Jul. 4th, 2007 23:17
can't photograph this
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cosOne advantage of living here: I thought the fireworks were at 9:15 and I'd missed them, but I heard them start at 10:30 so I stepped outside and walked over. I could see them from the park a block away, and then all the way down Mass Ave.
I'm very nearsighted. There are a few things I sometimes enjoy looking at without my glasses on, and fireworks are among them.
I wish I could photograph, or video, what I see, for those of you with good vision. I don't know what special lens or contorted photoshop manipulation could make a picture of it; I don't think I've ever seen one. Out of focus, but not in a way that makes it blurry, exactly. It's more like the lens reflections you sometimes see when the sun or streetlights are in a photograph, but these more discrete, compact points of light make smaller, tighter patterns, with bits of moiré.
You see a sudden pinpoint bright flash, then a slowly exanding sphere of dimmer little lights starting from that point; I see a sudden circular/hexagonal pattern of light so large it takes whole seconds before the sphere expands to fill up the area taken up by its afterimage.
You see sparkly weeping willow glitter patterns slowly falling; for me they set smooth gradient background colors for the sky. Bright points of red and blue and white shooting around evoke old Atari 800 video games and Commodore 64 sprite graphics. Bright lights shooting slowly upward to detonate, are semicircular flying saucers taking off. Standard fireworks, where many lights of the same size and color form the surface of a sphere, appear to me as giant richly-connected multicolored glowing volvox colonies. And when lights from neighboring fireworks lost their thrust and start falling together, red & blue alternating, I get overlapping patterns, venn diagrams of red and blue and violet.
I'm very nearsighted. There are a few things I sometimes enjoy looking at without my glasses on, and fireworks are among them.
I wish I could photograph, or video, what I see, for those of you with good vision. I don't know what special lens or contorted photoshop manipulation could make a picture of it; I don't think I've ever seen one. Out of focus, but not in a way that makes it blurry, exactly. It's more like the lens reflections you sometimes see when the sun or streetlights are in a photograph, but these more discrete, compact points of light make smaller, tighter patterns, with bits of moiré.
You see a sudden pinpoint bright flash, then a slowly exanding sphere of dimmer little lights starting from that point; I see a sudden circular/hexagonal pattern of light so large it takes whole seconds before the sphere expands to fill up the area taken up by its afterimage.
You see sparkly weeping willow glitter patterns slowly falling; for me they set smooth gradient background colors for the sky. Bright points of red and blue and white shooting around evoke old Atari 800 video games and Commodore 64 sprite graphics. Bright lights shooting slowly upward to detonate, are semicircular flying saucers taking off. Standard fireworks, where many lights of the same size and color form the surface of a sphere, appear to me as giant richly-connected multicolored glowing volvox colonies. And when lights from neighboring fireworks lost their thrust and start falling together, red & blue alternating, I get overlapping patterns, venn diagrams of red and blue and violet.
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no subject
However, I really believe that some of the most beautiful moments of my life were the Monet-esque softness of nature in the years before my parents discovered just how horrific my eyesight really was. Even now, without my contacts I can barely see what I'm typing even from a few inches away- but I look out my window to the sky and watch clouds float by and it's so much more enjoyable than when I can see them clearly. I get too dizzy walking around parks or taking hikes now without my glasses or contacts, but I really miss the way things looked then.