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At the end of 2013, I listed my 13 instants for the year. I continue to be fascinated by how we look at the world in square format in contrast with 4-by-3 or 3-by-2 formats. It’s not exactly the throwback to a distant past with square photographic plates, but the same physical and photographic principles regarding central symmetry apply. Here are 14 ‘fotograms’ from 2014, including a new 6D, watching my father die, and a return ‘home’ to Deutschland.
• Sights of the Weihnachtsmarkt: bright lights; Christmas pyramid; red and yellow stars; unveiling of the Backwaren (backed goods) made especially for the holiday season.
• Sounds of the Christmas market: the klang of full mugs distributed and empty ones collected, shouts of laughter from conversations scattered throughout the area.
• Smells and tastes of the Christmas market: candied almonds, cashews, and peanuts; roasted chestnuts; balls of fried dough with powdered sugar; mugs of hot mulled wine, available in several fruit flavours; grilled bratwurst; fried potato pancakes with apple sauce.
When the Christmas season brings out special baked goods, it’s time to pay attention. In Heidelberg, my favourite café in the university town doesn’t hold back as photos of the “Backwaren” (baked goods) show. There’s something for everybody at Café Gundel.
And on it goes: small lifetimes can be spent, seeing, smelling, and sampling the entire collection.
“Noch einen Wunsch?”
“Something more?“, asks the lady behind the counter when I’ve ordered a few of this and a few more of that.
“Das war’s. Komm ich wieder morgen …”
“That’s all. I’ll come back tomorrow …” I reply, with the sound of hope and promise in my voice. I’m sure she’s heard it all before. And yet, she humours me with a smile and a chuckle.
“Wir sind noch für Sie da …”
“We’ll still be here …”
It sounds like an unusual pairing, for science and Christmas to come together in a place called Anatomiegarten, or Anatomy Garden, in the German university town of Heidelberg.
During the Christmas season, the Anatomiegarten is host to one of the key Christmas market locations along Heidelberg’s main street (Hauptstrasse). Prominent are two names from a historical and scientific perspective: Bunsen and Kirchhoff.
Berlin is one of my favourite cities in the world. Since visiting the German capital city the first time in 2002, it’s been an ongoing love story, which now is entering a second decade.
There are a massive number of sights throughout Berlin, but to get a sense of the city and her people, I’ve always believed in combining public transport (trains!) with lots of “pounding the pavement” on foot. The photographs above are personal measurements of motion, geometry, a sense of place, and of locations around the “Hauptstadt.” Upon reflection, I’ve consciously chosen images which are (mostly) out of the direct spotlight of visitors, and even at well-visited locations, I’ve chosen a a longer focal length and/or a tighter crop to show a different point of view.
There are some certainties to making a photograph:
But make enough photographs, and three realities make themselves known. These arrive gradually, surprising you with their frequency and constancy. But you’ll eventually recognize the universal truths behind what it really means to make a photograph.
And this is where physics is a useful analogy, without the math.
When I was at university, one mandatory course was thermodynamics, the study of relationships between heat (thermal energy) and other forms of energy including mechanical, electrical, or chemical. It’s a way of understanding how heat transfer is described, and the various ways energy can be transformed or exchanged within a physical system.
What does this have anything to do with you? Thermodynamics is a driving factor behind weather in the atmosphere, water currents in the oceans, how refrigerators, heat exchangers, water kettles work, among other applications. Thermodynamics plays a role in our everyday lives.
In words, the Three Laws of Thermodynamics are:
The poet Allen Ginsberg created theorems, restating and applying the three laws of thermodynamics to “the game of life”:
I attempted to photograph large waves pounding the rocks at Sydney’s North Bondi. As I hunted for the “perfect crash,” I began to think a lot about thermodynamics. In a crazy wave of thought, I got down to my “Three Laws to Making Photographs”:
It’s good to know I’ve put some of that physics training to good use, and I’ve been responsible in raising the “total entropy of the photographic universe” by a small amount, after amassing 75000 exposures with a single camera.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time I headed out to continue my futile search and photograph that elusive moment of pure clarity …
I made the photo above from Bondi Icebergs at South Bondi in Sydney, Australia on 3 June 2013. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins.com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-3qx.
Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman provides a beautiful treatment of thermodynamics in his renowned 1963 Physics Lectures, complete with the math.
Fotoeins Fotografie 