Perspective: Towards a Vanishing Point

Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

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Flowers on Fire

Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

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Spilled Buttons

Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

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Duo

“1In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. ²Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

³And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. ⁴God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. ⁵God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.”—The Holy Bible

In Genesis we learned that Creation was produced by God who worked hard for six days and rested on the seventh day which He blessed and made holy.  We will never know how big his work really is, for it extends in infinite directions in the Universe.  What we do know is that there is a pattern of symmetry in Nature.

The number two seems to be pervasive everywhere.  First there was Adam, and God corrected the prime number, and created Eve, and made it a pair.  The first human beings were two.  There is always two.  There is time to sow and time to reap what you have planted.  There is the beginning (Alpha) and the end (Omega).  You have tall people and short people.  Colors are white and black.  These two colors have created much pain and incomprehension amongst many of us.  You have the pretty women and the ugly women and we take our pick.  There are the heavy ones and the light ones.  Always the pair, the ubiquitous number two—the duo.  The list goes on and on.  You get my point.

With this idea in mind, I decided to buy a large red candle and a small green one.  On top of each candle I taped the word “Duo” and the number “2″ to make my idea more explicit.  After the composition was finished, it was exposed with my small photographic device which in English we call camera.  One picture was taken during the day, and the others were taken during the evening.  There again notice the duo—morning and evening.

Below are the pictures of two candles—one being big and the other small.  I hope you enjoy the composition.  Here we go.

Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

“If you’re not busy being born, you’re busy dying.“—Bob Dylan.  Another duo.  Good Day.

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A Mouse With an Appetite For White Cheese

The electronic device that we use to execute commands in our computers looks a lot like a mouse and that’s the name we call it.  If you look closely, its resemblance to a house mouse is remarkable.  It even has a tail, which is the cord that connects it to the CPU.  Technically, in computing, a mouse is a pointing device that functions by detecting two-dimensional motion relative to its supporting surface.  The first known publication of the term “mouse” as a pointing device is in Bill English’s 1965 publication “Computer-Aided Display Control”.

Douglas Engelbart at the Stanford Research Institute, invented the first mouse prototype in 1963, with the assistance of his colleague Bill English. They christened the device the mouse, as early models had a cord attached to the rear part of the device looking like a tail and generally resembling the common mouse.

While holding this so called mouse in my hands, yesterday afternoon, it came to my mind that I could play with this concept.  I went to the kitchen, grabbed a large portion of white cheese from the fridge, cut a small slice, and placed it in a yellowish plate.  Then I extracted a red sweater from our closet to use as a cushion for my humorous composition.

The idea was to take a picture of a mouse trying to eat a slice of white cheese.  Photography doesn’t have to be rigid, formal and full of unbreakable rules.  Photography can also be lots of fun.  This is what came out of my naughty behavior on a sullen and  rainy Sunday afternoon.

Snapshot of my HP mouse simulating to eat a slice of white cheese on an adjacent plate. I was in a playful mood yesterday afternoon. Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

Snapshot of a composition of a computer mouse and a plate with white cheese. The red cloth is one of my sweaters. If you look closely, you will see on the background, one of the computer's speakers. Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

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Waiting Within Lines

A lonely passenger waits for a bus in Panama City, Panama. (©Omar Upegui R.)

I recently finished reading and re-reading the first chapter of my new photograph book, Langford’s Starting Photography. The title of the the first part is, Picture Making. It explains in plain layman’s terms the general principles of photography that has nothing to do with the nitty-gritty techniques of photography.  Everything is explained in common-sense photography.

At the end of the first chapter, Langford, suggests several projects to apply lessons explained earlier in his book   He explains, “This first part has been concerned with ‘seeing’—with not taking simple everyday objects for granted, but observing them at mixtures of shapes and forms, with various color and pattern characteristics, and set against a background.”

In Developing a Personal Approach, Langford requests, “Throughout this section of the book, we have concentrated on looking at how controlling the elements of art and design (color, texture, pattern, line, contrast) produces strong photographs.  Make a series of five photographs which feature each of these elements in turn.”

On my first assignment I went for lines—vertical and horizontal lines.  I framed the subject within vertical and horizontal lines.  Straight vertical lines convey the feeling of strength and straight horizontal lines convey a sense of solidness and tranquility.

In the photograph above, you can visualize a strong vertical line on each side side of the structure where the young woman is sitting down and several horizontal lines of the road in front of the subject.  Automobiles are sliding gracefully along these horizontal lines.  It’s a simple composition to express the feeling of waiting for a bus that never comes.  It’s like being imprisoned between vertical and horizontal lines, thus the title of the photograph, Waiting Within Lines.

I’ll be posting my photographic progress—if any—in the posts to come.  My next assignment will be about a fast-changing active situation—fire.  Until next time, Good Day.

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Photograph of the Day: Window

(Credit: Horus @Pixdaus.com)

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Proper Written Communication

I’ve been blogging for approximately five years now.  As everyone else, I was terrified during my first few months.  First, because English is not my native language and second, because I had no previous experience in writing publicly.  I feel this is a great responsibility.

Even though I have been studying English for more than fifty years, I still consider it a challenge to communicate in English.  There are so many different ways to express an idea; and it gets even more complex if you plunge into local expressions known as idiomatic phrases or idioms.  Each English-speaking country has its own particular idioms, which mean absolutely nothing to others who don’t live in that country or particular geographical areas within that same country.

Spelling errors, typos, incorrect sentence structure, bad grammar, sloppy writing styles, and poor content will all add up to losing credibility.  If you’re not careful in ensuring that your writing follows the rules of the language, you’ll end up with only one reader—yourself.

I commit myself to proofread very carefully what I write in Lingua Franca, but now and then, some typos seem to leak between the cracks.   Considering this fact, I read my posts several days later to see if I discover some unwanted pesky typos.  I usually do, and immediately correct them.  If I don’t, please let me know.

I was surprised of the many English mistakes that are included in mainstream Web sites, newspapers and/or  magazines.  I recently stumbled upon a Web site dubbed, “Terribly Write” which dedicates valuable time to detect these English errors. The name of the author of this site  is Laura, and she follows failed English like a hound dog.

This is what she wrote on her site about this issue:

“With the billions and billions of pages floating out there in the Web galaxy—and the billions and billions of words they contain—it’s no surprise that you’ll notice an occasional typo or grammatical slip. But, every typo, misspelling, wrong word, and punctuation misstep erodes the credibility of a website.”

I believe Laura hit the nail right on the head.  Constant errors in your posts will kill your blog, not matter how hard you try to keep it afloat.   By clicking this link, you will find some of the many English mistakes detected by Laura during her linguistic explorations.  Yahoo seems to be one of her favorite targets, as you will soon find out.

Another one of my New Year’s Resolutions, is to keep Lingua Franca as clean as possible from sloppy use of the English language.  I know, it’s a steep hill that requires a lot of work and dedication.  But you the readers, deserve that and a whole lot more.  Good Day.

Source:  Terribly Write – Laura

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Photograph of the Day: Pocketful of Posies

(Credit: Pixdaus.com)

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Photograph of the Day: The Seashell

(Credit: Pixdaus.com)

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