Captain EO

Holy Cow! This Thursday I went to Disneyland with Sig and my little sister Holly (of the photo, incidentally). Sig and I are *very* into Disney - we have season passes, and know most of the lyrics to most of the songs in most of the movies - this in spite of the fact that many of our friends/fellow students view our obsession with confusion and perhaps disdain. Whatever man. I can't let their judgement hold back the love.

We saw a 3-D show in Tomorrowland that apparently originally played from 1986-1996 and is now showing as a tribute to Micheal Jackson. The name - Captain EO.

Those of us who remember the 80s, or who have subsequently watched, say, The Dark Crystal or Labyrinth, know that it was a crazy time, a time of weird talking puppets and men who wear sparkle make-up. But seeing talking puppets and men in sparkle make-up in 2010 in full 3-D in the middle of the day at Disneyland was a bit of a shocker.

To give a little background, Captain EO was actually directed by Francis Ford Coppola and produced by George Lucas (!) and at the time it was the most expensive movie made on a per-minute basis, 30 million dollars for ~ 17 minutes of film. You'd think with the credentials and the expense you'd get something not crazy...right?

The film begins with Captain EO and his ragtag muppet crew. They avoid some nasty space scouts and land their ship on a planet covered in robot-machinery. (Meanwhile the face of their commander keeps popping up on a hologram and scolding them, 'CAPtain eO! You ALways FAIL!) Once landed the crew sets off to find the planet's 'Supreme Leader' (!) and deliver a 'gift'. It takes them about 30 seconds, luckily, to be captured by robot-soldiers and end up in the Supreme Leader's robot-y lair. She's your typical freaky, evil robot-lady with 5 inch claws who descends from the belly of an enormous tentaculed machine to greet her visitors.

Then comes the good part, Jacko informs her that she can't see the gift he has brought, she can only hear it. His crew busts out a bunch of keyboards and synthesizers and as soon as the music starts, Captain EO suddenly has supernatural powers! He shoots these, uh, laser beam things (?) from his hands and starts turning the evil robot army into a scantily clad 80's dance troupe! They all dance, the S.L. sends more bad guys who become more dancers, and finally, after about 5 minutes of this, Micheal Jackson flies into the air and shoots her with his laser hands and she becomes ANJELICA HOUSTON in a FAIRY OUTFIT!!! And the weirdest thing is that she looks exactly the same as she does now.

It Matters if it's Black and White

Lately I've been trying to write a paper about black and white photography and the workings of the human eye, but its not quite coming together right so I thought I'd try the idea out here.

So, the back of the eye is covered in light-detecting cells called rods and cones. Rods are responsible for 'black and white' vision (cones sense colors.)

If you stare at a completely black surface long enough, your rods, which initially send the signal 'this is black' to your brain, will adjust and instead send the signal 'this is middle grey'. The same thing happens with a white surface - your eyes acclimate until the brain treats it like middle grey. This might seem strange, but it's a very useful phenomenon. It's actually the same thing that happens when your eyes adjust to a dark room, or a bright day. If you adjust to the amount of light coming in, you're better able to compare the things around you to each other, no matter how dark or light it is.

There is a way, though, to prevent the eye from treating either a black surface or a white surface as middle grey. If you place black and white side by side, your rods don't adjust. And, in fact, they send stronger 'this is black' and 'this is white' signals than they would without the juxtaposition. There is also a good reason for this - the brain is finely tuned to parse edges. It works hard to make edges salient so that you can tell where one object ends and another begins. As a result, your perceived contrast between a dark surface and a light surface is not just a function of how different the two surfaces naturally are, it involves your brain upping the perceived difference so that you can really pick it out.

(Incidentally, you also do this with color. A red surface and a green surface side by side will look redder and greener than they would individually. Ditto blue and yellow.)

How does this apply to black and white photography? Mmm, so, in intro photo classes, the teacher will make it abundantly, completely clear that when printing your photo you should always make sure that the brightest part of the picture is completely white, and the darkest part is as black as it can go - 'Get your blackest black and your whitest white.' This rule is so ubiquitous that when a professional photographer fails to do so, the choice usually makes a statement in itself. Photos without a high contrast don't quite...draw the eye. They don't look very snappy, they don't give you that excited-beautiful picture look.

Low contrast compared to...

High contrast -

My idea is that these phenomena are related - the reason black and white photographs look best with a high contrast is that black and white in juxtaposition look blacker and whiter than they do on their own. But there are a few problems: 1) even photographs printed in middle gray are 'fixed' by the brain so the edges look more salient 2) this idea doesn't explain why high-contrast photos are more appealing, just why they look so durn contrast-y.

Thoughts? Anyone?

Rock Warrior

There is this climb at the wall that is mostly pretty easy, but has one move that drives me absolutely nuts. The move happens at the 'crux' ie. where the the wall slopes outward before turning back up again.

It shouldn't be hard, except that I'm a shorty, and this means that occasionally there are moves that are really easy if you can just reach up and grab the hold, and really, really difficult if you have to find another way to get up there.

So here is my solution (for simplicity sake, let's call the hold that's hard to get to the 'holy grail'), I grip onto a hold below the holy grail with my right hand, plant my right foot on a lower hold, swing twice with my entire left side free from the wall, and then on the third swing throw my body upwards with every muscle I've got. If I push to the very limit, my fingers will just get onto the holy grail and I can pull myself up.

(This is not me, by the way, this woman is more jacked, and has a tattoo.)

I would say I accomplish this move about %25 of the time, occasionally getting so tired during the attempts that I have to give up on the rest of the route. Recently, though, I made a new climbing buddy named 'Hal' who offered to belay me. I explained that there was a good chance of failure and Hal said, 'Nah, you got this. You're a rock warrior. Just think 'rock warrior!' when you do it.'

That time when I got to the holy grail I thought 'rock warrior!' and shouted 'hyah!' (sorta stupidly) as I pushed upwards. Got it the first time! And again on my next climb!

Never underestimate the power of putting the word 'warrior' on the end of whatever you're doing and insisting to yourself that you are one. (Bread baking warrior!, Hume-warrior!, Litter box emptying-warrior!)

Misposed

Sometimes when you're about, photographing, something happens and suddenly you just see a picture coming together and it's perfect, and you whip out the camera and snap it! And afterwards you feel this amazing rush, like, I can't believe that just happened! I can't believe the world lined up in that way and allowed me to make this image that is too right to be real.

Here is an example of mine, from a summer afternoon when my little sister was coming back from the garden with her take:

It isn't an amazing art photograph or anything, but there was something about the light, the insane green, the budding fruit and the girl, it all just felt right. And when I saw the photo, I wasn't disappointed.

But sometimes these moments of ecstasy go wrong. You feel that glory, and then the actual photograph is just...not. And if you're a young (or just stupidly in love) photographer photographing the object of your affection, the chances it will go wrong seem...higher than usual.

The problem with photographing someone you're in love with is that you *always* think they look great. And there's something so fascinating about their face and isn't their hair so beautiful, and look at their lovely hands la la la la la. The inspiration is there in the same way, but it comes from something else. Unfortunately for everyone else who isn't in love with your boyfriend or girlfriend they're just flattering photos of moderately attractive people.