Friday - some brief, inchoate thoughts on quantum physics and digital photography

 I've been studying quantum physics for the past few months. I won't say I understand what's going on, and I don't feel bad about because the more I read, the more I pore over the material, the more I listen to those whose livelihood is studying, experimenting and teaching quantum physics, the more I realize that they know how to do it but not why it works.There is an irony in this. Quantum physics is one of the most successful areas of physics. Time and again, experiments work with great consistency, technologies are built on it and our world is changed by it, but still, the underlying question of why remains a matter or doubt and  discussion. Untestable and unprovable ideas, consistent with the math and the experimental results but often philosophically disturbing or conundrums in themselves, dominate the discussion. Perhaps those who point to how well it works and choose not to worry about the why are right. 

Digital photography is both a product of quantum physics affected by measurable quantum phenomena. Once upon a time I thought it enough to understand something about optics and light at the sensory level to do my photography. Now, when I study the pictures I am taking with a digital camera, I think about how such things as quantum fluctuations of photons on the CCD affect the image. I might lose sleep over it but since there's nothing I can do change it, I don't. 

A couple of weeks after getting my second jab I drove out to Easton, PA to meet up with my friends Shalom Newman, an artist, and Ron Kolm, a writer and editor. So there's shots of both of them,as well as a masked barista in the Nature's Way cafe, two wait staff from a restaurant on a break, a man tending his friend's golden cockadoodle or something like that - a dog variety whose name sounds more like a snack food - have some golden cockadoodles - and a passerby. 

Easton seems a friendly place and people were determined to enjoy a rather lovely early spring afternoon.

Quantum effects included for you to think about.

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