Photography is Too Frickin’ Cool

I'm a mechanical engineer, so naturally I'm a fan of the Dilbert comic. I'm also a big fan of The Dilbert Blog by Scott Adams. A few days ago, Scott wrote a post titled “Too Frickin' Cool” that asks readers to describe some technology that is so futuristic you can hardly believe that you are using it. So as a photographer, my response to that is digital photography.

Photography alone is too frickin' cool — regardless of whether it's digital or film. You point your camera at something, push a button, and capture a slice of the past. That moment you captured represents some small amount of time in the past; a moment that will never return and can't be duplicated. But with that photograph, you can revisit that moment and see into the past. You can share that moment with others who weren't there at the time and instantly transport them to that time and location. So really, it's the closest thing we have to time travel and teleportation.

Now queue digital photography. The photograph you take is created by a small piece of silicon semiconductor that contains millions of receptor locations that transform photons of light into electrons, which then are converted to voltage and translated into binary data. That data is evaluated, transformed, and compressed by a tiny little computer residing inside the camera and powered by something that fits in the palm of your hand. That data is then stored in an array of floating gate transistors with a physical footprint smaller than you could see with the naked eye. The amazing thing is that this all happens is a split second. You can then transfer/duplicate that data to other storage devices, manipulate that data, and even transfer that tiny little block of binary code onto a large piece of paper worthy of hanging on your wall to be admired by others.

So what's frickin' cooler than that, huh?

Photo of the Day…

Photo by Brian Auer
03/05/07 Neuchatel, Switzerland
Swiss Alps Beyond Lake Neuchatel
Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D
Konica Minolta AF DT 18-200
300mm equiv * f/6.7 * 1/350s * ISO100