Ben's Language Lab

Image Talk #4

Image Talk

Episode 4

Beginner

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Hi, my name is Ben. You're watching Image Talk. This video is meant for English beginners. Today, we'll be talking about five different images. If you need, there are subtitles available, or the entire transcript is on benslanguagelab.com. All you need to do is to watch, listen, watch, listen, and enjoy. Let's start with this image, because it's a very intriguing image. It's very interesting. It makes me think. because it looks very old, right? It's in a very old style with these sorts of buildings and high up things and the colors feel very old. However, we see things like spaceships and this sort of meteorite and some flying stuff And so it's this weird mix of an old style with newer things, newer elements. And it's very interesting, the colors and how it looks. The first thing we see is this, right? This feels like something, the sun or a meteor. coming down, but also like it's being touched. This is sort of reaching up towards it to touch it, to grab it. And we don't really know what this is. Is this the ground? Is it this that's being sucked up sort of towards this thing or what's happening? It's hard to tell. But then we sort of see that, oh, there's this, which looks very historical. It looks sort of like it's from ancient Greece. And we ask, is this some sort of God? What is going on here in this picture? It's unclear exactly what this is. It's some kind of art. Down here we even see some people. We see somebody who looks like they're holding something upwards and looking at this thing. It looks like we see some other figures that might be fighting or doing something. Here it looks like they're in some sort of chariot. So they have a vehicle of some kind with wheels. There's their wheels. And that's sort of what I see here. Maybe it's got like a back or something. I don't really know. I can't see very well. And then we see the spaceship, right? This is very clearly a rocket that's going to space, right? We have, there's the rocket, there's the bottom, and it's going out into space, right? Out here. And so what is this doing here? I also don't know. It's this, it's sort of an interesting, not puzzle, right, there's nothing to solve because it's just a picture, it's an image, but I find it very, it's very strange, very interesting in what it contains. Here we see there's like a bridge, we see a sort of an ancient city, up here there seems to be more stuff, houses, city, there's just so much going on in this picture it's hard to talk about anything specific. All we know is that something is happening with this thing and it's changing the world around it. So, anyways, let's move on to the next image, which looks a little bit more realistic. It looks a little bit more like the real world, where we are, where I live. And we see that we're in a house of some kind. This is somebody's home. There are some, sort of a cushion, like a couch thing. Here's another couch sort of thing here. And it looks like there's a bar back here. So maybe it's not a house, right? It's not where somebody lives necessarily. There's a house. It might not be a house. It might be a bar. It might be a restaurant. because we see that there's a bunch of chairs, or rather, these are stools, right? A chair looks more like this, and it has more pieces to it, right? But then a stool is just this, it's sort of, there's no back to it, it just has this part, and that's a stool. So we see there's one, two, three, four, five, six, probably seven stools here, and they're all at the bar, right? This is the bar. Behind the bar we see what looks like some bottles, so maybe some liquor, some booze to make some drinks. And then there might be some other machines or other things behind here. And there's this great big window to look outside. You want to be able to look outside the building while you're enjoying your drink, while you're having your drink. Over here, we see that the wall is open, right? There's no wall, right? There's no wall here. It's open directly outside. We see there's the plants here with the big leaves, right? It has some big leaves here. And then we see some more plants back here, some smaller ones. And it looks like a spot where you might sit down and enjoy a coffee or your own drink or something like that while you're looking outside. Because if you're sitting here, right, this is you with your drink right there, and you're looking outside and relaxing, right? Or you can sit over here. Maybe you prefer to sit over here, and so you're sitting back here. You're very strange looking. There are your arms, and you have your drink here. There we go, that's your drink. And you're enjoying here, and you're looking out this way. So there's a lot of different places to sit in this room. It feels very tropical. Tropical is the places where there's a lot of rain and water and nature, right? So this is sort of tropical, this is tropical, right? There's plants inside. And then also the colors feel a bit tropical. There's sort of browns for wood and to be natural. The ground feels very earthy as well. Earthy can be not only brownish, this is sort of an earthy color. but also can be things that are related to the earth, right? So you can have like an earthy flavor. If something tastes a bit, almost a little bit like dirt, it can have an earthy flavor. So it's not just colors. And so this place feels like it might be in Southeast Asia or in Central America, somewhere that's a bit more tropical. We also see some really interesting patterns. These are patterns on the pillows. These are pillows. On these tapestries, they're some kind of cloth thing, pieces of art, I guess. So you might call them a tapestry. Or on the carpet, on the rug. It's actually a rug, but you can call it a carpet as well. And you can see there's interesting designs, right? We see all these different shapes on there and there's lots of colors. And so we say that the designs are pretty interesting. However, let's move on to another image. I think we've talked about that one enough. And here we have a very intriguing image of a few people standing at the top of a hill with what looks to be an eclipse happening above them, behind them. An eclipse is what happens when the sun, the sun here, gets covered by the moon, right? Because the moon is always a circle, right? But sometimes we only see bits of it here, right? But occasionally, sometimes, the sun gets completely covered by the moon and we can't see the sun. And we get all of our light from the sun. That's how the light comes to Earth, to us. And so when the moon is right in the same place as the sun, the light doesn't hit us, instead it sort of explodes out on the sides. And you get this ring of light, which is sometimes called like a halo. A halo is a very circular color, like a light, right? So this is sort of, it's halo around, and it creates this very crazy effect, it looks very unreal. It looks, remember from last time we talked about the word surreal, because it doesn't feel real, but it is, it's happening. And it's very, it's pretty normal. It's just science or just logic, right? If the sun is covered by the moon, you can't see the sun. But it only happens very, very rarely, which is why it's weird. And so this picture is a picture of an eclipse, a solar eclipse. Solar eclipse. And we