SeanBOWES

Hurtling through Time and Space

sbowes — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:09:57 +0000

http://blogs.usatoday.com/sciencefair/2009/10/13-billionyearold-light-finally-reaches-earth.html

I saw an article similar to this the other day linked off of the Yahoo Homepage.

Basically, the light from a 13.1 billion year old star’s formation has finally reached the earth. That means that the star is 13.1 billion light years away, making it the furthest and oldest thing in space that we can see (with the hubble telescope).

It fascinates me that since light travels at a constant speed, if the distance is great enough it can take a significant amount of time to travel that distance (like 13 billion years). Its almost like time travel to me. We can physically see the past of 13 billion years ago! Thats ridiculous! Thats awesome! Even our perception of our own Sun is living in the past. It takes a little over 8 seconds for light from the Sun to reach Earth, so what we see and feel is sunlight from 8 seconds ago.

Wild!

Intro to Mindfulness

sbowes — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 02:25:03 +0000

So today was the first day of a Mindfulness Meditation course I recently enrolled in.

First of all, WOW! I needed that. I feel so good right now. I have been cruising cloud 9 all night long. Anyways, the form of meditation is one in which you take time to focus on noticing, being mindful of, your self and your surroundings and/or whatever else you choose to focus on. For example, this evening we did a ‘body scan’ in which you sit or lay down and breathe and relax for a bit. Then you focus on breathing in and out, and also on the sensations you experience, and being conscious of when your mind notices something, even if it is unrelated. Always returning to the breath. (This is generally how the meditations are began.) Then the body scan begins in the bottoms of your feet. What do you notice? throbbing, tingling, heat/cold, dry/moist, the contact of your foot with your shoe or your sock or the ground, etc. You continue moving up and up and up ankles, legs, knees, thighs, back, chest, face, etc. I fell asleep at face…but it was so great. You realize so much about what your body is doing all the time that you dont notice. You learn the power of your mind to perceive. Its also very relaxing and invigorating to both body and mind.

again, WOW. so cool. try it sometime. i could go on forever…

Photography in Motion

sbowes — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 02:22:17 +0000

These are a few weeks old, but I have been a bit absorbed in other things and never got around to posting these. Alas, I took a few shots for a motion project, in which we had to utilize long exposures and panning techniques to capture motion. These are two of my favorite exposures that I got. One is an ambulance speeding through the center of town. The second is a car on the Zipper ride at the fair in my hometown.

I hope you enjoy them! This was a fun project.

Barefoot Day

sbowes — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:43:02 +0000

Today at my college there was an event called Barefoot Day. This day is coordinated by a company called TOMS shoes, which creates shoes using recycled materials and also donates a pair of shoes to a shoeless child for every pair purchased. The idea is to go barefoot for the day in order to spread awareness of the sad situation that millions of children around the world go shoeless every single day. Many of them have to walk miles over rocky terrain just to find water or to attend school. Some are even denied access to school because they do not have shoes. They are also subjected to soil-transmitted diseases which can result in severe pain, amputation, or even death, and which can be entirely avoided simply with a pair of shoes.

What I find interesting is how many people I hear saying that they would do it, except its cold, and therefore it would be uncomfortable. First of all, yeah its a little cold (High of 46 here today) but its not THAT cold. My feet are surviving pretty well and I have been strolling around campus all day. (Im not saying that it doesnt feel sooo nice to finally enter a warm building, but its not gonna kill me.) And second of all, THATS THE WHOLE POINT! DUHHH! The idea is to experience a tiny little supermarket sample of the discomfort that fills millions of children’s daily lives.

Anyways, thats what I’m up to today. I feel like I have gotten a lot out of it as far as appreciation for what I am so lucky to have every day in my life and realizing that it is not that way for quite a few people in this world. I encourage you to check out TOMS shoes or other similar efforts, or at least take a moment to appreciate the wonderful things you have. And maybe take a day to walk in someone elses shoes (or lack thereof) and see what its like. I believe that there is a National Barefoot Day organized by TOMS on June 1st if you are interested. Its actually kind of fun…i feel so free…haha

‘Crazy Angles’ Prints

sbowes — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:26:47 +0000

I developed some prints from the Crazy Angles shoot today! Check em out!

Also: let me know which are your favorites! I have to pick 4 by Monday

Black and White Printing

sbowes — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 03:14:37 +0000

I got a chance to start working in the printing darkroom today. I absolutely LOVE that process. You finally get to see your images at large size, and then when you put that piece of paper into the developer bath, its like magic before your eyes! I will never get tired of watching the image appear slowly before me on the paper.

I can’t help but think back to the 1800s when people were first experimenting with this technology and refining the process. Can you imagine how amazing that must have felt when any of the many people developing (ha!) photography processes finally washed their print in the developing solution and SHAZAM! there it is!?!? I would go nuts! I still go nuts.

I dont know if I said this already, but who cares I’m saying it again: I want a darkroom in my house. Any tips?

