about photography

photography

o sure, We know what photography is!
But, do we really?

From the latin roots for light and writing, we get the feeling that the original use of photography was to trace objects in the real world by standing inside of a huge camera. Using a pinhole, one could create a really accurate shadow of an object outside of the camera to appear unside down inside of it. One could then trace the object in preparation for a painting.

Eventually, someone figured out that a canvas could be prepared with a special light sensitive substance, so that a permanent image of the object could be transfered to the canvas without the need for the artist to trace the shape of it.

We have improved our light writing since those days, and now weild the power to write repeatedly, or even continuously! We have dispensed with the chemicals and the light sensitive coatings. So what more needs to be done to write really well with light? It seems that the thinking is all done, and it is time to just make some files!

Not so fast! I have been writing with light for half of a century, and i can tell you that there is more to it. It is a little difficult to think about, but i will write it down if i can.

First, there is the nature of light itself. Light is a crazy, crazy thing! It barely makes sense, and shows us that our ideas about the universe are pretty much poppycock. A magnetic field and an electric field trading energies very quickly, at right angles to one another, and proceeding through space at a finite speed that sets all of the parameters of our physical universe? Wow!

In one way, 'light particles' exist on their own, and have a given amount of work that they can do. In another way, light exists as a collection of synchronized waves traveling through space together. The particle or the wave description must be used depending on the circumstances, and the math is entirely different!

What this means is that we don't know what light really is. We are missing a piece of the puzzle. It is alright, because we know a lot about the behavior of light. We know that it makes the universe of atoms possible, by allowing an electrons to change it's orbital distance from the nucleus. The light particle is the energy 'change' that the universe must pay so that electron can fall toward, or be driven away from the center of that atom. If the electron comes to a new orbital shell closer to the center, it has less energy. A light particle comes out of the atom to make up the exact difference. The shells are rigidly shaped, due to the special granular nature of energy. Since these kinds of transactions must work both ways, the same flavor of light particle may strike the atom, and be just enough to boost an electron's orbit to the higher state. The light particle goes away, and the electron takes a higher orbit.

So, that is how light is 'born', or how it 'dies'. One must understand that there is no difference between the birth and the death of light. In other words, if you focused a very small camera inside of an atom [you can not do that !], it would not be possible to tell if the camera was going forward and backwards when one viewed a single event. that is how such small events are. Electrons and particles of light have no individual identity. Each one can be any of the other ones. They can not be told from one another. Together with the idea that one can not really tell the direction of time from watching particles of matter and particles of light perform together, this gives some pretty formidable questions about the reality of matter and light!

Professional photographer and guide Chris Conrad enjoys a campfire and a cigar with Jack C. Kirby

What about the stuff that enters the eye, or the lens of a camera? I mean, it seems to be organized in some clever way, and to provide useful information about the universe. We can get our brain, or a computer in our camera, to make sense of the light particles that have entered the respective chamber. We know how the light particle was formed. But, how does the light particle convey information about objects in the field of view?

That is where things get really interesting. Objects 'out there' can absorb light particles, and have their atomic orbits given additional energy, or they can emit particles when the orbits decay. If we are seeing them, the atoms are being struck by light particles, and giving out other light particles. In addition, light particles may bounce off of the object [reflect] in ways that are understood pretty well.

In most cases [outside of a mirror], we do not see the light that originally struck an object. we see the light that it did not want to absorb. The 'color' of an object is really the energy of light that is rejected by that object! The energy of light that was exactly right to lift an electron to a distinctly different orbital shell was kept by the atom. What is cast out, to be 'seen', are particles of light that were not used to lift electron orbits in that bit of matter.


so, light particles are not directly outlining the objects that interest us. The process of looking at objects, or photographing objects is more indirect that we At fist had imagined! It gets a step more indirect after the particles reach the sensor. We still have to organize the particles, and make 'sense' of them! After all, the particles are useless for doing work, other than lifting electron orbits in surfaces that they have struck.

