Category: Photography

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Photography Places

Keep the Faith

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

There’s a famous Catholic cathedral here in St. Louis: The Cathedral Basilica. It’s a beautiful building, with its green tiled dome and solid, hewn stone walls. What makes it unique, though, is its collection of mosaics. Only the Vatican has more mosaics.

Main church alter

I visited the Cathedral this week to scope it out for photographs for the MissouriGreen site. All visitors are welcome, with the only limitation on no photography in one small chapel to the side. They provide formal tours, but there are usually people about answering questions, providing stories of the mosaics, and the Byzantine architecture that inspired it. For instance, did you know that the balconies in many earlier churches were added so that pilgrims who traveled from afar could camp out there at night?

Church Balconies

The cathedral has three inner arches, with the main one over an inner dome with a white marble statue of Jesus Christ on the cross. On either side are chapels, four in all, and each very different from the others. There’s also a museum, though I spent my time this first visit wondering about the main area.

I didn’t take a tripod, but will my next visit. I also didn’t have strobe lighting, and as such had to use the camera flash or a fast (and grainy) ISO and large aperture. However, I’ve seen photographs of the Cathedral all lit up and it doesn’t do the Church justice. The magic of the place is the muted shadows of the simple, dark wooden pews, and the dark gray of the limestone and marble walls, offset by the color of the glass tiles–all around you, above you, high above you so that you stand staring up until you become dizzy with the effort.

(I have been reassured that if I wish to lay down on the ground to take photographs of the ceiling, I am more than welcome, and they’ll try not to step on me.)

The Resurrection Mosaic

The mosaics range from a very old Italian style created by Tiffany’s of New York, to very modern style. One section depicts scenes of the Church in St. Louis, including images representative of various Native American tribes in the area. The other sections of the cathedral portray traditional bible stories. Surrounding the scenes are geometric shapes, brilliant in color, filling in here and there: on podiums, around alters, and even on signs. Not gaudy though, because of the quiet neutral color of the stone and wood–little in the way of gold work, and that mainly in touches of gold leaf, or brass.

Mother Mary and Child

There are only two relatively colorful stained glass windows; in fact few windows at all. It’s not a dark place, though. The lighting is soothing rather than penetrating, and even that on the tiles is just enough to display the pattern without overwhelming.

It’s hard for me to say what was my favorite mosaic. Probably the more modern ones because of the unusual scenes and subtle coloring. There was one, though, in the lobby, that caught my interest. It showed Christ holding up his hands in a gesture of welcome, and surrounding him were the words:

I have fought a good fight. I have kept the faith.

mosaic of Jesus Christ

I rather liked the seal because its focus was on faith rather than religion; after all, keeping the faith extends beyond church, book, and priest.

I fight the good fight; I keep the faith. Sometimes that’s all I have in life, but I’m not religious. I like to believe that the rules, the dogma, the small and large intolerances come from religion; the acts of kindness and beauty, the serenity of place come from faith.

Slideshow of the photos

Categories
Photography

Picture This

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I haven’t been out indulging in my photography as much. Both my contract and book have (had) the same set of deadlines so there were few days I could do more than take a quick walk in the park.

Now, I’m in the last stages of the contract, and the editing phase of the book, but the weather has been terribly hot and humid. I hope, knock on wood, to have some nice days later this week. I wouldn’t mind a longer road trip and some time just to be away from the computer.

What photos I have taken I’ve scattered about my other domains, primarily as filler until I can get the sites’ look all pulled together. Since much of my writing lately is in the web page development, I am experimenting with Ajax/DHTML effects. Using such intensive levels of JavaScript means they can’t go live until absolutely checked out. While that occurs, a plain page with a couple of photos is better than an empty directory.

(You can see a little of this with the Dojo tools fisheye effect I’ve used at ScriptTeaser. I need to add an accessible alternative for non-JavaScript users, but I am really fond of Dojo tool’s fisheye effect. I’ll have more on this in ScriptTeaser when it goes live.)

As for the photos, I did visit Johnson Shut-Ins after it opened, and put together a show of some of the photos. Eventually, I’ll pull all the photos into a long, multipage story on the Shut-Ins at MissouriGreen, but you can see what a billion gallons of water can do to a mountain at a temporary photo gallery here. I talked with a park employee and she mentioned how ecstatic the geologists in the region are, because they normally can’t ’see’ the layers of rock that make up the Ozarks. The flood cut a path down the mountain to the bedrock, and managed to scatter an amazing variety of rock all over.

