127. Sisyphean - November 15-21, 2015
Deron-
The county has mandated that the land owner must clean up his acreage, so he has hired the lowest bidder to do so. Turns out this poor sap of a landscaper seems to have bitten off more than he can chew.
Issue number one; there is far too many weeds to whack for this little weed whacker. Issue number two; He's got an electric lawn trimmer... I hope he has about a mile of extension cord. Issue number three; DUDE, YOU'RE WEARING SHORTS!
In this scenario, it is not an insurmountable task, but pretty darn close. Good luck with that... idiot.
The county has mandated that the land owner must clean up his acreage, so he has hired the lowest bidder to do so. Turns out this poor sap of a landscaper seems to have bitten off more than he can chew.
Issue number one; there is far too many weeds to whack for this little weed whacker. Issue number two; He's got an electric lawn trimmer... I hope he has about a mile of extension cord. Issue number three; DUDE, YOU'RE WEARING SHORTS!
In this scenario, it is not an insurmountable task, but pretty darn close. Good luck with that... idiot.
Kevin-
What do you do when it’s time to decorate for the holidays and you discover that all the lights that would go on a tree, or on the house are all totally jumbled and tangled together? There are lights with a warm white color, lights with a cool white color, and colored lights that aren’t white at all. In the box there are long, straight strands of light, really twisted and tangled stands of icicle type lights and cords with input and output plugs that are buried in the box somewhere. Would it be possible to untangle this Sisyphean mess and actually use them again? How much time is worth devoting to the task? Or maybe it would be better to simply display this full box full of holiday lights next to the fireplace. Now I understand why so many people buy fake trees with the lights already in position!
Nikon D4s, tripod mounted. All of the studio lights were turned off except for this box of holiday lights. 24-70 mm f/2,8 Nikkor lens set to 70mm. ISO 100, f/22 at .8 seconds. One pop of one studio strobe at the end to cast a little more light on the box exterior, and on the floor below.
Perhaps you want to come by and help detangle?
What do you do when it’s time to decorate for the holidays and you discover that all the lights that would go on a tree, or on the house are all totally jumbled and tangled together? There are lights with a warm white color, lights with a cool white color, and colored lights that aren’t white at all. In the box there are long, straight strands of light, really twisted and tangled stands of icicle type lights and cords with input and output plugs that are buried in the box somewhere. Would it be possible to untangle this Sisyphean mess and actually use them again? How much time is worth devoting to the task? Or maybe it would be better to simply display this full box full of holiday lights next to the fireplace. Now I understand why so many people buy fake trees with the lights already in position!
Nikon D4s, tripod mounted. All of the studio lights were turned off except for this box of holiday lights. 24-70 mm f/2,8 Nikkor lens set to 70mm. ISO 100, f/22 at .8 seconds. One pop of one studio strobe at the end to cast a little more light on the box exterior, and on the floor below.
Perhaps you want to come by and help detangle?
Paul-
Sisyphean…hmm, tricky.
My first though was to come up with something using the mathematical value Pi—that enigmatic, transcendental number that has been calculated to at least 10,000,000,000 integers. This can also be written as 1.00 × 1013 in scientific notation (if you’re that kind of person). But my brainstorming on PI came up with some pretty weird stuff. So I dredging up the increasing compacted cognitive silt from my skull to see if anything else might work with the theme. And I found something! It will be easier to explain my submission by way of sharing a popular fable (that varies in the telling from one South Asian culture to another.) Paraphrased, here it is.
Once upon a time there lived a great King in India who loved chess. Such was his enthusiasm that he would regularly challenge any sage pilgrims visiting his realm to a chess match.
One day, a traveling sage was challenged by the King. To motivate his opponent, should he win, the King offered any reward that the wise man could name. The sage modestly asked just for a few grains of rice in the following manner: the King was to put a single grain of rice on the first square of the chess board and then double it on every consequent square…all the way to the final, 64th square.
The King lost the game and, being an honest man, intended to make good on his promise to the sage. He ordered a bag of rice to be brought to the chess board. Then he started placing rice grains according to the arrangement: 1 grain on the first square, 2 on the second, 4 on the third, 8 on the fourth and so on:
Following the wise man's request of the rice payment, the King suddenly realized that he was unable to fulfill his promise.
Why?
Because on the twentieth square the he would have had to put 1,000,000 grains of rice. On the fortieth square, he would have had to put 1,000,000,000 grains of rice. And, finally on the sixty fourth square the hapless King would have had to put more than 18,000,000,000,000,000,000 grains of rice. This equal to about 210 billion tons and is allegedly sufficient to cover the whole country of India with a meter-thick layer of rice. At (conservatively) ten grains of rice per square inch, the above amount requires rice fields covering twice the surface area of the Earth, oceans
included.
Source: [http://www.singularitysymposium.com/exponential-growth.html]
If you’re interested in exact number: The 64th and final square alone would have required 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 grains of rice. And adding up all of the 64 squares combined would have required the King to provide the sage with 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 grains. That weight is actually about six times the weight of all living things on the planet--somewhere in the neighborhood of 460,000,000,000 tons.
