View allAll Photos Tagged Persistence
It does not matter how slowly you go, so long as you do not stop.
Confucius
Chinese philosopher & reformer (551 BC - 479 BC)
Graham, Washington
122913
© Copyright 2014 MEA Images, Merle E. Arbeen, All Rights Reserved. If you would like a copy of this, please feel free to contact me through my FlickrMail, Facebook, or Yahoo email account. Thank you.
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This photograph has achieved the following highest awards:
InfiniteXposure, Hall of Fame
The flow of life is nothing if not persistent.
Zenit with Helios 44M-6 58mm f/2 on Portra 400
December, 2021
I was hunting for small things to shoot for this week when I came across my box of old watch parts. This particular cog (about 1cm across) had a bend in it that reminded my of some of Salvador Dali's work (the one with the melting clocks!). I'm certainly no art buff ~ my sister had posters of his paintings way back when... but just a persistent enough memory to provide inspiration!!
HMM
If the Universe was trying to tell me something about this image such as a week long failure to get a good shot, computer crashes, internet problems and feathers falling apart, then I ignore it.
This Sparrowhawk's persistence paid off after seeing it turn up everyday searching the shrubs and sitting on the fence waiting. It dropped down and began scrambling through the shrubs' branches scattering Sparrows in its pursuit and eventually came out with one in its claw before taking off to the bottom of the garden so as not to be disturbed.
Back alleyway, Hatfield.
( after Phil Simmons's early London Dada work; The Persistence of Witchcraft )
From Wikipedia:
Helianthus petiolaris is a North American plant species in the sunflower family, commonly known as the prairie sunflower or lesser sunflower. Naturalist and botanist Thomas Nuttall was the first to describe the prairie sunflower in 1821. The word petiolaris in Latin means, “having a petiole”. The species originated in Western United States, but has since expanded east. The prairie sunflower is sometimes considered a weed.
Prairie sunflowers are commonly found growing in sandy areas. They can also be found in heavy clay soil and in dry prairies. They are unable to grow in shady areas; they need to be in direct sunlight. Prairie sunflowers require dry to moist soil. This species of sunflower is an annual flower, blooming between June and September.
With the low snowpack last year, this small tarn was all that was left on Artist Point in late June. In most years, this would have been still covered in feet deep snow.
A stone spire with a lone evergreen at sunset. I love Colorado's Escalante Canyon at the golden hours.
Dalí is one of my favorite artists of all time and also a big inspiration for me. In my lost account I posted a tribute to "The Elephants" which I pretend to remake later on, but also I always wanted to create something along the lines of "The Persistence of Memory", which should be his most iconic artwork.
Persistence of Memory cannot be replicated because it's a masterpiece, but I tried to arrange some of the core ideas in here. The melting clocks, the idea of a dreaming subject or figure, the overall concept of "fading away" and even if I didn't use ants or flies, the color scheme tries to recreate the feeling of decay.
Southern Lady's Slippers (Cypripedium kentuckiense) from northeast Texas.
Last spring, I set out to relocate these rare orchids at a historic location in northeast Texas (see here for details of that trip). This year I returned and could not immediately relocate the site. The point my GPS brought me to looked so different than I remembered, and the site was still relatively fresh on my mind. I looked for identifying site characteristics but struggled to find any, instead seeing four very large, downed trees laying across the creek. I was dismayed, until I approached the locale from a different angle, and there, nestled among the massive, entangled branches of downed white oak were three perfect slippers. They had survived whatever storm had wrought their surroundings and felled the ancients around them. I crawled through the tangled crown of the fallen oak capture this scene, which shows their precarious existence on the steep bank of some tiny unnamed stream hidden deep in the woods.
I'm intrigued how the persistence of water carves, polishes and shapes rocks. Water finds its way over time...
(NDL7430)
...unless it doesn't. Einstein had a different take on it, which is perhaps more apropos.
There were eleven more of these, but I am merciful...
I've been thinking a lot about persistence, and patience. They are related, but not the same; nor necessary, one for the other.
