September 9, 2007
Baker’s berries
…listen
…about the musicWaltz for Baker’s berries.
Mt. Baker, that is. Since I do not bake. I make a mean chocolate mousse pie, but like my music, that creation does not involve an oven. Unless I’m doing something very wrong. However, if you put these berries in Mt. Baker, they would indeed be baked berries, smoldering yet still explosively sweet, I’m sure.
I felt guilty for eating all the berries in my last post, and so here are some from this afternoon’s stroll, volcanic backdrop provided for extra effect. I dunno what it is about my camera, a decent 8 megapixel pocket Nikon, but just for the record, to the naked, unenpixelated eye, Mt. Baker looms literally twice as large as it seems in this shot. My hand, for what it’s worth, is considered unusually small by everyone except the flies I swat and can only barely reach an octave on a piano. It’s fun to see it frighten all of Lopez Island with its threat of tossing berry bombs into the water and causing a tsunami. Since I am not only not a baker, not a concert pianist, but also not a photographer (I just play one on this blog), perhaps some dear reader can enlighten me about this odd visual phenomenon.
Robert Ballantyne said,
September 10, 2007 @ 8:53 am
I think you are right to refer to this observation as an “odd visual phenomenon.”
Clearly the mountain subtends a small angle from the point-of-view of you and your camera. The camera’s record is accurate. To photograph the hill the way you think you see it, you will need a telephoto lens (or crop and enlarge a portion of the picture taken with the lens you have now).
The phenomenon is familiar to all stargazers. In their case it relates to the Moon, not to mountains. The illusion is that the Moon looks much larger when it is rising or setting than it does high overhead. Yet, when you measure its diameter, is it a half degree whether it is high or low. When I worked in planetariums, this was a issue we heard about from the public every week.
The issue has to do with our perception of the scene. There are lots of articles on the subject. I found this one that discusses the most recent thoughts: Scientists Offer Answer to Baffling Lunar Illusion.
Alex Shapiro said,
September 10, 2007 @ 10:31 am
What a great article! Thanks for the link, Robert.
I knew the readership of this blog was smarter than the average bear.
Or blogmistress, in this case.
🙂
Doug Palmer said,
September 11, 2007 @ 7:31 am
in Frank Zappa’s “200 motels, Frank, (played by Ringo Starr), is seen at his desk doing strange things to his score, pouring coffee on it, smearing it around, pounding on it, and who knows what else. Who knows? Baking might add something.