Back to photos. Eventually, most of them, as well as my ’softer’ writing—stories, reflections, and so on—will go on to The Book of Colors site I’ve longed to put together. First, though, I have to figure out a format for the site, and how best to display both photos and stores. This has not been easy, as I’m having the devil of a time with site design. I’m tired of the same old looks, the centered pages, the conservative colors.

As if you can’t tell with my cockeyed, off-center look and sharp, pure colors. I must warn you, I’m in a mood for color. Bold vivid color. Odd shapes. Contrast. Rule breaking. It may get a little intense at times. Maybe even a little disconcerting. Perhaps I’ll design a special set of ‘rain mist’ glasses for my good friends to wear when viewing the sites.

Categories
People Photography Weblogging

Lonely impulse

One of my favorite webloggers has been very quiet and I did my usual, which was go into the comments of his last post in preparation of putting in a comment about being quiet, missing him, that sort of thing. Another had already been there, and commented the same, but what stopped me was the response. The weblogger wrote back about getting inspired of this topic or that, but asking himself was he going to a pleasant and helpful person with his writing, and upon answering himself, marked the items as read and went about doing other things.

I thought about emailing the weblogger and telling him he’s missed, and he’s cherished, and we love all his bits no matter if they were “pleasant and helpful” or “acerbic” and even more helpful. But I decided, and this is the reason I don’t name him specifically, that he has to make his own decision about the value of his weblog to himself–I have no right as reader to scold him, as if he’s withheld a lolly by not writing to his weblog. As a reader, the only right I have is to read, or not.

Being a person who also feels friendship with the weblogger, I have even fewer rights. The only right we have is to feel friendship, express it, but we can’t demand a thing in return. We may think we’ve given a precious gift, and as such the other owes us something in return. They don’t owe us a damn thing, and that makes life interesting, challenging, and sometimes, disappointing.

The greatest leap of faith is not based on how we feel about God, all apologies to Kierkegaard. It’s how we feel about one another. Those who study yoga, who sit in silent contemplation of self for hours at a time–they may think they are discovering much about themselves, but what they are doing is creating a walled garden about themselves; building barriers against the binds and ties with others; these connections that we can’t control and that can go from gentle and fulfilling companionship to wild fury in an instance–like the mustang on harness, lipping sugar from our hands one moment, demanding freedom with sinewy strength and desperation the next.

I can empathize with my friend, the weblogger. I’ve felt the last few months that much of what I’m saying seems to be counter to something, or in disagreement with someone–verbally, I’ve been drop kicking the puppies, kittens, and bunnies in our midst. And why not? They raise their butts in the air, they taunt us, demanding kicks. And when I blaze forth in words, the site seems to come alive and sparkle and we’re all engaged and everything seems to click. Most importantly, no puppy, kitten, or bunny was truly harmed in the writing of the screed. When I kick the proffered butts, I send the puppy or kitten or bunny flying higher than it would reach, sitting on the ground looking harmless. And cute. And innocuous.

When the coin of the realm is attention, we all benefit.

Nothing changes, though. I have not built anything during that time. I have not created a great work of writing or art. I have not added to my book, or worked on that new RDF application I’ve had in mind. All I’ve done is fluff what was already fluffy, and polish the shiny parts.

But the attention feels so good! What, you think that for all my talk of disdaining attention I don’t like it? We all like it. Some of us even crave it–like that horse and the sugar. We crave the feeling of connectivity–I bet even the most popular of us counts comments, feeling them, fondling them like sugar cubes in their pockets. That’s an apt analogy, too, because the attention we get is the sugar that also keeps us acquiescent and tamed to the hand.

A fortune I found in a cookie yesterday read:

Your artistic talents win the approval and applause of others.

Emily Dickinson sat at her desk in her home for decades, writing poem after poem, which she would sew into little books and then place into a chest. She asked that they be burned on her death. We, of course, betrayed her to our own good. Most of us, however, write what could be safely burned with little loss. That is our purpose: we are Not Emily. The Emilies need us Not Emily. If we were all Emily there would be no Emily.

It wasn’t just her talent that set Emily apart from other poets. Emily’s writing is unique in that her words are written in a state of being that is absolutely adrift from any other human being. She had achieved a perfect dis-connectivity in her writing. There was no desire to please, or displease in her work; there was no reaching out; no attempt to initiate emotion in others. She was both creator and consumer–the play and the audience. Her writing just was.

Emily found the same state discovered by the Irish airman in my favorite William Butler Yeats poem, An Irish Airman Forsees His Death: she had found her lonely impulse of delight.

