MY FAVOURITE PEOPLE

I LOVE CLOUDS AND CLOUD WATCHING

CLOUDS by PATRICIA LIVERPOOL

Patricia Liverpool © August 5-2019



I have always been fascinated by clouds. Cloud watching can keep me occupied for hours. As a child I loved to imagine interpreting shapes that I saw in the clouds. As the clouds drifted slowly across the sky, I saw animals, birds, dragonflies, people, dragons, mythical figures like Annancy, Olodumare, Oshun. I watched the clouds always silently travelling across the sky, constantly changing.



As an adult I learned that humans have a long history of cloud-gazing. Every culture has stories, myths about clouds. The scientific study of clouds did not begin until the nineteenth century.

Simply put, clouds are puffs of air laden with water particles. Clouds serve important scientific purposes, including, helping meteorologists predict the weather. During the day clouds help to protect the earth from the intense heat of the sun. At night clouds prevent the earth from getting too cold.



Cloud watching is a fun and inexpensive hobby for children and adults. All that is needed is some spare time and imagination. It costs absolutely nothing to spend some time looking at the clouds. I love to spend time photographing clouds!!



I also loved to listen to my parents recite the following poems about clouds that they memorized as children. My parents were born in a country that was colonized by Great Britain and the education system forced them to memorize British poetry.



THE CLOUD

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,

From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid

In their noonday dreams.

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken

The sweet buds every one,

When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,

As she dances about the sun.

I wield the flail of the lashing hail,

And whiten the green plains under,

And then again I dissolve it in rain,

And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,

And their great pines groan aghast;

And all the night 'tis my pillow white,

While I sleep in the arms of the blast.

Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,

Lightning my pilot sits;

In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,

It struggles and howls at fits;

Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,

This pilot is guiding me,

Lured by the love of the genii that move

In the depths of the purple sea;

Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,

Over the lakes and the plains,

Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,

The Spirit he loves remains;

And I all the while bask in Heaven's blue smile,

Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes,

And his burning plumes outspread,

Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,

When the morning star shines dead;

As on the jag of a mountain crag,

Which an earthquake rocks and swings,

An eagle alit one moment may sit

In the light of its golden wings.

And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,

Its ardours of rest and of love,

And the crimson pall of eve may fall

From the depth of Heaven above,

With wings folded I rest, on mine aëry nest,

As still as a brooding dove.

That orbèd maiden with white fire laden,

Whom mortals call the Moon,

Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,

By the midnight breezes strewn;

And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,

Which only the angels hear,

May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,

The stars peep behind her and peer;

And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,

Like a swarm of golden bees,

When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,

Till calm the rivers, lakes, and seas,

Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,

Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the Sun's throne with a burning zone,

And the Moon's with a girdle of pearl;

The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,

When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.

From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,

Over a torrent sea,

Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,

The mountains its columns be.

The triumphal arch through which I march

With hurricane, fire, and snow,

When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair,

Is the million-coloured bow;

The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,

While the moist Earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of Earth and Water,

And the nursling of the Sky;

I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;

I change, but I cannot die.

For after the rain when with never a stain

The pavilion of Heaven is bare,

And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams

Build up the blue dome of air,

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

And out of the caverns of rain,

Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,

I arise and unbuild it again.

I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD

By William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

Patricia Liverpool © August 5-2019

I LOVE PHOTOGRAPHY

I LOVE PHOTOGRAPHY

In 1814 the first photographic image was made using an early device for projecting real-life imagery called a camera obscura. However, the image required eight hours of light exposure and later faded.

In 1837 the first daguerreotype was made; it was an image that was fixed and did not fade and needed under thirty minutes of light exposure.

On May 8-1840 Alexander Wolcott, received the first American patent for photography (US Patent No. 1582) for a Daguerreotype mirror camera, which did not have a lens. The camera was based on a concave reflecting mirror built by an associate.

In 1841 an Englishman, William Henry Talbot patented the Calotype process. The translucent calotype negative made it possible to produce as many positive prints as desired by simple contact printing, whereas the daguerreotype was an opaque direct positive that could only be reproduced by copying it with a camera.

 In 1843 the first advertisement with a photograph was published in Philadelphia.

In 1851 Frederick Scott Archer invented the Collodion process so that images required only two or three seconds of light exposure.

In 1859 the Panoramic camera, called the Sutton, was patented. Sutton's Patent Panoramic Water Lens, was patented (patent no. 2193) in England on September 28-1859. Two lenses with extremely concentric curvatures enclose a hollow space which had been filled with crystal clear water.

In 1865, photographs and photographic negatives were added to protected works under copyright law.

In 1871, Richard Leach Maddox invented the gelatin dry plate silver bromide process, which meant that negatives no longer had to be developed immediately.

1880, the Eastman Dry Plate Company and Film Company was founded. The company’s first camera, the Kodak, was sold in 1888 and consisted of a box camera with 100 exposures. In 1884, the company  

invented flexible, paper-based photographic film and in 1888 patented the Kodak roll-film camera.

In 1898, Reverend Hannibal Goodwin patented a celluloid photographic film.

In 1900, the first mass-marketed camera, called the Brownie, went on sale.

In 1913/1914, the first 35mm still camera was developed.

In 1927, General Electric invented the modern flash bulb.

In 1932, the first light meter with photoelectric cell was introduced.

In 1935, Eastman Kodak marketed Kodachrome film and in 1941, Eastman Kodak introduced Kodacolor negative film.

On October 6-1942, the Patent Office issued Chester Carlson a patent for electrophotography (xerography.)   

In 1948, Edwin Land launched and marketed the Polaroid camera.

In 1954, Eastman Kodak introduced high-speed Tri-X film.

In 1960, EG&G developed extreme depth underwater camera for U.S. Navy.

1963

Polaroid introduced the instant color film.

In 1968, a photograph of the Earth was taken from the moon. The photograph, Earthrise, is considered one of the most influential environmental photographs ever taken.

In 1973, Polaroid introduced one-step instant photography with the SX-70 camera.

In 1978, Konica introduced the first point-and-shoot autofocus camera.

In 1980, Sony demonstrated the first consumer camcorder for capturing moving picture.

In 1984, Canon demonstrated the first digital electronic still camera.

In 1985, Pixar introduced the digital imaging processor.

In 1990, Eastman Kodak announced the Photo Compact Disc as a digital image storage medium.

In 1999, Kyocera Corporation introduced the VP-210 VisualPhone, the world's first mobile phone with built-in camera for recording videos and still photos.