Digital Photographs

Digital Photographs

by William Lulow

Ever wonder how digital photographs are actually made? I just read a fascinating article about an amazing woman by the name of Ingrid Daubechies, a Belgian mathematician who has found something called “WAVELETS” and has been able to use them in the field of image compression. Reading the article about her and how she has been able to use mathematics to aid in digital imagery was absolutely fascinating because not only am I a terrible mathematician, but it is truly way past my ability to comprehend what she is actually doing and how images actually get compressed. She was responsible for what we now know as JPEG2000 images. But like so many other things, photography is both an art and a science. I have always contended that you can’t do the art really well until you understand at least the basic science behind it. But you certainly don’t have to be on Dr. Daubechies’ level to make use of information you can understand.

When photography was at its beginning stages for me, I was able to understand many of the scientific facts that allowed me to produce some really good continuous tone images. I knew about the chemistry of the development process, which chemicals to use when and why they worked to produce an image. I learned about focal lengths, how view cameras could obtain infinite focus and why images on the ground glass were upside down and backwards. I learned about the properties of films and their various emulsions. How they held other chemicals in suspension so that light could affect them. And then, how other chemicals reacted with them in order to produce an image on a negative substance or on paper. Way back in the 1600s they had the CAMERA OBSCURA which enabled artists to view a scene through a lens and on to some sort of screen. But it took another couple hundred years until they figured out how to make the image permanent so that a great many people could view it.

When I was learning photography, I was aware that I could master the “how to’s” without necessarily learning everything there was to know about the chemistry. I knew that even though I had learned all the correct processes, I still didn’t know all the science behind why they worked. I feel the same today about the digital photography world. Many of the scientific principles of photography haven’t changed from the days of film, (you should know about how light behaves), but exactly how a series of ones and zeros can make up an image is still beyond my ability to understand. I know that it works and what must be done to obtain the right image, but that’s it.

That’s where folks like Dr. Daubechies come in. They understand the complex mathematical formulas and algorithms that constitute the underlying structure of why the digital process can produce images. I even have a lot of experience in producing half-tones which are used in the photo-mechanical reproduction industry and certainly understand the notion of pixels and how they work. I have long been fascinated with IMPRESSIONISM as practiced first in France and how those artists created works from techniques like “pointillism.” I met a scientist many years ago who loved to enlarge 35mm slides until the grain of each image produced a kind of impressionistic picture. I have discovered how to do something similar using various electronic filters in Adobe Photoshop. Here is an example:

These are what I call “SOLARIZATIONS” because these filters change the colors and add some pixelation to the image that gives it this impressionistic feel. I can then add kind of a screen to the image to come up with a kind of “pixelated” image or one that has a pattern on top of the actual photograph to produce something entirely different from the original. Here is another example:

These images seem to highlight the digital process itself. They make use of the information initially captured with a camera and lens, then transform it into a completely different thing altogether. Some of the beauty of this process is that you never really know which colors will turn into others and what they will be. So the element of surprise in the creation is one of the compelling factors in making them. I call them “Solarizations” after a technique we used to use in the darkroom on Black&White prints whereby if we flashed a light briefly during development, the grains of silver that made up the image would tend to clump around the parts that were exposed and create an image that kind of resembled a “positive/negative” image – an image that contained both elements. Here is one example:

This is actually a digital rendition of an image that was originally made in a darkroom with continuous tone material.

I will continue to try and understand the science as best I can, but the art is what still drives me to keep creating.