Four things I did not know about Edweard Muybridge
Y’all know Edweard Muybridge, right? He settled a very old argument and kind of fathered the moving picture in the process.
Horsey folk had argued for ages whether a running horse ever had all four hooves off the ground at once. Muybridge was a well-known photographer in California when Leland Stanford (former governor, race horse owner and founder of Stanford University) hired him to answer the question. Took him years to work it out, but Muybridge eventually wired a bunch of cameras along a track with tripwires, ran a horse down it and got the answer.
Which was: everybody was wrong. People in the NO camp believed a horse always had at least one hoof on the ground. People in the YES camp thought they were all four off the ground, with the front legs aiming frontwards and the back legs aiming backwards. Like a rocking horse. Whee! Turns out…well, look at the picture.
Muybridge went on to take upwards of 100,000 photos of people and animals in motion. Which is, to this day, a cherished reference for animators and illustrators. Lumme some Muybridge!
So anyhow, I was looking up the date of that first definitive horse series (1877) and I discovered four things about him I did not know before.
He was English. Born in Southwest London in 1830. He moved to the States in his mid-twenties. He was born Edward Muggeridge, but apparently decided his name needed a little weirding up. Which explains why you’ve never heard of an Edweard or a Muybridge before (unless you have, in which case — do tell!). He got some nasty head injuries in stagecoach accident in San Fran, which may have left him a little…cracked.
Also, he killed a guy and got away with it. He discovered his wife had taken a lover — a certain Major Larkyns — tracked him down, said “Good evening, Major, my name is Muybridge and here’s the answer to the letter you sent my wife” — whipped out a gun and BANG. Shot him dead.
His insanity plea (on account of his brain damage) was rejected, but it was ruled a justifiable homicide anyway. On account of, diddling other men’s wives was considered really unacceptable then.
Oh, a fifth and final thing — he then dropped his son off at an orphanage, assuming him to be Larkyn’s boy. Poor bastard grew up to look just like Muybridge.
Good weekend, folks!
February 24, 2012 — 11:14 pm
Comments: 27
Dutch lady shoots herself annually
This Dutch lady is Ria van Dijk. When she was 16, she went to the shooting gallery at an amusement park in Tilburg, Holland. When she hit the target, the booth automagically took a picture. That was her prize.
So — what the hey — she went back every year. Well, excepting 1939 to 1945.
She’s still doing it. She’s 88. And she’s put them all together in a book.
That sort of thing totally warms my cockles.
Good weekend, everyone!
February 3, 2012 — 10:07 pm
Comments: 23
Butt-crack daisy
I’m going to be the #1 Google hit for “butt-crack daisy” or my name isn’t Seraphina Terwilliger Weasel. (Original photo is a Man Ray).
I’m not yet. Feh. Google used spider me in really fast, back in the day.
Interesting…when I did a search of “butt-crack daisy” (only when it’s punctuated exactly like that), a notice appears at the bottom of the search listings: In response to a legal request submitted to Google, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read more about the request at ChillingEffects.org.
At the link: Child Pornography Complaint to Google. The cease-and-desist or legal threat you requested is not yet available. (Child pornography butt-crack daisy. Oh, let’s not dwell on that, ‘K?)
That Chilling Effects site is interesting, though. From my quick trawl, it looks like they’re gathering cease-and-desist letters and linking them up to FAQs. Cool.
Anyway, I just can’t deal with politics at the moment. Sorry. Between the presidential hoo-ha in the States and all the crap about Greece and the Euro, current events at the moment is like a great hooting of spider monkeys.
November 3, 2011 — 10:24 pm
Comments: 22
I have this little dream
O, what would I give to see Men of Color, Drunk/Sober, LGBT Youth, The Homeless, The Mentally Ill and Muslims all together in one place. And none of those gosh-darned policemen!
October 17, 2011 — 1:16 pm
Comments: 30
ZOMG! Totally like 99% of Americans
The caption reads: Transgender Anarchist Natalie Kobra Puke, from Russia. Go on, click. You know you want to see this one in color.
The Occupy Wall Street Movement: totally like 99% of us.
— 1:03 pm
Comments: 31
This is just alllllll kinds of wrong
This is the fighting in Libya. This picture bugs the shit out of me, and I’m struggling to put together a coherent post about it.
I’m not calling fake. These photographers put themselves in actual danger. The photo is nicked from this article describing the four NY Times journalists (including the lady at the far left of this shot) who were later picked up by Gaddafi’s goons at a checkpoint and given a very rough week before being released.
