View allAll Photos Tagged complexity
the futuristic arches of the ciudad de las artes y las ciencias stretch endlessly, their lines carving a rhythm into the light. sunlight spills through the high glass panes, slicing shadows across the stark white interior. a lone figure stands silhouetted, camera raised, dwarfed by the grandeur of santiago calatrava’s architectural vision. it's a scene of contrasts: light and dark, human and structure, simplicity and complexity. the stillness of the moment, caught in black and white, feels both timeless and fleeting—valencia’s spirit encapsulated in a single frame.
"Complexity characterises the behaviour of a system or model whose components interact in multiple ways and follow local rules, leading to non-linearity, randomness, collective dynamics, hierarchy, and emergence.
The term is generally used to characterize something with many parts where those parts interact with each other in multiple ways, culminating in a higher order of emergence greater than the sum of its parts. The study of these complex linkages at various scales is the main goal of complex systems theory.
The intuitive criterion of complexity can be formulated as follows: a system would be more complex if more parts could be distinguished, and if more connections between them existed." (WP)
"La complexité caractérise le comportement d'un système ou d'un modèle dont les composants interagissent de multiples manières et suivent des règles locales, conduisant à la non-linéarité, au hasard, à la dynamique collective, à la hiérarchie et à l'émergence.
Le terme est généralement utilisé pour caractériser quelque chose comportant de nombreuses parties, où ces parties interagissent les unes avec les autres de multiples manières, aboutissant à un ordre d'émergence supérieur supérieur à la somme de ses parties. L’étude de ces liens complexes à différentes échelles constitue l’objectif principal de la théorie des systèmes complexes.
Le critère intuitif de complexité peut être formulé ainsi : un système serait plus complexe si plus de parties pouvaient être distinguées et s'il existait plus de connexions entre elles. » (WP)
Spent a lovely long weekend in an Auberge, South of Montreal in the townships. (thank you sister for hooking me up winter fun style) Took a number of shots while out on a snowshoeing adventure through thick forest and mini mountains. T'was a perfect day, with sun, no wind.
Inspired by the Layers project. I wanted a dramatic scenario to add a conceptual layer as a puzzle as well as two literal layers. The layers of dictionaries was the initial 'layers of layers' but then my overactive imagination took off.
This Christmas bauble was hand beaded with sequins and pins by me. In usually make these baubles for others as gifts, but on occasion I make one or two baubles for myself. This is one such bauble.
The theme for "Looking Close on Friday" for the 20th of December is "sequins", so I thought I would show you this special bauble I chose to make for myself. If you would like to see the other baubles I have made as gifts for friends over the years, you can find them in this album: www.flickr.com/photos/40262251@N03/albums/72157649901152375/. I hope you like my choice of subject for this week's theme, and that it makes you smile!
As this is the last "Looking Close on Friday" before Christmas, I should just like to take this opportunity to wish everyone in the group a very happy Festive Season. May it be filled with happiness and joy for you all.
Each bauble I make is 15 centimetres in diameter and contain hundreds of sequins, varying in number depending upon the complexity of the pattern and the type of sequins I use. Most sequins in this bauble are 5mm in diameter, except the large star sequins which are 10mm, the sunburst sequins which are 12 mm and the small gold border sequins which are 2mm and very, very fiddly. The sunburst sequins are French and are known as "éclate de soleil" - "sunbursts". Depending upon the colour of the sequin, I will use either a gold or a silver pin to attach it to the bauble.
These baubles are smaller than some others I do, however because it is a complex pattern which starts from the inside and is worked outwards in ever larger circles, each bauble takes approximately 2 to 2 1/2 hours per side.
It is however, a labour of love which I do to pass the time throughout the year.
For some reason the first line of an old John Prine song popped into my head. This is actually a mixture of ice, water, leaves of grass, and part of a cottonwood leaf, all jumbled into a rich stew of nutrients that will feed the new growth in my backyard in the weeks to come. Shooting straight down and very close.
It's a departure from the spare look of my ice shots over the past few days. No elegant, clean lines here. Usually I try for simplification, which maybe I could have found in the leaf itself... but I have lots of close ups of leaves, and thought I'd try something different, organizing the visual elements around complexity instead. I built in a bit of structure by placing objects - the leaf, blades of grass - along the left, bottom, and right sides, leaving the top side open. This was intentional.
Tomorrow I'll be cranking up the wayback machine and revisiting some of my favourite wilderness backpacking adventures from years past. I am grateful to my younger self for being willing to place one foot in front of the other for as long as it took to get into these amazing places. It was a huge part of my life for a quarter century. Ask my knees and back - they'll tell you it's true!
This shot was made in my backyard at the peak of snowmelt in April. Val Marie, Saskatchewan (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission ©2023 James R. Page - all rights reserved.
