Feeling – Heart – Mind – Thinking

Because of its nature of ambiguity, what going in the depth of our Mind has no clear picture or even the defined notion or name.  Nevertheless, we are using a kind of the name for the sake of convenience.  And, we are using a kind of words to describe each Psychological phenomena.   So, from the murky deep to clear conscious, we named each of them such as to Feeling, Heart, Mind, Thinking. 

With the advancement of the technology and the medical science, the research and the understanding toward those mechanism of the psychological phenomena were becoming clear day by day.  And the development of experimental psychology is started to show quite new fact and the reality. 

One of the experiment, which was — the two group of the volunteer was given the Adrenalin hormone (so, the blood pressure rose and the heart started pounding) and one group was told by a decoy volunteer as “I heard we are going to have a  pretty funny game after this. So, I’m very excited” and the other group heard the other decoy murmuring that “I heard that the after effect of this experiment could be very bad. I’m very much worried of this”  On the after interview, the first group told that he (she) was very excited with the expectation of fun.  But the second group answered that they felt fear.

—– The same physiological effect = risen blood pressure and pounding heart was felt by the first group as a joyful excitement.   But the second group felt it was a tension of a fear. = Each were biased to the opposite direction by the dubious suggestions.  So, the feeling could be as simple as the balance of the chemical, same as too much acid in the stomach.  And to figure it out (with the biased expression) “I’m very heavy” is your heart.  Then, describe it with more objective words “I feel very heavy” is your mind.  And you might started to think “Should I take a pil ?”

Ambiguous shadow in the deep, may not have any holy truth.   Neither Carl Jung kind of romantic belief not mention Freud’s delusion.  (Now those kind of so-called “Psychology” was dead long since = simply because no such memory device which hold like Oedipus Complex etc or unconscious memory was found under MRI —– all those were our own creation inspired by the learned story in the daily life = same as a Dream.)    So, the unconscious mind = “Heart” might be just an unsorted complication of the chemical mix. —– As you know, when you feel so crazy and hot in love, the reality was that you were just filled with Oxytocin and Dopamine in your blood. = So, you feel its urge, still as it was nothing to do with any logic or hi-level thinking, you can not describe its factor or reason in word. (In fact, if you could describe it, you were not in love but just observing third party !) —– We call such invisible drive or a vector as the Heart.   😀

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What ? — OMG, it’s Cherry flower

On the street, I found a dropped Cherry flower.   —– ?    What ?   —– I looked up, OMG it was a cherry tree started to open the flowers.   Only few days ago, there was nothing.  It’s suddenly happened.  I picked up a dropped flower and a bud to bring back.

I put the flowers on the water in a lens cap.  And took pictures.  (After a while, a bud opened as well) —– It was a kind of my habit in these days, which was to make the photos for comparison = the photo left above was taken by Sony 30 mm F3.5 Macro and the right was by Helicoid-B lens.

So, this year’s first Somei-yoshino flowers were put next to the kitchen tap = In fact, this IS my photo studio.  (All the “Studio shot” in my Blog were taken in this “Studio” !    Another funny fact was — that all those homemade lenses were made in this kitchen work shop, and almost all of my sculptures were also produced in here.)  

It’s very simple, if we need to make, make it, or just do it.   There may not need to have any good-cause or theory or facility kind.  So, if you have a knife, you can cut.  With the same knife, you can cook as well.  If you can’t, you were just clinging an excuse of not to do or even worse you might be waiting somebody to push your back.   😀     (By the way, this is in deed the way of Zen = Zen need no cause or reason to do.  In fact Zen is to eliminate anything that kind.  Therefore Mushin (Mind of No mind) still, even a mind to think No-mind shouldn’t be there, = hence “Everyday’s Mind” (Heijo-shin 平常心). That’s why to able to be in the Everyday’s mind which is nothing special / peculiar  (is so ubiquitous as a dog shit) IS the Enlightenment. 

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Screen Copy by Fuzzy Lens

The outside is still cold and not much flower, and, I’m not keen to take picture of cut flower = so, just took photo of a flower in my old post screen using very fuzzy Helicoid-B lens.

