The fonts went sadly awry

I have spent all morning fiddling with this blog: firstly, trying to get threed's photos up in a manner acceptable to me, then, trying to fix the fonts which went sadly awry as a consequence of my post, and lastly, trying to put in links properly. (When one writes a message in Flickr involving a link, the necessary HTML is generated for you. On this site, one has to bumble around for oneself, but as you can see, my links now a) exist, and b) form part of a coherent sentence.)

I thought I had largely ceased to covet things. Not so. I have a new wireless mouse to prove otherwise. It came with false advertising: no battery from Singapore as stated. I bunged in a battery. It works. But has no switch to turn it off. I have rung the retailer and told them that they need to improve their game. They offered to take it back, but I suspect I am too lazy to do more than alert them that they are breaking the law, selling these items minus battery. (It is clearly the fault of the company doing the packaging: there was no tampering.) So for anyone wishing to acquire a wireless mouse, perhaps you should check that a) all advertised parts are present and b) there is a switch to turn the damned thing off.

Favourite photos (2): Some of my friend threed's photos

NY 2007
Originally uploaded by threed


Cathedral ceiling Parma Italy
Originally uploaded by threed


cootie infestation
Originally uploaded by threed

My friend threed very kindly gave me permission to post her pictures. So here they are in all their glory.

David Hockney & optical projections in painting

Piece of cloth


Hans Holbein the younger, Georg Gisze, 1532

In Secret Knowledge, David Hockney argues compellingly that artists discovered how to project three dimensional images directly onto a horizontal surface and that this is the basis for the extraordinary realism seen in the work of such artists as Holbein, Vermeer, Velasquez, Caravaggio, van Eyck and many others. (He also argues that it was this capacity to project images which led to the invention of perspective in Western art.)

One of his examples is this painting by Holbein, where it can be seen (in the full painting) that the plane of the table makes several alarming changes. This, he argues, is the effect of having to fit together smaller projections to make a whole. And certainly, while all the various parts of the cloth follow the notion of perspective, there is no overall perspective driving its patterns.

In this painting, Holbein is showing off by recreating the beautiful patterns of the textile on the table, as do other artists in showing off their capacity to recreate with light and shade, the wonderful complex patterns of silk brocades as they fall in folds about the body of the wearer. (And that is what inspired the first photograph)

The arguments are compelling because the distortions in various paintings (of anatomy, & of things which should be flat) are able to be isolated to whole parts of the painting (rather than things within the painting). This painting of Holbein's is an extraordinary exemplar.

Some favourite photos

This morning when I went for my swim, I had thought that I might post (with permission) some of my favourite photos from Threed.

However, none of her photos are able to be downloaded, so I am posting links to them.

NY 2007
cootie infestation
Cathedral ceiling, Parma, Italy

I came across her photos when looking for images of Kuringai Chase: I found a picture of Grevillea buxifolia and started to explore her photo stream, which ranges from the wonderfully mundane to the marvellous. There is an enormous sense of fun, of a desire to play and explore, which has utterly reconciled me to the notion of arty-farty. I can't do it: too self-censoring and critical. But I like looking at her photos.

Disheartenment & Casuarina cones

Casuarina cones

Forest Oak (Allocasuarina torulosa)
plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&am...

At the moment, I am feeling quite dispirited with my project of photographing and identifying plants that I see.

When I look at the thread for identified plants in the What plant is that? group, it seems my requests and IDs outweigh by far those of any other person, despite my having discovered Flickr only in September.

My incapacity to look, my failure to capture the critical details of the plant, and my continued ignorance of botanical nomenclature, together with the fear of attempting to key a plant out from the very beginning as one must on PlantNet(without being able to come in at it halfway through as one can to some extent using a text book) currently overwhelm me.

Anyway, should anyone be interested in making an attempt to differentiate casuarinas, to calibrate the measure of my despair and to witness the various interactions of the Flickr plant community, double click on the image of the casuarina cones.

Reflections & sea mist

Reflections Palm Beach

With the big seas closing the beaches, and its being a public holiday, even though I went late to the beach, there were still a lot of people at the rockpool and I didn't feel comfortable with the thought of leaving my camera with my things as I swam. So I walked the beach instead.

Walking north and looking landwards against the sun, there was a shroud of sea mist, giving a wonderful light.

But coming back, I saw this reflection in the smooth water surface of a receding wave. Or more to the point, I didn't. I saw the wonderful smooth surface. Only when I had captured the image, did I see the reflections.

Is this innate or is it learnt, this failure to observe the intangible and the evanescent?


Sunlight through sea mist and Norfolk Island Pines

(Both images best viewed large. Click on them, then go to All sizes and click on large.)

Sea mist & sunlight on Whale Beach Road

Whale Beach Road, late afternoon

The tail end of the Queensland storms has brought big seas for the last three days, so that these trees on Whale Beach Road (wattle, paperbark and strelitzia) are seen with sunlight coming through a sea mist.