Botanical garden and the Ginkgo tree

maipenquynh on 10. February 2024

When I think about botanical gardens, the educational aspect is the first thing that comes to my mind. They are often attached to a university and when you enter a botanical garden, the plants are categorized according to a system. And you see these little rectangular metal plates everywhere, with the scientific name engraved in black. Sometimes there is even a trivial name that you can learn.

What I usually don't take home: Knowledge about plants. I told myself often: Today you're going to look at a plant, memorize it and its name! And if you do that a few times, you'll have expanded your repertoire of knowledge about plants by at least a little bit.

And so many times this was too much effort and I simply enjoyed the plants and how they were put together.

As I have learnt from the german Wikipedia entry "Botanischer Garten" (Botanical Garden) I did everything the correct way. It says (the following quote is translated by DeepL and me): "'Science and pleasure' was the motto of the botanical gardens at Kew near London (England), at the beginning of the history of the great botanical gardens in Europe and America." Thus, pleasure is at least as desirable as the scientific aspect.

Ginkgo?

Once I actually learnt something. I can't quite remember how it all happened in detail but here's my vague recollection: there were one or two ginkgo trees in a botanical garden. Next to the metal name plates was a poster promising more information. It was written: Ginkgo trees have two sexes - female or male. The botanical garden only had trees of one gender because the other gender had something smelly.

I did a quick research on the missing details so that neither you nor I end this text with dangerous half-knowledge. The Karlsruhe botanical garden explains in the section "Männliche und weibliche Ginkgos" (Male and female ginkgos): Female plants develop fruits in autumn which eventually fall off the tree. If you crush them then, they will stink of butyric acid. I therefore assume that the Dresden botanical garden, where I had read the poster, only had male plants.

However, the pictures of the ginkgos are not taken in the Dresden botanical garden, but - after having strawberry tartlet - in the botanical garden not far from the S-Bahn station Klein Flottbek in Hamburg.

Last but not least, two random things: Firstly - Goethe wrote a poem about the ginkgo called "Ginkgo biloba". And secondly - don't forget the g after the k in the word ginkgo.

Camera + lens: Minolta 9000 AF + Minolta AF 50mm f1.4
Film: KODAK 100T-MAX
Development + scan: Charlie Engel Lab 2.0

Harz on rainy and sunny days

maipenquynh on 5. October 2023

Aurelie. Meant Harz in summer. And yet, it rained for a whole day. We walked with umbrellas to the viewpoint of Wernigerode Castle, only to not be allowed to see the castle because of the fog. But Harz in summer meant also a day of hiking full of sun with little shade. Field after field littered with purple foxgloves, surrounded by fine silver hairgrass. I haven’t had enough of them.

~

The purple colour got lost through the black white film, named Aurelie, and I was also unable to capture the foxgloves and silver hairgrass (determined by an app). The more I like the images from the rainy day. In fact, they are my favourite images in the whole film.

Flashback to my mini-teaser in the last logbook post. The note from the photo lab scared me; it read „Unfortunately, your film was not complete and predominantly strongly underexposed. The underexposure makes a dust-free scanning of the film quite difficult“.

It wasn’t until I was writing about the film and this post that I realised I hadn’t continued reading from „strongly underexposed“ onwards and was instead dramatic and disappointed. Indeed, a few motifs/pictures are missing and haven’t made it to anything after development, that’s the „not complete“ part then. A lot of pictures were strongly underexposed (not shown), round about the half of the film, nevertheless they weren’t just black spots. That’s what I assumed when I read the note and had quite much black-and-white-thinking – literally speaking. Instead, the pictures were rather a mix of dark grey hues with few contrast.

The fact that I worked with ISO 50 film for the first time most probably plays a role as well. First conclusion: tendency to underexposure. Thus, for the next time I will use an ISO 50 film, I should provide my film a little more light.

Camera + lens: Minolta Dynax 7000i + Minolta AF 50 mm
Film: ILFORD PAN F+ 50
Development + scan: Urbanfilmlab

I feel something that you don’t see

maipenquynh on 11. June 2023

Who would have thought that AI would also make it onto my blog and that I would be able to jump on the bandwagon just in time? (or I missed that I missed it)

The other day, as I was looking at, analysing and evaluating the results of my latest photo shoot when this thought occurred to me: AI could take better photos than me. etter in sense of: AI could probably create photos that would make people nod in impression and comment with „Wow, that’s really a amazing picture!“. If I handed my photos to these people, my best photo might get an honest but not particularly impressed „Yeah, it looks pretty good.“ But it just wouldn’t leave the impression that the other brilliant AI picture did.

 

A special feeling called self-efficacy

At that moment, however, I also realised: So what? Because at that very moment, a special and strong feeling strucked me: the feeling of self-efficacy.

The feeling of holding a product in my hands where I know: This picture looks like this because I have made certain decisions. Decisions based on knowledge and gut feeling over the years, and also a large portion of trying things and letting coincidence lay a hand on it. A bundle of decisions.

Starting with the technical equipment (camera, lens, film), to deciding on the motif (subject, framing, use of light) and ending with the settings on the camera to finally capture the subject (aperture, shutter speed, image focus).

While the first two points no longer cause headaches and insecurities, I notice that I’m still quite young when it comes to the camera settings and thereby the photographic paintbrush if you say so. Most of the time it’s trial and error and knowing that I don’t know much. So I’m really super-mega-very happy when the pictures turn out well.

There is so much behind each picture: my thoughts of the moment; what I knew and what not at that time. So many feelings and thoughts that accompany a picture until it is in front of me.

 

I see something that you don’t see (*)

As an outsider, you don’t see these feelings and thoughts on the product, this one photo. From this one photo, you can’t tell where I was standing two years ago and that I didn’t dare to leave the camera’s automatic mode. From this one photo, you can’t tell that I lost many photos to poor contrast and too little light. From this one photo, you can’t see the whole learning process. You know what I want to tell.

It’s a pity that no one who hasn’t gone the same way can see this way as well and acknowledge it accordingly, but that’s only natural. But what remains for me and for you is this feeling of self-efficacy.

This feeling of being capable is priceless and cannot be replaced by anything.

And importantly, once I feel it, no one actually can take it away from me anymore.

 

 

Eventually, it’s not about the AI. It could have been another person taking that other brilliant photo. It’s about me taking photos for self-awareness, for the feeling of knowing and being able to do a bit more today than yesterday. If I want to do more of interpretation, it’s about how I realise that I am and live.

And that, dear people, were my two cents on the subject of AI and my three pennies on the subject of self-efficacy.

Have you ever noticed your self-efficacy and if so, what situations do you think of?

 

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Disclaimer: This is my description of self-efficacy or a situation where I experienced it – if you want to learn more about it, your trusted search engine will help you. (*) Literal translation. This is a kids‘ game, the english analogue game is apparently „I spy, with my little eye“

Camera + lens: Minolta 9000 AF + Minolta AF 100mm Macro f2.8
Film: Rollei RPX 100
Development + scan: Charlie Engel Lab 2.0