And we certainly have a proud tradition of embedded journalists who show courage and provide a valuable service in times of war. So I’m not knocking that.
But this thing here, this smells wrong. That young man can’t be firing at anything significant, or they’d all be hauling ass for cover. So, he’s…what? Posing? Mmm.
I just. I dunno. When reporters seemingly outnumber the thing being reported upon three to one — and all the cameras point the same way — they aren’t so much reporting as shaping the narrative.
All the cameras but one. The guy who took this picture told me something a lot more interesting than an image of another angry young brown fellow with a shoulder-fired doo-dah.
March 22, 2011 — 10:08 pm
Comments: 33
The amoeba was always my favorite
I haven’t had my scopes out since I moved, but I was once a keen amateur microscopist. A pond dipper, mostly. Microscopy and astronomy are two areas of scientific study where a non-professional can make important discoveries (that’s the motto of Microscopy UK, which publishes the excellent free online mag Micscape).
I didn’t make any discoveries, important or otherwise. I made bowls of stinky hay infusions. And microphotography rigs that relied on duct tape, balance and the power of prayer.
I didn’t even really learn anything about protozoa. I spent hours and hours staring down the tube going, “ZOMG! That hairy thing just ate that blobby thing!”
I loved every minute of it.
If you want to see some spectacularly good pictures of hairy things and blobby things, check out the Flickr page of Proyecto Agua — the Water Project. It’s a pond-dipping and photography project of the Laboratory of Natural Sciences of the Institute of La Rioja in Spain.
I particularly recommend the videos (why, yes, there’s an amoeba proteus).
It took me an improbable number of years to find an amoeba, by the way. My dad was all, “amoeba? Pff! That’s the easiest one!”
We have really dumb arguments in my family.
September 8, 2010 — 10:45 pm
Comments: 30
Happy b-day, P’shop!
Adobe Photoshop turns twenty today. And, oh, what fun we have had!
Actually, the image editing system I learned on predated Photoshop by several years. Several years was a millenimum in early computing days; desktop computers couldn’t do shit in 1987. They certainly couldn’t do shit graphically. But my machine was stuffed full of a hundred grand worth of special bits and it could do shit. The image editing software it ran gave P’shop a run for its money for years.
An important part of my job in those days was a sort of vaudeville routine where I demo’ed that big boy for clients in real-time. So they’d know what a righteous, bad-ass research and engineering firm we were.
Can you remember a time when people said things like, “photos don’t lie” (and really believed it) and Leisure Suit Larry was a cutting edge computer game? Well, that’s when I was taking snapshots with a video frame grabber, lassoing bits and moving them around before a customer’s very eyes.
You shoulda seen their faces! (Particularly after I erased their noses and replaced them with supplemental eyes). Many thought it was some kind of trick we were playing with video. Computers couldn’t do things like that!
Anyhow, I know I’ve told all my war stories before (blogger’s privilege, telling them again). Happy birthday, P’shop — and here’s to the next amazing technology nobody ever saw coming.
February 19, 2010 — 6:55 pm
Comments: 20
Look! Up in the sky!
It’s a huge ass moon!
No, seriously. Tonight’s moon is a “perigee moon” — meaning the moon’s squashed orbit brings it closer to us than it will be for any other full moon during 2010. So it looks about 14% wider and 30% brighter than usual.
And that is a total no shit. We drove home tonight sandwiched between two of the spookiest-looking rainstorms I’ve ever seen — one over the Channel and moving out, one over the hills and moving in. And we got home just in time to see THIS thing hanging over our back garden.
I’ve honestly never seen the moon look so huge and round and close to the earth. I know the photo doesn’t mean much, but you’ve got to go outside and see this thing for yourself, if your local conditions are at all favorable.
Good weekend, everyone!
January 29, 2010 — 5:52 pm
Comments: 35
Lookit the birdies!
I was just sitting here with my feet up — I picked a shitload of blackberries and made a shitload of delicious bramble jam (which is what you call it when you make blackberry jam from wild berries) — when it dawned on me…I posted that rude M’chelle picture last night. I have to come up with a post for today.
So, please accept this picture of a mummy gull and a baby gull what I took at the beach a few days ago. Okay, that might be a daddy gull, but the speckledy one is definitely a juvenile. They stay spotty like that for a couple of years and hang around their parents. Ummm…if I remember my birdiculture correctly.
Note that the adult bird is banded. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is all over our area.
Thanks to everyone who threw me a link today. Nothing like a ‘lanche to cheer the dessicated lump of pure evil I call a heart.
September 22, 2009 — 8:20 pm
Comments: 13