A different web site—featuring a variant of this story—goes on to mention:
A typical grain of rice is approximately .2 inches long. (Yes, different varieties will vary. But let’s not quibble here.) Converting .2 inches to feet (divide by 12 inches to a foot) and then dividing that number by 5,280 feet in one mile, we get the length of the grains of rice, placed end-to-end, to be approximately 60,000,000,000,000 miles. How far is that? Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to our own, is located 25,000,000,000,000 miles (4.253 light years) from Earth. Placed end to end, these grains of rice would reach out from the Earth, across space to the Alpha Centauri, and back to our planet again.
Source [http://mathforum.org/sanders/geometry/GP11Fable.html]
So, by any measure, this is a Sisyphean task.
Our story so far: Shot at 1.0 sec.; f/25; ISO 800; 18-55mm lens set at 24mm; aperture priority; 9-point metering; -2/3 EV; camera is tripod mounted. The chessboard (rice board?) is sitting on a wooded platform inside a light box I made. One light is shining directly down and another is just barely be used to the left
Personal observations:
You think herding cats is difficult? Try counting out (and then corralling) small grains of wild rice with a medical tweezers.
Sisyphean…hmm, tricky.
My first though was to come up with something using the mathematical value Pi—that enigmatic, transcendental number that has been calculated to at least 10,000,000,000 integers. This can also be written as 1.00 × 1013 in scientific notation (if you’re that kind of person). But my brainstorming on PI came up with some pretty weird stuff. So I dredging up the increasing compacted cognitive silt from my skull to see if anything else might work with the theme. And I found something! It will be easier to explain my submission by way of sharing a popular fable (that varies in the telling from one South Asian culture to another.) Paraphrased, here it is.
Once upon a time there lived a great King in India who loved chess. Such was his enthusiasm that he would regularly challenge any sage pilgrims visiting his realm to a chess match.
One day, a traveling sage was challenged by the King. To motivate his opponent, should he win, the King offered any reward that the wise man could name. The sage modestly asked just for a few grains of rice in the following manner: the King was to put a single grain of rice on the first square of the chess board and then double it on every consequent square…all the way to the final, 64th square.
The King lost the game and, being an honest man, intended to make good on his promise to the sage. He ordered a bag of rice to be brought to the chess board. Then he started placing rice grains according to the arrangement: 1 grain on the first square, 2 on the second, 4 on the third, 8 on the fourth and so on:
Following the wise man's request of the rice payment, the King suddenly realized that he was unable to fulfill his promise.
Why?
Because on the twentieth square the he would have had to put 1,000,000 grains of rice. On the fortieth square, he would have had to put 1,000,000,000 grains of rice. And, finally on the sixty fourth square the hapless King would have had to put more than 18,000,000,000,000,000,000 grains of rice. This equal to about 210 billion tons and is allegedly sufficient to cover the whole country of India with a meter-thick layer of rice. At (conservatively) ten grains of rice per square inch, the above amount requires rice fields covering twice the surface area of the Earth, oceans
included.
Source: [http://www.singularitysymposium.com/exponential-growth.html]
If you’re interested in exact number: The 64th and final square alone would have required 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 grains of rice. And adding up all of the 64 squares combined would have required the King to provide the sage with 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 grains. That weight is actually about six times the weight of all living things on the planet--somewhere in the neighborhood of 460,000,000,000 tons.
A different web site—featuring a variant of this story—goes on to mention:
A typical grain of rice is approximately .2 inches long. (Yes, different varieties will vary. But let’s not quibble here.) Converting .2 inches to feet (divide by 12 inches to a foot) and then dividing that number by 5,280 feet in one mile, we get the length of the grains of rice, placed end-to-end, to be approximately 60,000,000,000,000 miles. How far is that? Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to our own, is located 25,000,000,000,000 miles (4.253 light years) from Earth. Placed end to end, these grains of rice would reach out from the Earth, across space to the Alpha Centauri, and back to our planet again.
Source [http://mathforum.org/sanders/geometry/GP11Fable.html]
So, by any measure, this is a Sisyphean task.
Our story so far: Shot at 1.0 sec.; f/25; ISO 800; 18-55mm lens set at 24mm; aperture priority; 9-point metering; -2/3 EV; camera is tripod mounted. The chessboard (rice board?) is sitting on a wooded platform inside a light box I made. One light is shining directly down and another is just barely be used to the left
Personal observations:
You think herding cats is difficult? Try counting out (and then corralling) small grains of wild rice with a medical tweezers.
Jerry-
Managing one's time can be a Sisyphean task, especially if you have any kind of plans or intentions. My "plan" was to photograph a pocket watch (from the Braton-Smithsonian Collection) in a setting that might invoke the feeling of futility involved with wrestling with time. So here for my WPOTM selection I have attached the Westclox Scotty in a wet, dark and dreary scene. I think the title should be "7 minutes past Midnight". Also attached is two prior attempts with the gold cased Waltham (still works pretty good) taken at a local cemetery. That nice watch I didn't want to get very damp.