When I try, I realized that the old screen of XP laptop makes moire pattern, so I changed it to iPad screen. (though, iPad screen makes the color a bit artificial)

Following 4 set of those photos, Left side were the original and the right photos were the screen shot. (All those photos came from Somewhere Net website —– I hope they don’t fuss about the copyright)  (If you Google, you may find the same very easily)

 

Ideally, I should take the original photo myself though, I’m no longer such keen —– (and neither the model herself keen to see dirty old man.  Ha ha ha.  😀 )

I think you may agree, we don’t need to see too much details of the girls.  We are not seeing the woman like an ological specimen.   In certain extent, the beauty of the flower is the same = We only need to feel its atmosphere. (If we go into the details of the flower, often they are rather grotesque. —– after all,  flower is the sexual organ of the plant. —– or, am I a sexcist ?)

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Maple flowers

Maple tree outside (said to be Oregon Maple though, I’m not sure) is having flowers.

They don’t looks like flowers still, they must be.  As they produce the two-winged seed later.   And it seems they can pollinate themselves (or blown by the wind ?) as I don’t see any insect around.  —– There are many forms of life. (not only cherry is the flower.   😀

(Those photos were taken by Tamron 500 mm F8 mirror lens though, as it was done through the dusty double grazed window, the image was not sharp at all.)

Two weeks later, how they looks now.  Though, I haven’t necessary been kept watching all the process how their tangled red things changed to this.  Photo above left might be the female flower and the right might be the male — but not sure. (Yes, I was wrong)

You believe or not, the one above photo, the right one was taken by 1000 mm lens.  In fact, a x2 tele-converter was added to Tamron 500 mm lens. = Long time ago I bought this £5 converter as a joke, thinking to make it for a close-up ring by removing the optics.  But now I know, this was not a junk.   With x2 converter, F8 lens become F16, so that on DSLR’s optical view finder it become too dark to focus. (Unless we use live-view on the back screen)   But, mirror-less camera can show the amplified bright image, even focus-peaking is working ! = It’s their biggest advantage.   (still, 1000 mm lens was not suite for hand-held shot.)   😀      (Since I found their dropped flowers, I’ll show you =  You  can see them developing to the full winged seed.)  Then I remember, one of my Zeiss lens for Sony showed AF malfunction (hence, I realized that’s was why it was so cheap) I gave another look. = While making a test shot on manual focus.

The picture here was by Zeiss (Sony) SEL55F18Z (55mm) Aperture was set to F8 (about 1/100 sec, hand held) and to show the enlarged center as well — pretty good isn’t it !  (By the way, Winged Seed pod right was the same pod wrongly appeared as Male, before.  Well nobody is perfect.  😀 ) 

But, it might be too unfair to the other lens.  I did the same test by Micro Nikkor 55 mm F3.5 = this was the lens, the Nikon themselves named that “their best lens ever designed.” (Canon EF gives  no F-setting on Sony (unless use a £100 Sigma adapter)  and the others such as Contax, Pentax, Olympus, etc, I would give sometime another occasion.  😀 )  —– If we use the lens careful enough, and the camera has Hi-res sensor (Nikon D850 has 47.2 Mp / Sony A7R has 32 Mp ) they could produce pretty good image, without using a heavy tele-photo lens. (Just crop the picture.  Forget the “Purist’s brah brah kind”)  Anyway, Net is for harmless / useless info’chat or Joke.  😀

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Andreas Gursky Exhibition

I went an ongoing exhibition of Andreas Gursky in Hayward Gallery with my friend’s family.

The 16 months boy said to have started to walk this week.

For the boy,  it was the first experience to be in a huge space and a slippery floor.  And he seemed to be very much fond of that and enjoying.

Gursky’s huge prints are amazingly sharp and detailed —– I was wondered what size of camera he had used ?  —– Then as I discovered that they were composed from many photos etc, I lost interest.   I rather like to see such work from graphic designers.

 Photo above said to be a landscape of Tokyo though, houses standing next by next without hedges nor the gaps.  Of course, no such place could exists. (Think, how people can access to their door ? — Where is the street ?) = It’s mean, the houses in this photo were stitched-up one by one leaving no gap ! = This IS an utter fake.  Not only that, if his image of Tokyo in its “Reality” was like this, I have to doubt his intelligence. —– You can find the lords of straight photos of Tokyo in the Net, not mention National Geographic kind.   😀

Photography is the art of “I’ve seen it and I captured” —– The primary existence is the subject. Once we started to make-up and project our own image, its became a business of the designer or even a painter, not of a Photographer.

