Althouse: At the Blue Sky Café...

March 6, 2010

At the Blue Sky Café...

... you can be as true or fake as you want.

16 comments:

Unknown said...: Thank you for that opening, Madame.

The top photo looks like it's part of a Cinerama presentation, with the somewhat darker vertical the bridge between two of the three screens used.

"How the West Was Won", mayhap?; 3/6/10, 6:31 PM
rcocean said...: Yes, there's some kind of weird photographic magic going on in the first photo.; 3/6/10, 6:55 PM
David said...: The $9.8 trillion deficit is enough to pay Obama's $400,000 salary each year for the next 24 million (!!) years.; 3/6/10, 7:21 PM
Chip Ahoy said...: Fake sure is purdy, in'nit.

Page 5, which is really page 6 but I wanted to do the harder one first, in which the meerkats feast upon the hawk that dared to trouble their blissful existence.; 3/6/10, 7:31 PM
David said...: I think the first photo is of a painted plaster backdrop. It's taken up close with the lens pretty much open and a much slower shutter speed, without much depth of field. Much more shadow and depth. It's not a fake photo, I think, just a fake sky.

Sorry to bring up Obama in my comment above, but the topic is real vs. fake.

wv=="fakey" (No bull!); 3/6/10, 7:32 PM
Ann Althouse said...: The only fakeness is if you think that's sky in the first photograph. It's wall. It is real wall. There's no photographic or photoshopping trickery.; 3/6/10, 7:38 PM
Anonymous said...: Has anyone noticed their comments occasionally disappearing? Am I doing something wrong, or do I have a kind of Stendahl syndrome, where I imagine I am posting something pithy but am not at all?; 3/6/10, 7:43 PM
XWL said...: For ye who have lost faith, remember...

(am I being fake, or real?); 3/6/10, 7:49 PM
Irene said...: A fellow "Cheesehead" sent me a link to this ad about a mouse revitalized by the lure of a good cheddar. And so began a friendly debate: is it real or is it fake?; 3/6/10, 8:00 PM
Ann Althouse said...: @PatCA I'm not deleting anything, if that's a concern.; 3/6/10, 8:01 PM
As my whimsy leads me.. said...: That second photo would make a maddening jigsaw puzzle.; 3/6/10, 8:33 PM
Peter Hoh said...: Last fall, my son and I drove to a friend's cabin in Phillips, Wisconsin.

We expected to lose cell phone reception on the way. And of course we did.

The search for bars (reception) was replaced by our amusement at the number of bars we passed. There was one little crossroads with two bars and nothing else in sight.

We came away thinking that "more bars in more places" should be the state slogan.

And so it comes as no surprise to see this map, showing the counties of the country in which bars outnumber grocery stores.; 3/7/10, 12:47 AM
traditionalguy said...: It is a hard thing to feel torn between being a true fake and only faking being true.; 3/7/10, 8:07 AM
Chip Ahoy said...: Notice how the real sky is darker at the top than at the bottom? That's how you get distance in a painting. Leonardo da Vinci wrote about that in his notes (along with the bit about drawing mountain tops)

One time a friend hosted a cocktail party in a Waikiki hotel room. We gathered there before walking out to a nearby restaurant for dinner. On arrival, I told the friend that I walked to the hotel with that the first painting we saw was curiously hung upside down. As usual, he questioned my authoritah How could I know? It was all blue on blue on blue on blue wild-ass brushstrokes. I said, "It's a horizon where water meets sky. Even though water blends directly into sky, ocean is still heavier than atmosphere. In my mind, it automatically flips over by weight. Invert this and it suddenly makes more sense. My friend told me I'm full of poop. Turns out the host did invert the painting just to see if anyone would notice.; 3/7/10, 8:36 AM
Deborah M. said...: The blue in those photographs is absolutely beautiful. Everything is a depressing brown down here at the moment but today I thought I saw a hint of green as I drove down the highway. Thank you for posting your wonderful photographs. I love seeing random restaurants and houses and especially the flowers and trees.

wv: minkshes. (Yiddish) A minkshes is a disgruntled person who does not appreciate photography.; 3/7/10, 8:47 AM
Anonymous said...: I guess it's not happening to anyone else...No, I didn;t think you were deleting comments, Ann. Sometimes I skip the preview and just hit Publish. Maybe that's it.; 3/7/10, 11:15 AM