Have a wonderful Sunday, friends...
This Sparrowhawk's persistence paid off after seeing it turn up everyday searching the shrubs and sitting on the fence waiting. It dropped down and began scrambling through the shrubs' branches scattering Sparrows in its pursuit and eventually came out with one in its claw before taking off to the bottom of the garden so as not to be disturbed.
Persistence paid off as I walked around and around trying to find the right composition for this sunset. It's facing east as the sun lit up the clouds and I got a decent reflection in this little pool.
Quintessential Pt Lobos. Panoramic Sunset like you've never seen it.
I keep returning to my roots. After 40 years it gets better and better. 3 panel panorama. One of those perfect days in May!
The Persistence of Memory is a 1931 painting by artist Salvador Dalí and one of the most recognizable works of Surrealism. First shown at the Julien Levy Gallery in 1932, since 1934 the painting has been in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, which received it from an anonymous donor. It is widely recognized and frequently referred to in popular culture, and sometimes referred to by more descriptive titles, such as "The Melting Clocks", "The Soft Watches" or "The Melting Watches".
The well-known surrealist piece introduced the image of the soft melting pocket watch. It epitomizes Dalí's theory of "softness" and "hardness", which was central to his thinking at the time. As Dawn Adès wrote, "The soft watches are an unconscious symbol of the relativity of space and time, a Surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a fixed cosmic order". This interpretation suggests that Dalí was incorporating an understanding of the world introduced by Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity. Asked by Ilya Prigogine whether this was the case, Dalí replied that the soft watches were not inspired by the theory of relativity, but by the surrealist perception of a Camembert melting in the sun.
The year prior to painting the Persistence of Memory, Dali developed his "paranoiac-critical method," deliberately inducing psychotic hallucinations to inspire his art. He remarked, "The difference between a madman and me is that I am not mad." This quote highlights Dali's awareness of his mental state. Despite his engagement in activities that could be seen as insane, Dali maintained that he was not actually mad.
It is possible to recognize a human figure in the middle of the composition, in the strange "monster" (with much texture near its face, and much contrast and tone in the picture) that Dalí used in several contemporary pieces to represent himself – the abstract form becoming something of a self-portrait, reappearing frequently in his work. The creature seems to be based on a figure from the Paradise section of Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights, which Dalí had studied. It can be read as a "fading" creature, one that often appears in dreams where the dreamer cannot pinpoint the creature's exact form and composition. The creature has one closed eye with several eyelashes, suggesting that it is also in a dream state. The iconography may refer to a dream that Dalí himself had experienced, and the clocks may symbolize the passing of time as one experiences it in sleep or the persistence of time in the eyes of the dreamer.
The orange watch at the bottom left of the painting is covered in ants; Dalí often used ants in his paintings as a symbol of decay. A fly sits on the watch next to the orange watch. The fly appears to be casting a human shadow as the sun hits it. The Persistence of Memory employs "the exactitude of realist painting techniques" to depict imagery more likely to be found in dreams than in waking consciousness.
The craggy rocks to the right represent the tip of Cap de Creus peninsula in north-eastern Catalonia. Many of Dalí's paintings were inspired by the landscapes of his life in Catalonia. The strange and foreboding shadow in the foreground of this painting is a reference to Puig Pení, a mountain in the northeast corner of Catalonia.
I had spent a good deal of time looking for field patterns when I just about stopped looking. It was time to make my way back to the crossroads where I had started and make the long trek home. When I arrived at the crossroads, it was necessary to pull over and put my equipment away.
When I stepped out of the car, this is the image that lay in front of me and the very shot I had been looking. The sun had set and subtle colors stood on the horizon. The organized and straight lines in the field lay in perfect contrast to the sweeping blue cloud above them. And the color on the horizon separated the two.
Sometimes it is patience that pays off in photography, sometimes it is just plane luck. But now and then I find persistence in both life and photography pays off in dividends. I have been searching for this shot for many months to deliver on a challenge from a flickr friend named Frank Gadarowski. To "find a Prairie field that just seems to go on forever", like this one.