Recently in Nature Category

Having recently had cataract operations on both eyes this has led a number of losses and gains. This is from the perspective of someone who has worn glasses since the age of 5 except for a 17 year period wearing soft contact lenses soon after they first cames out.

On the plus side I don't have to wear glasses anymore (Big cheer) except for reading, and yes I can see one of everything rather than multiple versions of text and objects (This made watching snooker especially odd!). The cost of glasses is less my normal glasses cost upwards of £300 plus reading glasses £250! Now two reading pairs with new frames £200 a massive difference.

On the negative side I have lost my close-up vision, for someone who was very shortsighted (-10 and -11 dioptres for those in the know e.g. free eye test territory!) this is useful without glasses is like using a hand lens threading needles was always a doddle. This is probably also where my interest in close-up photography came from as in many ways it is this ability to see what the naked eye can't normally see that has always fascinated me. Whether it is the structure of a moth's eye (see photograph to left) or poppy seeds (see earlier post) whenever you examine something that close there is always something new and unexpected to be found.

Oh by the way my next purchase is in optics is going to be a hand lens.

I thought it was about time I got back to writing and looking at scientific photography on my blog so I here is a recent photograph of poppy seeds. Yes well exciting! Actually poppy seeds I realized after taking photographs of bread with ultraviolet fluorescence looked interesting so I used photomacrography to get closer and the shapes on the surface are hexagonal.

Heaxgons are not uncommon in nature from the shells of some prehistoric creatures, to eyes of moths and other insects, shapes of honeycomb and wasps nests and inside our eyes with the corneal endothelium. More on hexagons to follow this piece.

For information on the mathematics of hexagons go to http://www.mathopenref.com/hexagon.html

When we take photographs are we changing what we see to suit our view or extraction of reality? A photograph is capturing what we see we capture not the reality but the reality as we see or interpret it the photographer is both observer and interpreter. Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle could equally be applied to photography.

We also can photograph what we cannot see with the naked eye to capture in our memory photography is beyond that as we can capture different chunks of time that we see in continuous motion. We capture with infrared and ultraviolet and the light emissions of subjects due to light or other radiation. As we use more and more digital capture devices so the time has shortened between the moment of capture and seeing what we have captured. We like video cameramen before us have become slaves not to our viewfinder and imagination but to our LCD screens.

Photographers had to wait for gratification till after processing and printing. We waited in anticipation or dread to see the final result; now we can see it as soon as the file has saved onto disk and know we have what we want or not and either keep it or delete it. The negative does not reach the neg sleeve or the cutting room floor instead it is deleted or downloaded then awaits its fate in hard drive failure or some eventual digital graveyard along with betamax and laser disks.

Going closer to a subject we see what we would otherwise never see unless extremely shortsighted the unseen made visible has been an enduring chase for photographers looking at things through different lenses. This is still the goal of photographers whatever they photograph to reveal their personal vision of the world to the world. In many ways the only need is for capture and print to reveal all the use of further editing might be seen as superfluous or the task undertaken to reveal even more from the perfect print in the darkroom to the PhotoShop editors mouse but at what point does that artistic or scientific extraction or abstraction become the reality or further and further removed from "reality".

If proof were ever needed, we are in danger of editing out the truth behind the natural beauty of the photographic image. But, how much alteration is too much? How much reinterpretation can we undertake before we are distorting through the unreality of our personal perceptions.

The key attribute for digital cameras is the ability to not only control aperture and shutter speed but also film speed. This was brought home to me recently when changing from outside at 200 ASA to inside the Exploris Aquarium in Portaferry, Northern Ireland with 1600 ASA.

No more fiddling with several cameras and different rolls of film. My only gripe for camera manufacturers would be that ASA rating should be as easily changeable as the shutter speed/ aperture. Then I always use the camera on manual so like to change these as I go along so why not also change the film speed quickly as well?