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Derek Zhao

@asymmetricmeter

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💼 ML @ Disney
📸 Lowercase-p photographer
🔊 Some weirdo inflicting essays on you

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“Copy, moon joy.”“Amaze amaze amaze.”“Stable one.”“Four green crewmembers.”When the Space Shuttle Challenger launched with cold, brittle O-ring seals, combustion gases escaped and converted a rocket into a bomb.When the Space Shuttle Columbia re-entered our atmosphere with a punctured heat shield, the left wing melted from the inside and the orbiter disintegrated.Never take for granted the relief of a nominal splashdown.———#landscapephotography #moonphotography #lakereflections #nightphotography #longexposure @nasa @nasaartemis by @asymmetricmeter

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To my #british friends 🎵 if you know, you know 🎵#architecturephotography #intentionalcameramovement #icm #streetphotography by @asymmetricmeter

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The greatest colorist of all time was not a painter nor film photographer. He was a composer, Maurice Ravel.Ravel had a unique gift for understanding how to mix the timbres of different instruments in the orchestra to create colors then-audiences had never heard. His precision was compared to that of Swiss watchmakers.Ravel’s most famous piece, Bolero, is a color study. He called it a “piece without music in it.” It consists of only one pair of melodies, repeated 9 times over a span of 17 minutes. No harmonic variation, no melodic development, just brutal repetition, with “color” as his only means of controlling the shape of his piece.Bolero is somehow both a minimalist and maximalist work.Ravel suffered a neurodegenerative illness at the time he wrote Bolero. Some think this the reason for the obsessive repetition. I don’t know if that’s true, but I know my color study across these 17 shots severely tested my sanity.You might question your sanity too as you try to make it to the end of this set. Just remember: the snare drummer had to keep it together for 170 repeats of the same two bars.———I learned this morning that @cxlxurblind has protanopia. I get so interested in reading between the lines that I often forget to read what is right in front of me.Decklan, I think that’s partly why your eye for light and shadow is so strong. Beethoven wrote his best symphonies after going deaf. I write so much because I am a clumsy speaker.I made the 9th slide for you.92.59% of us can experience this image the same way, instead of the usual 92%.———@phomonay has been in my thoughts recently. Harimo is Iranian, though I do not know if she is there or abroad. She loves Ravel’s Bolero. She is why the idea for this post exists. I hope she finds this waiting for her when things settle down.———The unedited version of this rainbow waterfall is on my no-edit account @dailies.haul. I’ve written a nice story about it too.#landscapephotography #rainbowwaterfall #rainbowphotography #waterfallphotography #visitcalifornia by @asymmetricmeter

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Despite all the expense and toil it took to construct, #prambanantemple was abandoned less than 100 years after it was completed. Historians think a volcanic eruption blanketed it with ash and triggered a mass migration that left Prambanan to the mercy of the jungle.When it was rediscovered in the 1800s, the temples had collapsed into piles of stone. They’ve since been painstakingly reconstructed, but with a catch: Indonesian archaeological rules inherited from Dutch colonizers dictate that a structure may only be reconstructed if more than 75% of the original masonry can be found.This is why the central shrines stand tall while, tragically or photogenically, by the rubble of smaller irrecoverable ones.#exploreindonesia #javaneseculture #candiprambanan #ruinporn by @asymmetricmeter

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✨ Miniverse 🪐with original music by @jng.musik I sometimes like to play pretend. I imagine that the universe of who I follow and vice versa is the entirety of human art. I like seeing how art history rhymes and repeats when played out in this miniverse.Who influences who? Who bands together? Who drifts apart? Who are the progressives? The conservatives? Who says a lot with exacting quietude? Who says little despite all their sound and fury? Telescope in hand, I think I can spot in this miniverse the Pollacks and Picassos, Miros and Monets. And yes, the Bob Ross’s too.None of our photos really matter in the grand schemes of the universe, but they matter in this miniverse where I am invested in what you have to say about what it is like to be you and how you grow as you learn how to say it.Thank you for being a part of my miniverse. And allowing me into yours.———@jng.musik recently stepped into my miniverse and I his. He is behind the original music for this post. Be friends with Chris, and your miniverse will be much richer for it.———#startrails #astrophotography #lakereflections #nightphotography #abstractphotography by @asymmetricmeter