see some people up here at the top of the hill who are looking up at the eclipse and it looks like this person is taking a picture of it as well. And so that's the picture of, that's what this picture is of, a solar eclipse. There's not a whole lot to talk about here. It's pretty simple, right? We have a hill, three people, and a solar eclipse. So I think we'll move on to the final image here. Or no, not the final image, the fourth image. We have two more. We have two more images, and we'll talk about this one, which is, again, a little more abstract. And so I wanna talk about this word for a second. abstract, because it's hard to explain. Abstract is when something is clear, is not made to be anything real or specific, and instead we have to think about what it might mean. And so if like this person is not abstract, right, this is just a regular person. For example, this image is not abstract because it could be real. This one also is not abstract. It's matching real life. But this one is also not because it's not real, right? It's not a real thing that ever happened. It's a painting. But it's not abstract because it's supposed to represent real things. I hope that's becoming a bit clearer. But abstract is when something is a little less clear what it's supposed to be. What is this? I don't know. We see that it's like half of a head, right? It's somebody's head from here down. But then this part is something different and they're in the clouds. And so we get something that is a lot more abstract. A fully abstract picture would be something that's just like dots and colors and it's just completely crazy, right? Something that's totally just not real. It's just color. That's fully abstract and then fully real is like this, right? This is fully real. And so this is like somewhere between. And so if we're looking at art, we have abstract, abstract over here, and real life here, or E-A-L, and we have a line between the two. This picture, this one that we're talking about now is somewhere closer to over here on this scale, on this spectrum is what that's called. A scale is between this thing and this thing. But what's actually happening? What do we see here? So the first thing that we see is this person, this thing, and they're wearing a blue shirt, and their skin is covered in these lines, or their skin is these lines, or maybe it's not even a real person. And so they have all these lines on them, and then their head turns into what looks like a room. This looks like a door. Because it looks like you can stand in here, right? So here's a person standing inside this room thing. And it almost looks like they're bars on a prison. So we have the bar that we talked about in this picture, right? This is a bar. But we also have the word bars for something that covers something else with like metal rods. And so like you might see on windows, there might be bars like this, right? So here's the actual window itself and it's covered in bars. If you go to prison, there's also bars that you're holding onto and you can't pull apart the bars. And so these sort of look like they're metal bars of some kind. We also see that there's clouds around, right? These are clouds that are kind of going into the room and they're dripping off and falling and this man is looking up at It looks like he's looking behind, right? Because his shadow is cut off. His shadow is behind this arm here. And so it looks like he is further behind this person, right? He's behind them, which is interesting. And he's looking out over the water. Right, so here we see there's water. Well, not here, right? This part is water and this part is all water. And then across the water, it looks like there might be a city of some kind or there's something beyond across the water that he's looking at. And so I don't really know what else to say about this picture. It's very interesting. And I thought it was kind of cool. And I hope that you learned a little bit about the word abstract from this picture. Here's a fun one, let's talk about the final image here, which is of a little cat, well, a big cat, a very fat cat. We see the cat is quite large, he has a very big tummy. This is his tummy right here, tummy, his little tummy, and you can pat his tummy, you can pet his tummy, and he looks very cute. But I saw this picture and I thought it was sort of funny because it's the same cat in a bunch of different poses or positions. A pose is when you, right, you pose and you make a different position of your body. And so this is a picture of eight, oh, excuse me, of eight different poses that the cat might be in. And so this first one, it looks like he's saying, no, no, no, no. I don't want that thing. He's a little bit, he's saying no to something. Move along. No, thank you. And then here, it looks like he might be quite happy. He's getting something. Ooh, yes, please. Right? Opening his mouth. Food. I want food. I'm hungry. And in this one, it looks like he's being a very acute cat. He has his paws up here on his chin going foo, foo. He's sort of begging a little bit or possibly praying. He might be praying. When you pray, you go, oh, please work, please work, oh. Right, that's praying. And so he might be praying of some kind. In this one, it looks like he's a little bit grumpy. I'm grumpy. He doesn't want to do anything. He also doesn't have any arms, so we don't know where those are, but he is a little bit grumpy in this one, maybe because he lost his arms, right? If you lose your arms, oh no, my arms are gone, you might be a little bit grumpy, right? Ouch. And here, sort of a similar one, but he's a little bit more, Hmm, bad mood. He's in a bad mood, maybe. Which is a little bit too bad, right? He's a little bit grumpy still and sort of, hmm, upset and sad. And again, he doesn't have any arms, so we don't know where those are. In this one, it looks like he is licking himself. Cats often lick themselves to clean themselves, right? They have to clean themselves. And so it looks like he's turned around and is licking his back or his butt or something like that. So he might be licking himself here or here or something like that. And his arm has come back, thankfully. In this one, it looks like he is possibly tired and stretching. He's stretching. Stretch. That's nice. He might be stretching of some kind, and he looks a little bit tired or wistful, maybe. That's a bit of a weird word for that, but you know. And then in this one, it's sort of similar to this one, but he's saying, no, get away, no, no, or something like that. And so we have a bunch of different poses that the cat might be in. But that's all for this episode. We talked about five pretty interesting images. We talked about this strange picture of some sort of event happening. I'm not really sure still. We talked about this interesting bar in a tropical place. We talked about this solar eclipse with the family on the hill. We talked about this abstract piece of art, and we talked about this cat in many different poses. But this is the end of this episode of Image Talk. I hope that you enjoyed this video and maybe learned a couple of new words. Remember, all the transcripts are on benslanguagelab.com if you need. And I'll see you again in the next video, so make sure that you subscribe to see that next one when it comes out. I'll see you then. Bye-bye.


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