The Narrative Image

This is Yolanta (not her real name). She’s from Kazakhstan (No, she isn’t). I know what you’re thinking. “Poor girl!” you worry, “With looks like that, how will she ever acquire a husband?” Fortunately for Yolanta, they still have arranged marriages where she comes from.  When my car engine blew up, Yolanta was kind enough to give me a ride to and from work until I was able to get it fixed (we work at the same company). She refused to take money for gas but eventually agreed to take one of my photographs instead. This was the photograph she originally chose. It’s the punchbowl at Eagle Creek at the end of January in 2010. I immediately had an enlargement made. But when I picked up the enlargement, I found the image to be unacceptably grainy. In the figure below, the image on the left shows how the picture looked straight out of the camera. The image on the right shows how the picture (the one that Yolanta chose) looked after selective brightening and color satura...

Overnight, supposedly, the temperature bottomed out at 15 degrees Fahrenheit. With only a 20% chance of precipitation, the odds seemed good for a survivable trip up the Eagle Creek Trail. The only places that were icy were the places where water perpetually drips down and oozes out of the basalt layer cake that makes up the cliffs to Eagle Creek's canyon. Perversely, the only places that were icy were also the places that have the greatest exposure to heights. The water was running much higher than I've become accustomed to, no doubt because of all the recent rain, and the new broad banks made a view of the falls from the lower viewpoint problematical. The water runs ice cold, even in the summer, and the last time I tried to wade out for a shot of the now hidden iconic-waterfall-scene, the nerve connection between foot and brain was numbed so quickly that I endangered the well being of my photo gear as I teetered crazily on senseless pegs,...