It seemed that Gursky’s interest were immense pile-up or swarms of the subjects, hence putting together and repeating many images, were natural approach though it was the commercial graphic designer’s approach.  Impress and overwhelm the others with “immense amount” were noting but a cheap trick, easy exploitation of the digital editing.

It was the snow outside.   (The Photos here were taken by either Canon fish-eye zoom 8~15mm or homemade Helicoid-B lens on Sony A7R.)

PS :  Next day I read the booklet of the exhibition and realized that Gursky applied all those stitch work / digital manipulation for the “sake of reality” and later, he wanted to have painterly effect blah blah (by taking picture of the Turner’s paintings   :-D) ….. though, very simple answer to him was that his image was not pretty,  but just messy = does anybody want to have his photo on your wall, other than a sake of snob ?   😀

To compose the image, Approach from the pattern is easy, because it can be done in logical thinking.   But esthetic beauty only come from the deep intuitive sense.  So, its easy to see why Gursky resorted with those pattern or repeating expansion in mass.  But it IS not the art, but an industrial production.   ( Or was that cynical Modern Art ?)

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Canberwell Cherry by Other Lenses

You may think, the camera was rotated but this swirly bokeh was the lens’ own aberration.

Those two were by Helicoid-B lens 

And those two were by G9 lens

Those photos above were by G10 lens

What I don’t like about this camera was, its AWB (White Balance) changes frame to frame.

And those two were by SZ lens

—– The hardest part in those photography was, to sort the photos without mix-up, not mention the trouble to capture them while holding the camera high above the head and shoot by guess-work. (You know, the Photography is a hard work)   😀  

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Camberwell Cherry by NZ Lens

While passing through by bus, I noticed that a Cherry tree in a corner of the Green was in full bloom.  So, I went back there with my camera together with some homemade lenses. 

(In this photo the red cast seemed to be created by the camera’s image processor — may be non genuine lens may not work well with this camera (Sony A7R)

Cherry itself seemed to be a primitive wild cherry, we called Yama-zakura (Mountain Cherry) in Japan, not the well cultivated Kan-zakura (Winter Cherry), nevertheless Cherry flower is the Cherry flower. (May be from the mountain standard, the climate in the town was warm enough to open their flowers.)

(The photo above left was the other tree nearby — this one seems a Plum flower)

The photos in here were taken by the lens called (or, I named) NZ lens.  It was a Nikon Zoom lens which I utilized its front element, and made it as an individual lens. (Works as a 90 mm F1.6 and able to focus down to 45 cm)  Its macro quality was not too bad though, it got a strong aberration and together with its “Fully open” F1.6 aperture (Think, 90 mm F1.6 is pretty big), it’s creates “Fantastic” fuzzy images like those top photos.  They were shot while using 10 mm extension ring.  And this fuzziness IS very unusual = it looks like a halo in the highlight which spread around still, the details and the contrast in highlight was maintained. = I never seen the image like this.   (If you agree with it.  😀 )  

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Rice Beetle

This is the Rice Beetle I found in the Italian rice after more than 60 years lapse of time.  When I was a child, we were told to pick up and remove the rice beetle from the rice, before the mother cook it.  So, we spread the rice on a news paper and corm it to sort out the beetles.  It was the norm then that the rice was infested by the small beetles, elephant rice beetles.

I don’t remember exactly when its became we no longer needed to look for the insects. Anyhow, when the Co-op rice producer started to fumigate the rice with insecticide gas, the beetles were disappeared from the rice.

Many years ago, when I demonstrated the Japanese cooking to my friend’s family, while seeing me washing the rice, a daughter of the family shouted “Hey mum, he is washing the rice” —– it seemed, that the family has been eating the rice without washing.  Then the Mum started to preach me that the goodness of the rice is in its brown skin and the bran, therefore if we wash the rice, we will lose its remaining goodness etc.  So, I told them the story that there used be a lots of insects in a pack of rice and the reason why they disappeared was because the insecticide fumigation.  To wash off its remaining chemical is far more acute problem than a bit of nutrition. 

