macro

40. expression

41. pet

42. youth

43. symmetry

44. book(s)

45. happiness

46. vintage

47. bokeh

48. depth of field

49. out of place

50. camera

51. weird

52. shadow

53. broken

54. fave thing/place

55. hair

56. instrument

57. apple

58. shape(s)

59. amphibian

60. sweets

61. cold

62. hot

63. lock/keyhole

64. high

65. empty

66. time

67. distance

68. smell

69. rock(y)

70. portrait

71. vacation/travel

72. candid

73. hand

74. feet

75. sepia

76. artsy

77. public place

78. steps/stairs

79. bridge

80. horizon

81. gate

82. vine(s)

83. beauty

84. balloons

85. forms in nature

86. column(s)

87. doors/doorknob(s)

88. neon sign

89. porch

90. reflection

91. swing(s)

92. barn(s)

93. looking up

94. looking down

95. railroad anything

96. entropy

97. stranger

98. park/campground

99. around my yard

100. hobby

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Uploaded on July 19, 2011
Taken on July 18, 2011