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Death Valley is named for what is absent: life. Specifically plant life, the lack of which only makes the hottest place on earth even hotter.One would think there’s not much to see in a valley of death, but without all those pesky plants, you can suddenly see the naked earth.A botanist’s nightmare and a geologist’s dream.———Happy #earthday2026 ! 🌎🌍🌏Horrifically underexposed unedited versions on @derek.no.edit#zabriskiepoint #desertporn #desertsunrise #geologyporn by @asymmetricmeter

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If I’d resolved to never see the perennially dry Badwater Basin again because I’d already done it, I’d never see the Lake Manly it becomes after unprecedented rainfall.If I’d resolved to only see Lake Manly once, I wouldn’t have known how quickly a vast body of water could dry up over the course of two days.You might intuitively grasp how the hottest place on earth can vaporize a large lake, but it’s different to experience it, the farther and farther treks on each subsequent visit, the taller and taller salt mounds, as the lake bids farewell.To revisit does not mean to repeat.———Shoutout to @rochairster ! I don’t know who is behind it, but it is high on charm and surrealism. I hope you keep up your advenchairs.🪑———#deathvalleynp #badwaterbasin #lakereflections #reflectionsonwater #landscape_lovers by @asymmetricmeter

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The ⬛️monolith⬛️ in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is structurally crisp and symbolically blurry. It can be read as a catalyst for human evolution, the limits of human understanding, or a tool that transforms the mind.Funny, because AI can be read as all of those things too.Funnier still, @binaryresonance uses AI to create ominous, liminal, #weirdcore monoliths that recalls the land art of Michael Heizer. The deep cuts to my favorite film scores and composers were an unexpected bonus.It clarifies my point of view about art: Art is pretty, yes, but it is about ideas, feelings, and stories. How someone gets there is not so important to me. Cultivating taste can be just as time consuming as mastering a technical skill. Developing a compelling thought can require just as much experience as traveling to an exotic location.I’m happy that AI is part of the artistic ecosystem. Like human art, most of it is meh, but I’m inspired by the good ones.I’d like to thank @binaryresonance with monoliths of my own, made of negative space. I’ve chosen the same film soundtrack they so tastefully chose for theirs. Positive and negative space resonating to the same music, I think it a poetic tribute to their name.———Each time I open my mouth about AI, I lose a small batch of followers. You know where the🚪EXIT🚪is.———#intentionalcameramovement #museumphotography #immersiveart #experimentalphotography @mercer.labs by @asymmetricmeter

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“We squat so we can take our images to new heights.” - @cabbage.cart ———#reflectionsinwater #lakereflections #badwaterbasin #desertvibe #desertoasis by @asymmetricmeter

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🗂️Misfiled📂The French composer Maurice Ravel, whom you likely know from his ubiquitous Bolero, lost his battle with history. Despite his protestations, he is now misfiled as an Impressionist, lumped together with the other titan of the movement, Claude Debussy.History’s confusion is understandable. On the surface, Ravel and Debussy sound similar enough with their non-functional harmonies, whole-tone scales, and dreamy orchestrations. But where Debussy embodied Impressionism in the purest sense, writing music with broad gestures that breezily suggested other gestures, Ravel was a Swiss watchmaker; every note served an exacting architectural purpose, to the harmony, to the melodic line, to the timbre, to the long-form structure of the piece.Ravel was really a neoclassicist. He did not want to be conflated with Debussy, but history didn’t care.What if I am an impressionist hoping not to be misfiled?What if you are too?———#artistspalette #abstractphotographyart #desertdweller #icmphoto #experimentalphoto by @asymmetricmeter

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To expand an adage about film photography, color is a chemical miracle—in our rocks and our clothes too.#colorharmony #colorfulrocks #desertsunset #desertlandscapes #artistspalette by @asymmetricmeter

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slickrock———#landscapephotography #desertsunset #travelphotography #visitpage #visitarizona by @asymmetricmeter

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