That is Lake Mendota at 5:44 this morning. A tad garish, no? It's hard to get your head around the idea that this is just a photograph and no kind of manipulation.I was motivated to post these pictures by reading this sentence, quoted in the previous post: "Was the wine-dark sea really the color of a fine Chateauneuf-du-Pape, or did that refer to something about luster or sheen or some other visual quality?"
If only the ancient Greeks had used cameras! Imagine needing to describe the effect in these photographs. You'd have to write poetry, and the poetry would stir up some kind of emotion but you'd abandon any hope that the reader could see what you saw.
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And like all of these spectacular sky displays, I'm sure the camera didn't even come close to capturing the color...
Wine-dark is just a Homeric epithet. Like strong-ankled Hillary. It was fashionable in ancient Greek but has fallen out.
Absurdly gauche. It’s the art on the wall at a supper club with a light behind it. 100% wonderfully Wisconsin. Thank you for sharing it.
Ann wrote, " ... but you'd abandon any hope that the reader could see what you saw."
Perhaps in their mind's eye they would see more.
Sacks explores some of the most fundamental facets of human experience–how we see in three dimensions, and how we represent the world internally when our eyes are closed.
The Mind's Eye
It's hard to get your head around the idea that this is just a photograph and no kind of manipulation.
That reflects something I was just musing on between these two posts. We all live, and have lived for a long time, in a world that is awash in artificial colors, in the sense that we don't routinely come in contact with entirely natural patinas outside the natural world. Think back to gloriously hideous kitchens of the 1970s, or cars in the 1950s. It's not hard to imagine that we would have an entirely different sense of what colors look like than someone who was surrounded daily by largely natural objects.
Wow, these are beautiful. As an exercise for myself I’m going to try and paint one of them. If it comes out good, I might even share here.
So gorgeous.
Ahhh. Sunrise on Jupiter. It brings back memories...
"It's hard to get your head around the idea that this is just a photograph and no kind of manipulation."
Not at all. Just had to emotionally give in to the mind-bending colors.
Think about the metaphors in English that have been over-used to the point that few people ever consider what they literally meant. I'm not sure that "wine-dark sea" should be interpreted any more literally than "taken aback" in English.
Imagine a thousands-of-years-in-the-future historian, for whom not much documentary evidence of our time has survived. In reading the memoirs of a captain who commanded a nuclear submarine, the phrase "taken aback" in used in its figurative meaning. And then this historian goes on to argue that nuclear submarines must have used sails for surface propulsion...
Reminds me of Edvard Munch's The Scream.
Reminds me of the colors of chorizo
The moonrise last night lit up the lake a smoky pink, i think it is from western fires.
“Rosy fingered dawn” came up a lot in The Odyssey.
Looks more like a Côtes du Rhône to me…. :)
Our Pond had a similar psychodellic foreground water reflection in an evening photo. Freezing time in organized chaos.
Part of your photo is 3D enhanced by the simultaneous contrast resonance from the juxtaposition of the far horizon and overhead portions of the sky. A happy accident (TM)
“Strong ankled Hillary” was not a Homeric epithet — that’s a big fibula!
(But of course it takes strong ankles to climb Everest.)
To me, the phrase “wine dark sea” always invoke the sense of clouds overhead, turning the water dark just before an impending storm. It seemed an apt description
Were you able to identify the U-boat pointing its periscope at you?
realestateaccnt (11:41am):
I'm surprised you were the only one of 18 comments to mention Munch and 'Scream'. That was my first thought. My second was "Wait? Is it possible that Munch was actually painting what he saw in front of him - the background, I mean, not the screamer? I always assumed he was painting the imaginary colors present in the screamer's mind, and had no idea such colors might be found in nature."
Analogous to Frederic Church paintings. Now explain the allegorical meanings.
I was walking along minding my business
When out of the orange-colored sky
Flash, Bam, Alakazam, wonderful you came by.
--Homer
>>“Rosy fingered dawn” came up a lot in The Odyssey.
Helped a lot that it plugged right into the meter (dactylic hexameter). Specifically the last half of a line. For that matter, the same is true of the "wine-dark sea" bit.
My favorite d/h line may be the first one in one of the choruses from Antigone: "There are many wonders/terrible things, and nothing more wonderful/terrible than man" [anthropos, not aner; and the word I've equivocated about is the root of the first half of dinosaur, the second half just referring to a "lizard"]. I can't remember much past that, particularly in the original Greek, but it goes on to refer to daring things like sailing (maybe even on the wine-dark sea!).
There are at least one or two Greek lyric poems where I remember a bit more, but still just a couple of lines. But I still have the books and know exactly where they are.
--gpm
The first part of "wine-dark" is oinos, cognate with the Latin vinum, but the modern Greek word is krassi.
--gpm
Mavro (black or dark, as in Mauritania) krassi for red wine, aspro krassi for white. But I prefer retsina ("resin" flavored from pine barrels), originally from Athens, though a lot of people don't like it and compare it to turpentine.
--gpm
Forgot to say "aspro" as in aspirin, though there are a couple of other words for white. One is the base of the word leakemia, referring to white blood blood cells, which also appears in the name of the White Mountains in Crete. In New Hampshire, we just say "white," no doubt affording the mountains great privilege.
--gpm
I'm late to this conversation, but I instantly thought of The Scream as well.
Interesting fact: It's been proposed that the background for The Scream was a "volcanic sunset," from the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa.
Interesting interpretation: The "scream" is not coming from the person, but from nature, and the person is responding by covering his ears.
It would take about 25 words, but a poet could describe that, if the poet were talented enough.
And yes the poet would have to be someone who knows how to use words better than a non-poet would imagine. Someone who would choose the words right.
We're not talking Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen here. More like Sylvia Plath on a really really good day, but better, or Tomas Transtromer on a similar good day, but better.
Always like your photos but these are a cut above. Outstanding.
"In these poinsettia meadows of her tides..." Hart Crane
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