Nikon D750 with 24-85 set to 85mm, 1/400 @ f11, ISO 8000 (for the heck of it).
Managing one's time can be a Sisyphean task, especially if you have any kind of plans or intentions. My "plan" was to photograph a pocket watch (from the Braton-Smithsonian Collection) in a setting that might invoke the feeling of futility involved with wrestling with time. So here for my WPOTM selection I have attached the Westclox Scotty in a wet, dark and dreary scene. I think the title should be "7 minutes past Midnight". Also attached is two prior attempts with the gold cased Waltham (still works pretty good) taken at a local cemetery. That nice watch I didn't want to get very damp.
Nikon D750 with 24-85 set to 85mm, 1/400 @ f11, ISO 8000 (for the heck of it).
Don-
This challenge was challenging. I find it one of the darkest subjects. Ranks right in there with Ayn Rand's hero John Galt. I asked my wife her opinion and she instantly came up with dust. I would guess her second choice would be cleaning the toilets and then vacuuming. Taking a picture of a dusty surface was a good picture but I wanted something more male Sisyphean, hence taxes. I considered doing fake blood and a gun with my head on the pile of papers but that is more a finale.
So here I am doing "Taxes." I shot it in my kitchen. I wish I had a place of a bit of a studio. I used the Byro-Snoot thingie to give me the 'lamp over the papers look.'
Camera is a D810 with 70-200 2.8 lens. Shot at 70mm, 1/60 sec, f8, ISO500, in aperture priority and with flash and the Byro thingie.
This challenge was challenging. I find it one of the darkest subjects. Ranks right in there with Ayn Rand's hero John Galt. I asked my wife her opinion and she instantly came up with dust. I would guess her second choice would be cleaning the toilets and then vacuuming. Taking a picture of a dusty surface was a good picture but I wanted something more male Sisyphean, hence taxes. I considered doing fake blood and a gun with my head on the pile of papers but that is more a finale.
So here I am doing "Taxes." I shot it in my kitchen. I wish I had a place of a bit of a studio. I used the Byro-Snoot thingie to give me the 'lamp over the papers look.'
Camera is a D810 with 70-200 2.8 lens. Shot at 70mm, 1/60 sec, f8, ISO500, in aperture priority and with flash and the Byro thingie.
Byron-
First of all, I know what I want for Christmas. A Thesaurus. Now, on to the picture. I was given a project as a gift to commemorate something...50th birthday, retirement I don't remember. It is a project that I looked at as a monumental task. It is a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle of Elvis. Oh, it's not just a jigsaw puzzle of Elvis. It's a mosaic of Elvis. The large picture of Elvis is made up of thousands of little pictures of Elvis. I hadn't opened the box until this week to use it as props for this picture. I have 2 sisters that enjoy jigsaw puzzles I think I will donate it to them.
I decided to show a pile of pieces yet emphasize one piece to show what the pieces are like. I poured approximately 500 pieces on a coffee table. I suspended a piece of glass about 7 inches above the pile. I found a single piece that had a complete picture of Elvis and laid it on the glass. I setup my softbox and positioned it near the top side of the picture. I wanted to shoot from directly above but I don't have a copystand so I used a light stand with a boom arm. It has a tripod bolt on the end of it so that is where I attached the camera. To my dismay I discovered that my Nikon wireless remote is not working. Even after a battery change. I had to carefully push the shutter release to keep the puzzle piece centered. Because I wanted to get close to the puzzle piece on the glass I used my 1984 vintage 55mm Micro-Nikkor set at f8. The shutter speed was 1/50 second and the flash was set at 1/8th power. Because of the older lens I couldn't use TTL.
First of all, I know what I want for Christmas. A Thesaurus. Now, on to the picture. I was given a project as a gift to commemorate something...50th birthday, retirement I don't remember. It is a project that I looked at as a monumental task. It is a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle of Elvis. Oh, it's not just a jigsaw puzzle of Elvis. It's a mosaic of Elvis. The large picture of Elvis is made up of thousands of little pictures of Elvis. I hadn't opened the box until this week to use it as props for this picture. I have 2 sisters that enjoy jigsaw puzzles I think I will donate it to them.
I decided to show a pile of pieces yet emphasize one piece to show what the pieces are like. I poured approximately 500 pieces on a coffee table. I suspended a piece of glass about 7 inches above the pile. I found a single piece that had a complete picture of Elvis and laid it on the glass. I setup my softbox and positioned it near the top side of the picture. I wanted to shoot from directly above but I don't have a copystand so I used a light stand with a boom arm. It has a tripod bolt on the end of it so that is where I attached the camera. To my dismay I discovered that my Nikon wireless remote is not working. Even after a battery change. I had to carefully push the shutter release to keep the puzzle piece centered. Because I wanted to get close to the puzzle piece on the glass I used my 1984 vintage 55mm Micro-Nikkor set at f8. The shutter speed was 1/50 second and the flash was set at 1/8th power. Because of the older lens I couldn't use TTL.