Let that impinge on your mind for a moment! A lot of light particles came into your eye, and they warmed it up in a certain way. And somehow, your brain learned something about the world outside of itself. It can predict things, and choose behaviors that will lead to good experiences. Similarly, a camera can store patterns in a computer chip that have something to do with the world outside of the camera's darkened chamber. unlike the products of the human eye, the camera's patterns can be shared among advanced tool users. This is remarkable, and can be seen as a kind of dream that may be shared. It is another magical thing like the uttering of organized sounds and the recording of those utterances. It allows humans to share their consiousness with other humans over time and distance.

Human thoughts have energy if they are organized. They can do work, and must be paid for in some way.  Organization in one area leads to disorganization somewhere else. I mention this because it bears on the question, should photography be done at all? This is a very difficult question, that asks other questions. What is life for? It is OK to look around, or use devices to look around, while humans are hungry or in pain? Is one here to carry water, or to play around on the internet? Grow food, or hide in a soundproof room and play computer games?

As a verified busy monkey, this author has found that some kind of busy course of action is needed. It hardly matters what exact course that it is. Simply digging holes in the ground and filling them back up would probably work just fine. Fooling around with light particles seems pretty harmless. I dont know. You choose!

real vampires!

Vampires do exist, but they are not set aflame by sunlight, and they do not require human blood to survive. They are ordinary homo sapiens organisms, that were born and raised with insatiable hunger. 

Using reincarnation language, our vampires are the lower animals that hurried into human form without satisfying all of the time consuming requirements. From the soul standpoint, taking human form is a great deal. You may be born a wealthy American, and be assured a life of abundance and plenty. Hopefully, you will not be held captive except during your earliest and final years.

Instead, you will be a great jailer. You will have pets, which are creatures of other species that you have total control over. You will have a series of machines that can do amazing things, so that you do not have to do those things. The machines will go quickly over the earth, getting food and  drilling deep holes in the earth and killing creatures that are not desired.

Hopefully, you will get to 'own' land. This is a really amazing concept! A short lived creature is thought to hold a bit of the planet captive. The human draws exact lines, and they may decide which other creatures cross that line. In some cases, the imaginary lines of ownership extend a certain distance up into the planets atmosphere, and a certain distance toward the core of the planet.

If that is not sufficiently amazing, The islands that make up the dry surface of the planet are also 'owned' or held captive. For these 'continents', the captor is a special group of the vampire humans. The group controls a portion of an island, and the control extends far up into space and down into the ground. Their influence  extends a distance past the imaginary lines, and overlaps with the influences of other groups of vampire humans.

The vampire types keep control of a larger group

of more docile humans. The docile ones are compelled to work with various obvious tricks, including the illusion that they may become a vampire, as well as a kind of hypnosis called 'religion'. The docile ones may also be compelled to leave the imaginary borders of their island, and to purposely harm other humans!

The purposeful harm is called 'war', and it includes the poisoning of the land, the  air, and the water in that other land, so that it is hard for creatures and plants to live there. It is difficult to see how this will work over time, as the illness of war infects lands that are overfilled with humans, where the land and air and water is already badly poisoned.

Can this process be stopped? Wow! It seems to have progressed past a tipping point. Many species have already departed. The atmosphere has been influenced chemically and energetically, so that it needs a few thousand years without human 'husbandry' to calm down.

Perhaps that is the answer. Husbanding has not worked. 'Husbanding' is about harm and captivity and mindless force. 'Husbanding is deep holes and barbed wire and huge fires and cluster bombs.

Perhaps the earth needs to be 'wived'. It is hard for humans to even imagine that. How would largescale 'wiving' look? Do nurturers form armies? How is love 'deployed'. What will become of the NFL?

The good news is that husbanding seems to have run it's course. Within the US, there are areas where Females seem to be loosing rights and becoming the property of men. But, in the world, Women are being given control of countries and companies. Women are shedding the hijab, and donning the trappings of office. It is the most forceful and masculine females that are  encroaching on the all male mandate thus far, but that may change in time.

Real nurturers might get power, and the real 'wiving' of the earth could begin. It is a race, and the outcome is not at all clear. A tiny minority of extremely 'hungry' humans have the upper hand. It is hard to budge them, as they are willing to puncture and burn and cause general harm to remain the 'captor' of their flock. In many cases, they control the news media in their area, and have methods of winning elections and getting laws into place.