I love you without knowing how or when or where. I love you straightforwardly without complexities or pride. Happy Anniversary ya BB.
This Christmas bauble was hand beaded with sequins and pins by me. I have a Christmas tradition. I bead Christmas baubles for a select group of friends every year.
Each bauble is 15 centimetres in diameter and contain hundreds of sequins, varying in number depending upon the complexity of the pattern and the type of sequins I use. Most sequins in this bauble are 5mm in diameter, except the stars which are three different sizes: 3mm, 4mm and 10mm in diameter. Depending upon the colour of the sequin, I will use either a gold or a silver pin to attach it to the bauble. I always leave the flowers until last, allowing a gap in the sequin chain to pin them in.
These baubles are smaller than some others I do, and because it is a simple pattern which starts from the inside and is worked outwards in ever larger circles, each bauble takes approximately 1 1/2 to 2 hours per side.
It is however, a labour of love which I do to pass the time throughout the year.
The complexity of life, even that of a 'simple' magnolia flower, never ceases to amaze me. And the closer one looks, the more amazing it gets.
Indeed, if we looked even closer than a macro photographer's lens can see, we would observe a level of complexity far beyond our imagination. As in every other living thing, each cell in this magnolia flower contains the DNA for the entire organism. In his book (the Selfish Gene), Richard Dawkins says of human DNA:
This DNA can be regarded as a set of instructions for how to make a body, written in the A, T, C, G, alphabet of the nucleotides. It is as though, in every room of a gigantic building, there was a book-case containing the architect's plans for the entire building.
Dawkins denies that there is a God, yet admits that all living cells contain information (instructions) and even likens it to architect's plans. No matter the medium in which it is stored (paper and ink, compact disk, DNA, etc) information has to have an author or, in Dawkin's analogy, an architect.
Sadly, Dawkins appears to recognise the unavoidable truth, yet still says there is no God. But the Bible says:
For the invisible things of Him [God] from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.
(Romans 1:20-22)
On the deck of the Kaiwo Maru at the Tall Ships Festival in Steveston (Richmond, BC).
To see others' superb photos of the Kaiwo Maru during the 3 day
tall ship festival in Steveston--including the sailors up on the masts unfurling the sails--please go to this Gallery I created: www.flickr.com/photos/130881643@N04/galleries/72157681555...
abstract shapes shadows and silhouettes
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Detail of ground level walkway within Keeling House, a modernist apartment block in Bethnal Green, East London. Designed by Denys Lasdun and completed in 1957.
Dear friends, for the theme of this week I decided to experiment by using a tilt-shift adapter. I tilted the focal plane to follow the cubes and, with the shift movement, I tried to correct a bit the perspective distortion.
The final effect is a bit weird, but I found it funny, therefore I decided to share it.
I hope that you will like the result. Have a nice Friday! 🙋♂️
As I walked this old cemetery fence line, my eye was drawn to a disruption in the ironwork. A secondary gateway had been mangled by a vehicle that had left the road, crossed the berm, smashed into the fence, and continued on to destroy some nearby grave markers. Probably unfolded in a matter of a couple of seconds, but left lasting damage. Didn't appear to be the sort of accident that would have involved serious injury. Of course the driver would have been subject to ridicule by friends suggesting that they were just "dying to get into that cemetery." For me the resulting disorder in the otherwise uniform and pristine fence was a visual delight. I wouldn't normally wish for damage to happen solely for the benefit of a photo. But on the other hand I never shy away from documenting such things when I stumble upon them. As I contemplated the scene, I was distracted by the rhythmic clip-clop of horse hooves hitting pavement. It was the unmistakeable audible signal of an approaching Amish buggy. The timing could not have been better. I was already bent (no pun) on photographing the damaged gate. Coordinating this with the passing buggy I thought would really amp up the visual impact. I used to be timid about photographing the Amish, and still avoid shooting them individually. But I now figure the buggies are fair game. I exchanged waves with the driver as the buggy drew near. Then knelt down and just let the shutter go in a continuous burst as the buggy passed the gate (trying to time shots like this and trusting a single shot is doomed to fail). The resulting image was exactly what I had envisioned. The horse and buggy, along with the fence, appear out of another era. I love the funerary feel of both, and the background and sky tie in perfectly. An image of simultaneous simplicity and complexity revealed in 1/500th of second. Love when the universe tees one up for me like this.
Even though I was in the big city for ten days, I was still drawn to photograph the nature that I found there.
On the railing of one of the bridges over the river near my class I found this colorful caterpillar of the Gulf Fritillary butterfly on its host plant in full bloom, a Passion Vine.
The flowers of the Passifloraceae family are reportedly the most complex in existence.
I have manipulated this photo to look like an illustration for a book, similar to the previous fish photo. (I work in such a stream-of-consciousness mode that I don't record my multiple processes, so it's amazing I could achieve anything similar again!!)