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

Should my friend return to weblogging? Well that’s a decision he’ll have to make for himself and one with which we have no influence. I won’t lure him, though, into returning, with hints of attention and promises of continued readership and expressions of kinship. He knows I like his writing, but that may not always be. He knows I like and respect him, but people change and life goes on.

Categories
Photography Places

Glass in the garden

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

My roommate was home from work early yesterday so I took the opportunity of having the car during the day to make a quick trip to the Botanical Gardens.

There was a great deal of activity–more than I would expect on an overcast Friday afternoon. However, the unveiling of the Chihuly Glass in the Gardens happened yesterday, and the Children’s Garden officially opens Monday, so that’s two major events rolled into one.

Me? I was there for the iris–they’re just now in bloom.

What I was surprised to find is that the Chihuly glass pieces aren’t limited to just the Climatron–our famous domed conservatory. There were bits of glass sculpture all over the park. Needless to say, I spent a merry time taking photos.

 

 

The Botanical Gardens staff was originally reluctant about the glass display. The park features art, true. But it’s always been secondary to the plants. The Chihuly glass demands, and gets attention.

Still, the glass doesn’t stop the flowers. In fact, they complement each other–blown glass has a very floral feel to it. I imagine that during the Thursday night Chihuly in the Park nights, when all of the glass is lit and the music is playing that the effect will be magical. Can’t wait to go.

 

Categories
Just Shelley Photography

In celebration of Earth Day 2006

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Hold on. Hold on. Stop the break. I almost forgot to post my traditional Earth Day offering of photos. This Earth Day I’m featuring photos from the Show Me Mobile Aquarium; the large semi-truck size fishtank filled with native Missouri fishies currently on display as part of the Earth Day offerings at Powder Valley Conservation Center.

There’s a new self-portrait at the end of the post.

This year the tank had something different: an inner tank with goldfish. I figured that the goldfish might be food for the other fishies. The longnose gar were particularly interested in them.

I was interested in the longnose gar; fascinating creatures, who would follow me as I moved around. It could be they hoped for food, but I think it might have been the camera lens. It did look something like their own eyes. Perhaps they thought I was the Great Gar–god supreme of long nosed fishes.

After all, did I not make little fishies fall out of frustrating see through cave?

The corner of the goldfish tank had an aerator, which the goldfish would swim into and through. As I was looking about, I noticed that one goldfish was on the other side of the goldfish enclosure, frantically trying to get back into the enclosure. There was a bit of water weed next to the inner tank, and in it I noticed two other goldfish hiding. The poor fish were getting caught up in the aerator and then pushed over and out of the inner tank into the outer.

The Great Gar provides.

The gas prices are rising and rumor has it they’ll top out over 3.00 a gallon and not go back down. I wouldn’t mind–perhaps now people will give up their monster trucks and tank-size gas guzzling SUVs. But the money forms an almost obscene amount of profit for oil companies, and I do tire of this.

If the money went into cleaning up the air and water, I would be more positive.

Last week I pulled up next to this huge, shiny and chromed black truck at the light. Two guys were in it, looking cool. I was so tempted to lean out and ask them if they’ve had to haul any pigs to market lately, but didn’t. Someday I won’t have to say it, and the guys won’t look cool in a truck too big for most people’s needs.

When I finish my project and book, I’ll have to think about how I’ll handle my end of work travel treat. I had originally planned on driving, from east coast to west. Now I’m thinking it would be better, and cheaper, to take a train or some such thing. Especially since even with a sleeper, it might be less expensive.

But I like driving, and traveling by car. I think we’ll need to look at different ways of road trippin’ in the future. Perhaps a ride share trip planner with others of like mind.

However, I also like my solitude when I travel. Me in the car with my music, discovering something new around each corner; following my own whim of which road to take. I have seen the most amazing things in my travels. Some folks crowd into a church, close their eyes, and pray for miracles. They don’t understand.

It’s a beautiful day today, but no drives as I have work I need to do this weekend. And the car is in the mechanics again. A different mechanic. They spent four hours looking for the squeak and couldn’t find it. They only charged us 20.00. Good new mechanic (Dobbs on LaClede and Watson in St. Louis).

We moved the deadline of the book up in preparation of an earlier publication date. Since we’re far enough along, I’m comfortable releasing the title for the book without fear of The Jinx. The book is Learning JavaScript. It’s a good all around introduction to all aspects of JavaScript: the basics of the language, the browser and document object models, Ajax/AJAX and DHTML, and all the nifty tools and libraries–how to use and how to create one’s own.