BTW: Ill have some example prints up by Wednesday. I’ll be doing more developing by then! I’m very excited

A New Development…

sbowes — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 22:08:34 +0000

Soooo today I developed more film. I developed two rolls I took for a project on motion (practicing using slower shutter speeds to blur actions/backgrounds of actions) and one roll I shot for a project on depth of field.

The two rolls on motion came out GREAT! I got quite a few shots that I am very pleased with (I promise I will show them once I actually make prints of them! Right now everything is negatives). I went to the Ledyard Fair for a weekend and took a lot of great shots of the rides spinning all around and crowds moving. I also got a few shots of Ethan, my little bundle of perpetual motion, and a few good shots from main street of emergency vehicles rushing by.

The other roll came out pretty alright. The project wasn’t quite as exciting as the motion one, but the shots still came out well. The only thing is that this roll gave me some trouble. I started utilizing a process called bulk loading to save some money on rolls of film. Essentially you buy a giant roll of 100ft of film (thats like 30 rolls) and use a little contraption to load it into canisters yourself. The only problem is, I forgot how many frames I loaded onto it, and there is no way for the canister to tell my semi-auto camera when to stop advancing the film, so I kept shooting, and my camera ripped the film off the center reel in the film canister. CRAP! So I go into the darkroom, and grab the end, and there is the tape that once attached the film to the central reel. I grab for the scissors to chop off the end, and they are nowhere to be found. CRAP! I close the camera, so that I can go grab some scissors, and PZZT! the camera thinks I put in another roll and starts winding it around the reel. CRAP! So I got to spend 10 minutes in the pitch black darkroom trying to scrape the smooth tape off of the smooth film so I could remove it from my camera and develop it. It was quite a frustrating process, but I did it! Now I am quite adept at working in the pitch black.

Cubist-inspired Landscape

sbowes — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:34:50 +0000

This is the most recent work of mine. I started it over this past summer, for entry into an art show at the Norwich Arts Council. It is still not quite as finished as I would like it to be, but this was created over a span of one or two weeks.

This is a view from Ericson Park on Military Highway in Gales Ferry, CT. My final work from Painting last year was a cubist study, which I really enjoyed, so I was keeping some of those ideas in mind while working on this piece.

The idea of the cubist style is that a scene does not necessarily exist exactly as a photograph might portray it. In fact, natural scenes are constantly in motion, and constantly changing. Also, what is the point in viewing a scene from a fixed viewpoint? That way you only can see one aspect of the scene. The cubists used various ‘planes’ to render a scene from several views in order to get a different idea of the 3-dimensional relationships between the forms. The impressionists also observed that certain light conditions change throughout the day and may render a scene in an entirely new way than at another time of day. There is also a bit to say about the forms of nature vs the forms of industry/man’s creations.

Well, I hope you enjoy this piece. Please leave comments and criticism, I really appreciate them.

Italy

sbowes — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:07:41 +0000

I went to the Study Abroad fair today. I have already been to the Global Exchange Office to speak with them about what’s involved and whatnot, but I figured I would go get some information (plus, by going you can be entered to get $500 off, which is never bad).

I’m fairly certain I want to go to Italy. I recieved some information about the program previously and it sounds AWESOME. The main campus is smack in the middle of Florence, which is AWESOME. I’ve also heard that they have access to lots of crazy stuff such as Michelangelo’s sketchbooks and other treasures from the renaissance which is AWESOME. Plus, all of the credits are fully transferable and I would be able to take sweet art classes there which will go towards my major. BONUS: Lorenzo D’Medici tuition = Keene State tuition.

I also talked to some other folks about some other places, such as Australia, which has a nice art program, and also an opportunity to do a 6 week independent study in India. Buuuut who knows.

So……thats basically what I am excited about. I’m planning on going during the Spring of next year. And it will be AWESOME!

Time…

sbowes — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 23:52:24 +0000

…keeps on slippin, into the future…or does it? This is something we often take for granted in the contemporary western world. Many ancient mesoamerican cultures believed that time was cyclic in nature, as opposed to linear like we think of it today.

The Mayan calendar, for example, takes the form of a couple of large stone disks. The two are not equal, ones cycle is 260 days and the other 365, but they are cycled simultaneously, like gears inside of a clock. They noticed natural cycles in nature, which often corresponded uncannily with their calendar. For example, after 52 years the two clocks would realign and repeat their sequence, and for the mayan’s this usually meant disaster (2012 end of the world anyone? The mayan calendar realigns on that year and predicts ‘drastic change.’ Interpret that as you will.) They noticed cycles in life, death, seasons, harvests, rain, disaster, luck, everything.

A lot of times, modern culture is future future future, and when I hear about these cultures I wonder if there’s something to it all. All around us things operate in cycles, the planets and stars, the water cycle, the nitrogen cycle, Kreb’s cycle and the Calvin cycle, the respiratory system, life itself. Why shouldn’t time? I wonder sometimes if we should take a break from blasting forth into the future and take some time to think about where we have been and what might be coming back around for us.

At any rate, it is compelling to me to question my preconceptions about time and try to think of it in a new way. It brings up a lot of other interesting ideas and questions, I could go on and on rambling but I will spare you. I hope this inspires you to roll it around in your own skull for a bit.