My friend Paul Strominger discovered that the panorama feature of his iPhone gives funny effects if there is a moving object in view. For example if, while panning from left to right, a car drives to the right faster than the pan then, in the picture, the car comes out backwards.
Somehow this picture of Saskya, walking about the same speed as the pan, sometimes a bit faster and sometimes a bit slower, comes out as metaphorical, although I am not quite sure what the metaphor is.
Something about that we live at one instant in time in the continuum of time. One instant is nothing in the overall flow, and everything to us as we live in that instant. And, it is confusing looking at space and time as a whole while we only live in that instant. So, we come in and out of view as our attention is in the present or not.
There are lots of (to me) interesting details if you zoom in on the picture. Saskya’s face enters and leaves the view as she passes in and out of the sliver of time that the camera was recording. There are lots of embroidered dragon flies on her purse. She moves her purse from her left shoulder to her right shoulder.
Your metaphor works on many levels, Andy.
Hi Andy:
METAPHOR: a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable.
Example: Saskya is a ball of fire.
SIMILE: a figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid (e.g., as brave as a lion, crazy like a fox ).
Example: Saskya is like a ball of fire.
Warm and loving thoughts, as always, heading their way to Saskya, you and your family.
Diana
So, a photo is neither a metaphor nor simile. What is it?
Sometimes a photo is just a photo, like a cigar.
Diana:
But can a picture be a metaphor? Or, the word “picture”. Can you pick out, say one sentence and rewrite it the way that I should have?
There is the famous (apparently false) story about Groucho Marx talking to a man who had 20 children. He asked “How is that?”. the man said “I love my wife.” Marx said “I love my cigar too. But I take it out of my mouth once in a while.” Is a cigar then just a cigar, or is it being used as a metaphor? (I think cigar is not just a cigar in that context).
That picture looks really odd, but I can relate to your thoughts of the relationship of moments to entire timespan… What I do like in this picture is you being out in this beautiful spot. In Finland, Spring in only starting to take shape, birchleaves and the nightingale remind tgat the summer in only a moment away… love Eeva
Dandelions dance in sun and Saskya with the dandelions. There are probably many poems about this. One that comes into mind from my English lessons is “…and then my heart with pleasure fills and dances with the daffodils.” By William Wordsworth
Well, the sun …always, according to Saskya! The other image that comes into mind is my mother telling that one can always see when a woman has walked through a room. The thing is that she leaves behind nice things, like order, odour of flowers, etc. But when I walk through a room I leave behind clothes, coffee cups, paper work and such. I suppose it’s just an extroverted thing…
Cool picture, interesting thoughts
When I first got my iPhone and started doing panoramas I considered getting a tripod to avoid distortions, like wavey horizons. Then I thought, why? A panorama is a two dimensional projection of a three dimensional slice of four dimensional space-time. A “normal” panorama only PURPORTS to represent a three dimensional slice that is perpendicular to the time axis, which no panorama actually is. It only gets away with the deception if it contains no moving objects. The angle of the three dimensional slice to the time axis is some angle other than 90 degrees, depending on the speed of the pan. So I don’t consider the panorama of Saskya walking across the field of dandelions as containing a funny effect, rather, I consider it as a picture as being true to its own inner essence. As a picture being honest about itself; being open, honest, real, out, and liberated.
Exactly.