One finds oneself in the position of a farm animal, trapped within barbed wire that one worked to put up, and lowing piteously to be set free. How is that supposed to work? It is not that great to be an animal when ones planet has insufficient room for some of it's animals.

The american nightmare

In reviewing a large number of modern movies, I have become disgusted. Most of them are American, and it is pretty clear what Americans [of which I am one] want to watch.

There are lots of movies about stealing money. Probably the second most popular theme is revenge, and the justified captivity and torture of deserving perpetrators. This shows, all too well, the attitude of the average American. The monetary system has failed, because people no longer see money as a reward for very hard work. They think that it does not matter how the money is obtained. In fact, most Americans seem to be involved in handling the money itself rather than in doing useful work.

We are living in the rotting corpse of a once great country. Our people tend to be obese and useless. Our horses have given way to great shiny machines of metal. The machines have replaced our citizens bodies, and fossil fuel powers those bodies. I see parallels with the fall of Rome, with it's dependence on human slaves and continual military expansion.

We have ceased to educate ourselves, except in the acquisition and handling of money. Practical work and resource extraction have been moved to other lands. We are proud of this, and our obesity and uselessness seem like good things. Our remnant of military might is used to grab resources that can not be purchased.

We have allowed the greediest and the least polite among us rule, and this has led to some real world problems. The US should have been the leader in reducing it’s material needs, and in switching to clean energy. Instead, we have allowed our greediest fools to deploy depleted uranium and torture to maintain their monopoly on fossil fuel. We have denied climate change, even while US cities are being covered with sea water.

We reserve real health care and effective education for the very rich. We eject people from their homes readily, and use US soldiers and militarized police to keep our own poor at bay. We are proud of this, and point to a few billionaires as our shining examples. Elon Musk is the only positive example that I am aware of. He has faced our problems head on, using his genius and creative force to tackle obvious problems.

The rest of us remain in chaotic cities, attempting unsuccessfully to get money. We vilify others for what we have done. Here is what we have done: As European rejects, we destroyed most of the native humans, and the larger native mammals of a subcontenent. We did this in a cowardly way, using disease and subterfuge. We imported a race of people to be our slaves. We carved up the land into rectangles, and have controlled those rectangles with brutal force. Firearms and barbed wire and poisons are our favorite tools.

We have replaced the healthful native creatures with mutated and diseased beasts. We imagine that we 'own' them. We make believe that the slaves in their city ghettos have been entirely freed, and that the surviving native humans are very happy in their wasteland concentration camps.

It is time to wake up. The world has seen our rigged elections, and watched us steal oil from any nation that could not defend itself. We have destroyed our own buildings to scare ourselves into surrendering up our semblance of freedom. We pay close attention to a fat and pasty Hitler wannabe, who grabs breasts and promises to lead us in one final pillage of the planet.

Who wants to live in a world like that? Do I have positive suggestions? You bet I do!

We could have real elections, where the most qualified person is elected. I suggest using the internet, and forbidding the use of big money to win elections. We could put up a lot of windmills and solar panels, and allow the oil companies to go out of business.

We could do away with the concept of the corporation. We no longer need 'middle men' to stand between the supply and the consumer. Middle men are worse than useless, especially when they are allowed to set national policy.

We could actually free the slaves, and allow the natives of this land to leave their prison camps. We could attend to our population’s health and education. We do not have a government to steal foreign resources or to read our mail. We have it to make our lives better. We could bring our aircraft and our troops back to the US, and concentrate on defending this place. It would be OK to shrink our military. We have always been able to grow it back at spectacular speed.

As far as borders, well, I honestly don’t know what to do about borders. My own people were chased here by the Nazis. Every group wants to be the last group admitted.

I am not certain that we need such a powerful federal government. The US was originally designed as a confederation of separate countries that could band together in time of war. We have given this confederation too much power, by allowing it to stay in a permanent state of war. We never wanted a king, having finally gotten out from under the British king. Now we have a king, and our once productive nation has changed from eagle to buzzard.

The US need not be destroyed in a war with the rest of the world. It can be allowed to collapse gracefully, as it is doing now. The USSR has already dissolved into states. I wish that I had a more rosy outlook and better suggestions.

Perhaps, if we were healthy and well educated, we could figure out what to do.