It’s not a reference book; I leave that to O’Reilly’s excellent Definitive books. It’s how you (yes, you) can quickly and comfortably get up to speed with JavaScript/ECMAScript.

I’ve returned to the same writing style and format that I used with Developing ASP Components, and that book did very well, so I’m confident this one should do nicely.

Lots of people unhappy about this opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, but the writing is good and some of the points are valid. The Shiny Happy People will like it. I loved the following:

I don’t think the blogosphere is breeding cannibals. But it looks to me as if the world of blogs may be filling up with people who for the previous 200 millennia of human existence kept their weird thoughts more or less to themselves. Now, they don’t have to. They’ve got the Web. Now they can share.

Best post and comment section on this weblog:

Dear Jerry and matt: what you guys need is a blog. You are two people, right?

Let me share more of my thoughts with you. Stop me when I get to the part with, …I liked to be tied up when….

Speaking of intimacy, I have a question for you straight guys: are you as comfortable chatting with the women online as you are the guys? Or do you sometimes think to yourself that a woman might be getting interested in you, and does this make you more reticent?

Are you more comfortable with a woman friend when one or the both of you is attached to another? There’s a significant difference in age? In geography? What makes a woman ’safe’ for you?

How about you ladies: what makes a man safe for you?

(Adjust questions accordingly if you’re gay.)

Just as an FYI, though many of you are sexy as hell, I’m *not interested romantically in anyone I’ve met through weblogging. I hope no one’s heart is broken by this. I also hope no one is feeling too relieved.

Now that this is out of the way, we can all be friends. Just being friends isn’t rated highly enough. I suppose it doesn’t sell books or movies. Or Hallmark cards.

This probably makes me sound like a sad person, but I get more excited at seeing a marvelous new bird, a wondrous new mountain range, walking by the ocean or on a new trail in the woods, traveling, having a giggle or ramble with friends, working for a cause, reading a really great piece of writing, seeing or even trying to create, a special photograph, tasting something new, a good movie, and even creating an amazing work of technology then I do at the thought of going on a ‘date’.

Of course, any of the above with someone who complements the moment is okay (no, dammit spell check leave it alone); even nice. But my joy in the experience is not diminished by lack of companion.

That’s it–I’m officially one of those. I’ll have to start carrying bags made out of straw and make the pilgrimage to Mexico.

Earth Day, 2006. Yes, I liked the Wall Street Journal article earlier. This one however, is based on missing statistic, overinflated biased recordings, self serving data in order to promote you all buying more more more, so that companies in the world can make profits off your eventual misery. Supposedly the reason for all the scientific concern being expressed now about global warming is because those who speak ‘truth’ (i.e. against the concern) are intimidated into silence. I have only one thing to say to the author: may your children and your grandchildren grow to adulthood and live long in just the kind of life you want to give them.

Do you all realize that if we make one change in our lives, we can make a significant impact on the environment? Yes, if we drive a car with better gas mileage, walk more, take a bike more, recycle, and use environmentally friendly products, we can make a difference.

Did you know one of the most romantic dates you can go on is go for a walk? Take along a basket with a little bread, cheese, wine, and fresh apples. Cloth napkins, and real plates say ‘class’.

Sure you have time. Don’t tell me you don’t have time. It only takes 10 minutes to make an egg sandwich for breakfast–you don’t have to throw another piece of plastic (and the container it comes in) into the microwave.

Sexy isn’t clothes, you don’t need 100 pairs of shoes, and the woman or man that can get by wearing last year’s clothes this year and next and and next and next and maybe even the next is the woman or man who has learned how to spit downwind instead of up.

The economy won’t go belly up if you don’t overspend this year.

Apple will recycle your old Apple products safely. Many schools and non-profits will take your old computer equipment (as long as it works). Linux will run on PCs that are years and years old.

If you download music, there’s less plastic used for CDs. If you buy a new computer every 4 years, instead of the average of 3, you save money and there’s less motherboards and old casings in landfills.

Buying produce in larger containers and re-packaging into your own reusable containers at home is cheaper and more earth-friendly than buying in small containers.

If you buy that, you’ll have to dust it. If you buy that, it will break. If you buy that, you’ll have payments. If you buy that, no one will fall in love with you.

Except if you buy my book when it comes out. If you buy it, I’ll love you. And you’ll be able to get it digitally. Digital books are pro-environment.

Digital photography is pro-environment.

And no tree was harmed–or acts of cannibalism committed–in the making of this weblog.

*And my heart belongs to Johnny Depp.