I have built a better mousetrap, and deployed it for the mouse in my kitchen:
Better Mousetrap as deployed under kitchen sink.
I did not put my better mousetrap under a basket
(come on, nobody does that!),
but it’s deployment under the kitchen counter, raises other questions:
How do we know the better mousetrap is behind the cabinet door?
Schroedingers-mousetrap– is it behind the door?
If it is behind the door, how do we know whether it caught the mouse?
Schroedinger…
Schroedinger?
Sunbleached, old redwood planks suck in a lot of paint — even acrylic paint.
I asked around, the answer: if you want a bright picture, use lots of white paint.
Artist’s vision, composite image, taken from rock paintings at Sego Canyon 1100–1200 AD~ acrylic on redwood fence boards with gel coating, 2012.
The Anasazi and their sometime neighbors such as the Fremont culture, and later the Utes, had no white for rock painting (for pottery yes, rocks no).
What they had was yellow or yellow ochre (from corn and various grains), black (from last night’s fire) and red or red ochre (from the blood of insects).
Where to buy a bucket of insect blood nowadays?
Nowhere. So, I went to the paint store, bought several tubes of acrylic reds and yellows and a black. And then I stepped further out of the indian cultural tradition and got a big tube of acrylic white, too.
About 18 coats of paint later, the photo at left shows what it looks like now.
Peter Neibert at Kentfield
2012
In the late 1960’s I bought a couple of rolled Cambodian Temple rubbings in Hong Kong — said to be from Angkor Wat, pre Khmer Rouge. This appears to be a dancing Shiva (paired with a sitting Buddha, in another frame, both framed under glass in Japan about 1970).
Inside measurements of the Shiva frame are about 23″ x 33″ . The image is chalk on rice paper, rubbed wet and dried. Depth is about 1/4″.
Cambodian Temple Rubbing, dancing Shiva, chalk on rice paper
So, now what? Fate has provided a 1″ slab of marble with rounded external edges — about the same size and shape of the Dancing Shiva, 32″ wide x 43″ on vertical center-line from highest point to the mysterious break.
1″ marble slab at place of rest in Kentfield
How about that?
Walk around the pictographic panels at Sego Canyon to see something like this photograph.
The main figures are nearly life size — or perhaps they are life size for a race of people slightly smaller than us.
The dark green-black colors are “desert varnish,” lichens that adhere to the stone over time. When you stand very close to the Guardian figure at left, you can see slight evidence of the original (ancient) red pigment.
Sego Canyon faded pictograph in sunlight
In a faithful photograph, the pigment doesn’t come thru faithfully to the viewer.
Below I used Photoshop’s curves to bring out the surviving color. As you see, it’s a bright red. If I wanted to recreate the pictograph as it looked “brand new” (perhaps 1,400 years ago), I would use the red you see further below, and also use Photoshops controls to remove desert varnish from the image.
Ancient Alien enthusiasts point to images like this as proof of their theory
Red pigment painted on rock before “desert varnish” covered it.
The good news about Sego Canyon is that it’s close to I-78, so anybody can go there. The bad news of course is the same — look closely to see bullet holes, modern era grafitti and the effects of well meant but but regrettably imperfect restoration work.
The Guardian at the left of this panel is similar color pigment but rather more deteriorated by its heavy coating of desert varnish.
Morning, night or afternoon you never know how the sun will treat images on stone when you finally get there.
South of Sego Springs and across the river — when you look back from the south bank of the Colorado (20 miles east of Moab), you see these square shouldered, robed spirits coming out of the valley away in the distance, below.
Seen them before? Well, maybe… actually, yes: in the Great Gallery in Horseshoe Canyon.
The left-most panel contains The Holy Ghost grouping of life size figures. The Holy Ghost himself is tall, straight robed, square shouldered. Like these forms below.
There are many theories about the Holy Ghost image. My theory is he came from here.
So, why didn’t the 2 Old Men in a Jeep get closer and take a decent picture? The trail was blocked off by a movie company from Hollywood, California. Their security guard did not speak English, French or Japanese. So we left and found a dude ranch, which took us in for lunch.
Canyon Lands, near Moab, Utah, 2010
You can hear the wind pressing through the red rock canyon. You might think it’s the Three Gossips whispering, but they’re not.
Poetic fantasy or sunstroke, they’re really stone.
No talking, please.
Near Moab, Utah.
Foundry shoe making forms align behind a building in western Colorado.
Maybe they’ve walked on by.
Whose National Monument ? it’s in Chinle, Arizona, so it must be ours. Well, it’s all inside the sovereign territory of the Navajo Nation.
Let’s not argue that again. Just be content that it means no fee to visitors like you and me. It also means that you are in brutal sunlight that washes out the scenery during most of the day.
I found one wall I could get behind and hood my camera (actually, I used my sun hat) to take this picture in the middle of the day.
And then I was gone.
Cairns in Shorebird Marsh, Corte Madera, Marin County (behind Cost-Plus). Watch birds and chase rabbit6s here. And at least one skunk.
Summer sunrise lights up Panamint Valley and its mountains to the west side.
Behind the camera is the Panamint ridge and behind that is Death Valley, and the sun arising. From my spot the reflective sunrise presents a momentary view worthy of a medium format hasselblad. Even bigger would be better – but I don’t want to carry anything bigger.
This is one of those shots you have to get up early for and stumble around in the piedmont gravel and brush. You’re trying, before sunrise light passes over, to get back to that place you think you remember from last trip – or maybe it was the trip before that.
This time you’re carrying about 30 pounds more equipment than before. How do those big name photographers get assistants to get up at 3:30 a.m. and carry it all without paying them? Note to self: engage unpaid tote-man. They call them interns. Self, get an intern.
Well, I got no intern. What I got is a couple of hard disks full of scenes like this of the American West. This week I finally put-up a group of 40 medium format, California landscape images in Gallery 40 (two pages on this blog). If I had found this photo file betimes, I would’ve put it in the Gallery and changed the number to 41. It’s my favorite of the bunch.
Everybody needs a picture of early morning sunrise over San Francisco — the sun poking through the north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Here’s one of mine – I’ve donated its use to the Meg Whitman campaign for Governor of California.
The way to take a picture like this is to hang around the Marin Headlands for a long time, months, even years, scouting out angles to view the gate, the bridge and the city.
Then one morning when you think the sunrise is going to flare and do something spectacular, you get up and speed to your favorite place in the dark before first light. Set up your camera gear in the cold fog and shiver. Then most of the time there is no sunrise. Just the blackness fading to the faintest gray, and gradually a little more gray than dark. And then that’s it – it’s over, you can go home and wonder why you do things like this.
And then you do it again.
