jesse_the_k | photo: Recursive Lake Appreciation

Final photo from my pontoon boat adventures back in September.

Ten minutes after sunset, the black downtown skyline is highlighted by red, orange, yellow streaks quickly fading into a deep blue sky. The left-most passenger holds up a smartphone camera to capture a picture much like this one.

described above

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

goss

Oooh, the colour gradient! Love the recursiveness. :D

From:

jesse_the_k

Thanks!

From:

sonia

What a beautiful capture! The recursiveness is perfec.t

From:

jesse_the_k

Yes, I did indeed inhale Gödel Escher Bach as a young'un.

From:

colonelborkmundus

Oh, that is a beautiful sunset!

From:

jesse_the_k

All sunsets are beautiful, and this one was extra-special. Only time I've seen such a southwestern color palette in the upper midwest.

From:

runpunkrun

I love photographs of people taking photographs. Actually seeing the photo they're taking adds a whole other level to it. Great shot!

From:

jesse_the_k

I grew up in a family which always had at least two Polaroid cameras, and half my childhood is "people taking pictures of people taking pictures." I can testify that it's a genre with lows as well as highs.

Do you have particular favorites you can point me to?

These Polaroids had an early, sloppy, "autofocus," so parental units were forever urging us to "hold up a finger". No, none of the pictures I have had that finger, but it's still a suboptimal composition.

$runpunkrun: portion of koch snowflake fractal, text: snow fractal (snow fractal)$

From:

runpunkrun

The first one that comes to mind is a family photo of about eight of us all lined up for a group shot taken by one family member. Meanwhile, my dad was standing slightly off to the side taking another photograph. EVERYONE in the group is looking at the first photographer except one of my cousins, who's looking straight at my dad with a huge grin. The other photographer isn't in the shot, but can be inferred.

Of published photographs, I can't point to any specific ones, but The Lost Photographs of Captain Scott: Unseen Images from the Legendary Antarctic Expedition by David M. Wilson does include several which is notable because they're in ANTARCTICA and it's absurdly delightful that there are somehow TWO people taking photographs out there on the ice.

From:

jesse_the_k

The ghostly photographer is inferred! That's great.

I'll have to launch an expedition to find that book. Puts me in mind of 30toseoul's fabulous journal.

From:

runpunkrun

I was lucky enough to borrow the book from the library. It's BIG in a large square way, and is mostly photographs with a little bit of history for context.

30toseoul's journal was such a fascinating glimpse at a world so few people see. I went through a huge polar exploration reading kick in like 2013, but I still haven't read Big Dead Place, which 30toseoul recommended more than once, a modern look at the people working down there.

From:

jesse_the_k

Big Dead Place is gathering nanites in my ebook collection -- I guess I could read it. BTW that press hosts lots of very strange books.

30toseoul's writing inspired me as well! I enjoyed Lucy Jane Bledsoe's murder mystery the Big Bang Symphony, a murder mystery and Kim Stanley Robinson's Antarctica.

Did you have a south polar-expedition history you'd recommend?

$runpunkrun: portion of koch snowflake fractal, text: snow fractal (snow fractal)$

From:

runpunkrun

Sadly I do not! None of the histories I read about the South Pole were good enough to recommend. I still have some reading to do in that area, though, including Ernest Shackleton's own South: the Endurance Expedition.

During that same time I tried to read Kim Stanley Robinson's Antarctica, but found it extremely plodding and gave up, which is a shame, because Antarctic science fiction is extremely relevant to my interests.