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March 18, 2007
Photography and astronavigation
Jim [I would normally link to his site, but it seems to be enjoying some downtime at the moment, probably living up in some cyber bar in some exotic cyber location, near a cyber sea I shouldn't wonder] anyway, Jim asked me to photograph the opening of his exhibition at Kinetica in Spitalfields, London last Thursday.
It was a great show, good to see Jim's work in a big space. There were lots of people there, most of whom Jim had never seen before in his life it has to be said. I lurked behind pillars capturing images on whatever it is behind the mirror of my camera that captures the images [for those who like to know this sort of thing I was using a Nikon D200]. Time was I knew what lay behind the shutter of a camera: a thin piece of plastic with an even thinner coating of chemicals whose properties are excited by light and are such that, with the addition of further chemicals, images can be projected, with a bright light, corresponding almost exactly to what was in front of the camera at the time.
The chemical coatings have been replaced by tiny electrical things which are similarly excited by light, and are subsequently and almost instantly, processed by a small computer in the camera which is most probably three times as powerful as the computers used for the Apollo space mission. Such is the wonder of photography [and space travel].
Posted by john at March 18, 2007 12:12 AM