The Big Picture - 20 November 2010

Before I became a teacher, I used to work as a machinist for sixteen years. I built robot parts and, eventually, built the robots themselves. When looking at a blueprint, you need to be able to visualize the drawing in 3-Axis’s: X (left to right), Y (front to back) and Z (top to bottom). Seeing the piece in your mind before you started working the material helped you in creating the part.

Digital photography takes a 3-D object and turns it into a 2-D view. You will lose all of the dimensions and correlation/relationships to other items/subjects in the photograph and, unless you rebuild the scene, another viewer cannot get a real feel for what you experienced. We can look at the images the Hubble Telescope has been able to produce as an example. Can you really tell that certain stars, or celestial, entities are light-years apart in the photographs? You might be able to see the gaseous surroundings of a nebula, but do they have any texture to them? How about heat? Do they smell like anything we have ever experienced?

Digital photography can also be used to make space “seem” real too. Chapter 12 talks about modeling, something that has been used in photographic and cinema for decades. As we tried in one of our assignments, we played with the sun and moon, using them as toys or props for our pictures. We cannot really catch the sun or moon, but with careful placement of a hand, or prop, we can make it look like we hold the solar system in the palm of our hands. The same can be done with a toy car. Stand far enough behind a Matchbox ’57 Chevy and it will look like you own the hot rod. With simple personnel placement, I could look like I was able to slam-dunk a basketball over Michael Jordan’s head.

Modeling, Dimensional Thinking and Digital Photography can also be used to help a project too. Scale models of a skyscraper can be built long before the real building. A simple photograph would show some of the characteristics and features of the façade and, with careful placement of a light source, how the structure will affect neighboring entities. If building “A” is built on block “M,” what will it do to the park down the street? Will it kill off all the trees by blocking the sunlight? Will building “A” make buildings “C, D and E” too dark during peak hours of business? These are some of the ways you can use Modeling, Dimensional Thinking and Digital Photography to help us make a better world.