Exposure

I

 Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us... 
 Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent...
 Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient...
 Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,
   But nothing happens.

 Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire.
 Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.
 Northward incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles,
 Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.
   What are we doing here?

 The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow...
 We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy.
 Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army
 Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of gray,
   But nothing happens. 

 Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence.
 Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow,
 With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause and renew,
 We watch them wandering up and down the wind's nonchalance,
   But nothing happens. 

II

 Pale flakes with lingering stealth come feeling for our faces--
 We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed,
 Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed,
 Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses.
   Is it that we are dying?

 Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires glozed
 With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there;
 For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs;
 Shutters and doors all closed: on us the doors are closed--
   We turn back to our dying.

 Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn;
 Now ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit.
 For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid;
 Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born,
   For love of God seems dying.

 To-night, His frost will fasten on this mud and us,
 Shrivelling many hands and puckering foreheads crisp.
 The burying-party, picks and shovels in their shaking grasp,
 Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice,
   But nothing happens. 

Exposure is almost always controlled by manipulating the f-stop and the shutter speed.
The exception is flash photography, where the shutter speed does not change much: it is just the f-stop.

What does good exposure mean ? Well, the definition is quite relative, it all depends on what your aims (and you materials) are.

For negative materials, any printable negative could be considered "well exposed". For slides, you would require a certain contrast range. If you practice the zone system, on the other hand, you have an almost scientific definition of exposure.

On a personal side, for me exposure is the photographic moment: it is when I decide, arbitrarily, to chew off a piece of reality, and put it on film. I rob the world of its photons. It is an act of selection. When I press the shutter release button I don't breathe, and it is not only for practical reasons.

In rock climbing, mountaineering or other outdoor pursuits, exposure typically refers to the maximum distance that you are likely to fall if something goes wrong. Mount Everest's Southeast Ridge, for example, has a huge amount of exposure. The dropoff to the Tibetan side is 7,000 feet, and to the Nepalese side is 5,000 feet.

Exposure is a measure of the ability of a particular photon to produce ionizations in air. Exposure, symbolized as X, is equal to the total number of either negative or positive ions produced in air per unit mass of air as a result of irradiation from photons. Only the negative or positive ions produced are counted, not both. The sum of ions produced is symbolized Q, and the mass of air is symbolized m. Therefore, exposure can be written as:

     Q
X = ---
     m

The historical unit of exposure is the roentgen, R, of which one R is equal to 2.58 coulombs per kilogram of air. Roentgens are used to measure exposure from x-ray and gamma radiation, and apply only in air.

In 1979, Robert Fripp released his first Solo Album, "Exposure". Originally conceived as part of a trilogy along with Daryl Hall's album Sacred Songs and Peter Gabriel's second solo album (both of which Fripp produced), but problems with their respective record companies (the story of my life!) pushed the three albums' release dates around enough that it would be irresponsible to call them a trilogy.

The album itself is a bizarre (even by Fripp's standards) mixture of styles, ranging from AOR to punk to more "traditional" Fripp-style instrumentals. Its content is heavily influenced by the mystical philosophy of G.I. Gurdjieff, and recordings of Gurdjieff's foremost pupil, John Bennett, are interwoven with the music in several places on the album.

The track list is as follows:

Side One

2. You Burn Me Up I'm A Cigarette (Fripp/Hall)

3. Breathless (Fripp)

4. Disengage (Fripp/Hammill/Walton)

5. North Star (Fripp/Hall/Walton)

6. Chicago (Fripp/Hall/Walton)

7. NY3 (Fripp)

8. Mary(Fripp/Hall/Walton)

Side Two

1. Exposure (Fripp/Gabriel)

2. Häaden Two (Fripp)

3. Urban Landscape (Fripp)

4. I May Not Have Had Enough Of Me But I've Had Enough Of You (Fripp/Walton)

5. First Inaugural Address To The I.A.C.E. Sherborne House (Bennett)

6. Water Music I (Fripp/Bennett)

7. Here Comes The Flood (Gabriel)

8. Water Music II (Fripp)

9. Postscript (Fripp)

Further information can be found at the Elephant Talk website, www.elephant-talk.com/, which has a wonderful webpage chock full of information about the album, and has plenty of other webpages about Fripp's other projects, from King Crimson to his soundscapes.

Ex*po"sure (?;135), n. [From Expose.]

1.

The act of exposing or laying open, setting forth, laying bare of protection, depriving of care or concealment, or setting out to reprobation or contempt.

The exposure of Fuller . . . put an end to the practices of that vile tribe. Macaulay.

2.

The state of being exposed or laid open or bare; openness to danger; accessibility to anything that may affect, especially detrimentally; as, exposure to observation, to cold to inconvenience.

When we have our naked frailties hid, That suffer in exposure. Shak.

3.

Position as to points of compass, or to influences of climate, etc. "Under a southern exposure.

Evelyn.

The best exposure of the two for woodcocks. Sir. W. Scott.

4. Photog.

The exposing of a sensitized plate to the action of light.

© Webster 1913.