To take a photo of this tiny insect, I needed to use x5 magnification.  (Look at its magnified details, I noticed that this carcass got only two pair of legs = its mean the chest and the head was missing. )    Among my homemade macro lenses,  I chose to use the Instamatic Macro and the LED illumination.   Still, it was always the case, improvised Hi-magnification macro is very awkward ( = x5 magnification means the image is 1/25 dark, needs minute minute focus, sensitive to the shake 5 times more etc) — nevertheless it was a fun, especially, this was the record of the very rare encounter = I met this old friend again after 60 years absence.  I was really grad to see that they ARE also surviving somewhere on the earth.  

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Instamatic-304 & its Lens

This Instamatic Camera has been sitting in my junk box rather long time = Because  1) I’m not very keen to disassemble Instamatic as I had hard time to deal with very awkward mechanism (It seemed, Kodak designer was not very smart) on the previous experience.  2) I’ve got too many similar kind of fuzzy lenses already. —– The lens on this camera has no focus adjustment, still it was made long before the Japanese one-time use camera by which omuni-focus lens became common = could mean, either very interesting omuni-focus lens or mediocre lens which rely on the small F-aperture (— when people goes out, it will be a fine day and the camera’s EE control will give a smaller aperture with deep depth of field).—– But, I’m not going to use their EE control = I’ll need to have a focus adjustment. = may need to use a not very smooth focus helicoid recently got from Ebay. —– ?

Anyhow, I disassembled the camera.  Since the camera was using only few screws to build and many parts / panels were glued down = as I anticipated, it was a very awkward hard work. (I wouldn’t recommend you to do this.   😀  )

Then I remembered,”If I need a helicoid”, I got an empty helicoid of the Canon FD lens, of which I took the lens out. (Photo left) From that empty shell, I further removed the FD mount part and the front cosmetic part. (Photo middle)

And put the lens which I’ve taken from the Instamatic-304 camera (Kodar 41mm F8 Lens) into the Canon helicoid on Sony A7R  (Photo right)

The test images of this lens were like those —–

Then, I made a fatal mistake.  After final assembly, in order to clean the lens, ( — I thought, that the white smear on the lens was caused by the plastic putty) so, I used the alcohol to clean the lens though, as this old plastic lens was not made by the today’s optical plastic but by a primitive stirole kind of plastic = the alcohol destroy the lens surface = and the image became like those.

M m m, —– even to a man who fancy the fuzzy images, these were gone too far, not funny at all.

On top of the snowy weather and CH brake down, life is hard and complicated.   Not funny at all.   😀

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Origami

I found a blog post showing the photos from the Origami exhibition of ICOA (International Collegiate Origami Association) = Those Origami exhibits were created by the Uni’ students, the members of each Origami club.   I show you one of a jaw dropping work, may be a typical Japanese Art of dedication which said to have 4~5 years of preparation and 3 weeks to make.  You believe or not, this figure of Hi-school girl was made by just a single square blue paper which got white back, without a use of scissors. 

If you can’t believe, try make the same, following the draft / pattern here by yourself. (The same one would be made but, be prepared to spend few weeks of intense work) —– may be better start with simpler practice —> you may find a lots of Youtube instruction by Googling “Origami”. = I saw some of them but soon gave up.   😀

 

The original blog ( you need to read Japanese though the photos of those Origami works are worth visiting) :nlab.itmedia.co.jp/nl/articles/1708/16/news095.html#l hoico 170816jkori02.jpg

In there you may find the ICOA info’ as well. (or, you can Google in English)

They ARE in deed the work of incredible concentration and the dedication —– might be something common with other Japanese craft though, I couldn’t figure out how the creator could foresee / plan the process = (to see the “would be shape” beforehand —

Or lots of try and error ? — then the pattern of outcome would be accumulated (so-called experience) then, further advanced variation could be tried out — and so on, —– Or, is it the same to see the effect 10, 100 moves ahead on the Go, Chess, Shorgi game ?  And the same to forecast the effects of economical / financial move ?  (They ARE all follow the rational logic = to forecast the result may be the matter of the accumulated patterns = memory power / intelligence —– is it ? 

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