Dancing with light

Or, why I’m excited about another piece of new technology.

I know my interests tend to vary, but they all have always had one focal point - communications. And in the end, that’s why I’m excited about my new Canon Digital Rebel. It’s a beautiful marriage of traditional 35 mm single lens reflex and digital technology. And if used correctly, I may actually be able to say things with it that I can't say with words.

Picking up the Rebel I feel like I’ve stepped back 20 years or so to my last serious 35 mm camera, a Canon ------. With that camera I had intended to get serious about photography. I mean serious. Understand I have been a “professional” of sorts since I was 13 when I sold my Hurricane Carol pictures in sets of 20 to neighbors. About a year or so later I sold a couple of my photos to the Providence Journal and one made the front page. And during my freelancing days - mostly the 70s - I regularly took photos that were used in magazines of national circulation such as Popular Science. But I never took myself seriously as a photographer and I was always happy to have a real professional to work with me on an article.

Then I got the Canon and decided it was time to keep records, to bracket exposures, to really understand what was happening in terms of light and film. So I read the right books and I tried to keep the records, but frankly, t was too much of a hassle. (Or maybe I’m just too undisciplined.) I only kept good records for about six months and I never felt I had the money to buy enough film or lenses to really experiment. So I pretty much gave up and went back to being a point-and-shooter with perhaps a little better handle on the basics of composition, color, and light.

And so I have been until the Rebel walked into my life about a week ago. Now you don’t have to keep records because all the important data is stored in the camera for each shot. And you don’t have to worry about the cost of film - you can experiment until your hearts content at no cost. (Did I mention that when a storage card gets full I can empty it onto my Ipod and then continue shooting?) And lenses - yes, they’re out there. I just have to do a little more Web work so I don’t feel guilty buying them ;-)

And frankly - I feel more comfortable taking pictures by the numbers than I did pushing around chemicals. That is, when you do the dance with light and you do it digitally, the light gets reduced to a bunch of numbers - millions of ‘em - and that works better for me than the chemistry of film and photographic paper. Chemistry was never my strong suit. In fact, of all the sciences it interests me the least. And while I have a certain nostalgia for the darkroom, I got to admit the computer is faster, better, far more accurate and more versatile - not to mention a lot easier on the hands and a lot less stinky.

What’s more, there’s something terribly profound going on just beneath the surface with this computer imaging stuff. Somehow, it seems a good - or at least, comprehensible - model of reality. Maybe even a model of life. Think about it. There are no photographs stored in this computer. What is stored is information - numbers - that when accessed can be suddenly transformed into an image. For me that calls to mind the profound Buddhist concept of “manifestation.” That is, things are not created nor destroyed - in a sense there is no life and death - there are simply different manifestations of the same thing.

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I’m probably torturing Buddhist thinking here - but that’s how I understand it and somehow that all meshes nicely for me with the way I know computers store information in different forms, then create “manifestations” of that information - images on a screen.

And at the bottom of all this is the most profound mystery of all - light. What amazing stuff - takes the forms of waves on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and of particles on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. So what is it on Sundays? Oh come on. “Let there be light! (But in the beginning there was the Word. Hmmmm... information first, then light.) And if you don't think light is profound and mysterious, you need to reexamine relativity theory. Just think for amoment - light travels for millions of years to reach us from distant stars - and yet it arrives zipping along at the same speed with which it started - 186,200 miles a second. Is there anything else we know that keeps a constant speed throughout its travells? But then . . .

So, of course with photography you’re painting with light. With digital photography, you’re painting by the numbers. And with the Digital Rebel - well, it’s my passport back into the world of light and everything it reflects - or is reflected by it - and since I’m one of those fortunate people who thinks everything is a miracle, who could ask for more fun? ;-)

Whether I can say anything with it that means anything to anyone else remains to be seen. (Ooo - Sorry - pun unintended!)

Posted by Greg Stone at February 6, 2004 04:40 AM