About me
I’ve always seen myself as a creative individual, but have been feeling a little out of touch with my artistic self lately. I’d like to rediscover a creative purpose and direction through photography. In this blog I’ll share a thing or two along the way.
I definitely feel way more comfortable with the technical side of things, and that’s only somewhat reflected by the different hats I’ve worn: physicist, neuroscientist, electrical engineer, data scientist, software engineer… Add a fascination with visual perception, computer vision, image processing algorithms, neural networks for image recognition and the like, it’s probably not a huge surprise that I end up with a camera strap around my neck most of the time. There are oodles of technical intricacies that make photography such great fun, yet completely distract from any artistic vision or creative intent. I suspect my usual approach fails here, it’s time to try something new!
What’s in a name
phos•phene \ˈfäs-ˌfēn\ 1
An impression of light that occurs without light entering the eye, usually caused by stimulation of the retina or by excitation of neurons in the visual system.
Human vision is complex, often causing an altered perception of reality. Besides the numerous optical illusions and attention mechanisms, there is at times even a complete disconnect from reality. Phosphenes are the luminous floating stars, zigzags, swirls, spirals, squiggles that you see in the absence of light. Visual perception is possibly quite a bit less objective than the experience makes us believe.
This subjectivity need not be inconvenient. For an image to convey the essence of the captured moment, it needs to be more than a strictly factual representation of that reality. More often than not, parts of the original context are lost in translation, rendering a faithful reproduction lacking. To compensate, we embrace the exact same tricks our mind plays on us, steering attention and altering perception. At times we even forego any semblance of reality in the name of artistic freedom.
