A return to Texas Tech’s public art today with a close-up of Tom Otterness’s Tornado of Ideas sculpture outside the Student Union Building.
This work is prominent for two reasons.
First, the photography is symbolic. As a graduation present to me, her dissertation advisor, Wendy Maxian bought me a copy of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Existentialism and Human Emotions. Notoriously absent-minded, I promptly misplaced it in August.
This morning I begged my wife to find it, which she did. Hence, as I walked by Tornado of Ideas today looking for the right angle, this title, Existential Cognition, jumped out.
Technologically, it’s the first Project 365 photo taken with an actual camera. I checked out one of the college’s Canon EOS Rebel XS cameras for the weekend.
This allowed me to use aperture priority mode to shoot it at f/5.6, which is as wide open as this 18-55mm lens would go. This allowed a shallower depth of field, making the hideously ugly library building behind to me maximally blurred.
In terms of cropping, the shot was limited due to the blinding sun immediately behind the center of the statue. Finally, the shot was retouched with Photoshop’s Auto Levels adjustment.
I'm a cognitive scientist and communication scholar who manages a psychophysiology lab at Texas Tech. I teach courses about the cognitive processing of media messages and research methods.
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Props to refering to McClamrocks book…