“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I’m only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”
Hillel
The James Webb Telescope has sent us many wonderful images from the Universe. What are photographs? As images in light3 they are traveling through space , and when they reach a medium light, they can create an image.
like in a movie theatre where an audience member holds up a hand and a black matching area appears on the screen instead of the movie image. These images from outer space may use different light waves and this light carrying this image is very very old.
The James Webb Space Telescope’s mid-infrared view of the Pillars of Creation.Courtesy NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
How is it these Images embedded in the light traveling around the Universe in search of a medium. Maybe other life forms will will have different sense organs. All the life forms on Earth would have evolved onEarth and thus have sense organs which could experience Earth.
A photograph is an image made from light reflecting a surface, which in the reflection makes another (the reflected) image makes another image in itself, and so on.
Light coming from “gazillions of lights year away” can reach us as long as nothing is in the way, like a blackhole or a galaxy or two. But what is blacked out?
Does the image we see have some missing parts, like where the arm got between the light flow—the projector and the screen —and blocked the light and thus altered or blocked the image.?
Alameda Creek
People really like photographs and they really—really like photographs with their image in it,
This is about as close to snow as Fremont gets.
We may call a “snapshot” implying an impromtu unrestrainable reaction/response to a moment in time. Some times I wonder if Steve Jobs had that behavior in mind—if more people had a digital personal small computer and they could make photographs and pass them around digitally, then Apple could build a larger market based on “human feelings” and sell more products,
Light is traveling all over the Universe,. Or maybe its “just all over the Universe,” its not traveling at all, it stays in one place and its the latent images that travel around. .How far can it go before it dims? Does it seek to go everywhere there is no light. Or maybe light is running away from no light.
Can light light everything in the Universe? Then it would be the Universe.
One reason the iPhone is so popular is because it can make photographs and people send them directly , and instantly, to another person. Human communication.
Light with “latent images,” maybe more like a movie, traveling through the Universe, and all we need to do is to reach our hand out there, grab (record) a piece of the traveling light and print it out. We could see history and theoretically everywhere light has been there should be images except where the light has been reflected some where else, and if we could ever we can find a specific piece of light we could print it out.print out.
Does , or can, light travel the whole universe? Think about it, maybe its not the light traveling but the images like on a conveyor belt and we pick and choose which one we want.
It seems that different living things also have different as well as over lapping ranges of light perception than humans. And we can compare them, Bats using sonar detect (perceive?) the same mountains and caves we do. We share perceptions which reinforces our common knowledge.
Our eyes naturally pick and choose from the things we can see, and cannot see —know.
We have tools which can do that, tools which are not just extensions of our senses,. The investigation process has shown we have used things we could not perceive to measure things we cannot perceive.
All of that is embedded in a photograph, and you can take this photograph, call up a friend on the other side of the world, and both of you can be look at the photograph.and talk at the same time .—Oh did I s forget to say, you can record it!
EndPapers
You may think its weird I make too many photographs of my self, (and that is your right, and I don’t care what you think about this ) , but I am here, I know what I want, its convenient, and many of these images are not complimentary,—who else would allow others to see them like this except me. But they are for fun., especially those using a point-and-shoot.
I like the feeling of being caressed by the afternoon light feeling the warmth move across my body..
Walking past a fenced & screened construction site in San Francisco , I wonder a feeling about a different life.
Can I photograph something in the past—or at least in, my own past—but isn’t that what a memory is for, to remember my past, maybe I need to get past the memory.
If I make a photograph, then using a computer mix and mingle pixels, and then make a print, is that a photograph? Or is there something about the feeling of the image that instantly communicates to you —This is (or is not) a photograph ! and not a silk screen, a wood cut or an etching.
Ga te ga te par a ga te par a sam ga te Bo dhi sva ha
snaegele EmptyPage Blog 
We had dinner with some friends this past week and had several long conversations about phoning, texting, voice mail, converting voice mail to text, but very little about photographs or images. We ranged in age from 65 to 85+ and the older couple in the group doesn’t text and typically use flip phones, another person doesn’t like to text and prefers talking or voice mail, and my wife and I probably send photos as often as we text or call. I have a good friend who used to work in a visual profession and liked to paint as a hobby but changed to a verbal profession and now really only wants to talk.
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David,
I use a flip phone because I am not comfortable carrying an expensive smart phone around in my pocket, I worry with the kind of stuff I do it will get broken, and I don’t text. My wife has an iphone we use to call our son in Japan and her brother using the Line app. I use Facebook messenger video to talk to my sister in Japan . I almost always send a photograph in my emails to friends.
When I walk on the trail I listen to podcasts or Saturday’s public radio. Over the past 15 years often when I meet people listening I ask them to what they are listeneing and only twice has the person in return asked me what I was listening to.
Its hard to believe that the Russian invasion is the daily video entertainment news for the world, and in the news seems to be competing well with sports, pop culture and the political nut cases. Reminds me of Vietnam news and waiting daily for who won the “body count.”
I enjoyed your photos of San Francisco, I think there were three of them that I made at the same place. I might assume you like the photographs of Walker Evans.
David, best to you and your family for th holidays and the New Year
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