I’m facinated with photographing power lines and poles. I love finding a series of lines that follow the natural flow of the land. Or a transmission tower against a blue morning sky. There’s something about the man-made vs nature aspect of electricity transmission that draws me to it.
That’s why I was happy to find another “powerful” subject on a hike I took over the weekend. This is a perfect example of what I’m talking about here. Unfortunately, I still haven’t found anyone else who shares my curiosity on the topic.
Human vision is amazing. Standing in my kitchen early one morning my eyes picked up the tiny, jerking movement of a very, very small moth. But my first thought was not “this is a moth”. Rather, it was “this is not a mosquito”.
Right now we’re in the middle of mosquito season and I’m always alert for ones that have invaded my home. I knew this bug wasn’t a mosquito right away although I didn’t have my glasses on and couldn’t clearly see it. It was the movement that gave it away. A mosquito seems to glide smoothly through the air while a moth makes erratic seeming movements in all directions.
My vision system registered all of that in a split second. Had it been a mosquito I probably would have reacted instantly by swatting at it since I’ve programmed my brain to think of them as needing to be killed before I get bit. Since it was a moth, I didn’t have to spring into action.
It’s amazing how the human brain reacts to its built-in sensors and makes a split-second decision whether to put the body into motion or not. Most of the algorithm my brain used to make this decision was formed over years of seeing bugs in flight, categorizing them and determining if they were dangerous or not.
Learning any task or skill is built up the same way. Repetitive input through the eyes and ears along with the movement from the rest of the body program the brain to recognize patterns and respond to them. At the same time, the brain uses these recorded programs to send feedback to the body that allows it to output the pattern. A skill is born.
What I’m interested in now is finding ways to imprint those patterns on the brain faster and more permanently. Of course one has to practice skills. But is there a way to acquire them more efficiently?
If you live in a neighborhood without overhead power lines, you likely live in a neighborhood with big, ugly, green transformers popping up out of cement pads. It’s not uncommon to have one every three or four houses.
Now, I understand the necessity for electrical transformers. I love electricity but even I know that 13000 volts is more than my toaster needs. But why do these utilities have to be so, utilitarian? Why do they all have to be the same olive drab green?
A nice alternative color scheme to mimic the neighborhood feel would go a long way toward removing these things as eyesores. I don’t blame the electric companies for not doing this. Sticking with one color is cheaper and easier to maintain. But I’d love to see them allowing customers to spruce them up.
So here’s an idea. Why not manufacture removable skins that can be stretched right over the top of one. Imagine the decorative possibilities. And it could be a great business. There are probably hundreds of thousands of these things in the U.S. alone and more are being put in all the time.
Overhead lines are coming down and being replaced with underground lines in many cities. In some ways, we are replacing ugly poles that everyone’s used to with ugly boxes right in people’s yards. It’s a ripe situation for a cosmetic solution.
Of course this will never happen. Anywhere there’s a warning sticker (like on every transformer ever installed), there’s absolutely zero chance of having any fun. That’s just the world we live in today. But I might start coming up with some designs anyway.
I always see interesting things when I go on my morning walks. This time it was a vine growing through fence slats. The vine had produced this beautiful purple flower and the fence was a stark background for it. The scene offered brief enjoyment but I decided to stop and capture an image of it for both of our future enjoyment.
