Skip to main content

Capacitors

Image
By
This is a chapter from my seventh book called Bookeh - Through the lens of a Trinidadian photog


It is raining heavily at the moment. I just came from the shed where I took this photo. This is the top of an old capacitor from our air conditioner sitting on top the cover for our sewer tank. When I saw the capacitor on the ground this morning I told myself it would make a good subject. It looks like a face, especially since I added a piece for the mouth from our sewing kit that forms part of a hook-and-eye. Looks like a ghost. A ghost from a robot. A relic from the Jetsons. The rusting gives it character. I want to believe it is a friendly ghost or maybe not. Maybe it is one of those ghosts that causes the electricity to go out when we need it the most. Like on a hot night when the mosquitos are out in their numbers. Maybe I should have chosen a curved mouthpiece to give it a friendly and welcoming smile.

My friend Gemini tells me how capacitors help us in photography. Capacitors, essential components in photography, store electrical energy for a quick, powerful burst to ignite the flash. Their history intertwines with photography's evolution; early glass plate cameras used flash powder for illumination, a dangerous process. Capacitors replaced this with a safer, more reliable method. Today, they power modern electronic flashes, enabling precise control over lighting and capturing stunning images, a testament to the enduring partnership between technology and photography. Pieter van Musschenbroek invented the Leyden jar, the precursor to the modern capacitor, in 1746.

We all have the capacity to be great. We all have the capacity to be great photographers. Photography is accessible to everyone, and with passion, practice, patience and a unique perspective, anyone can capture remarkable photos. It is about finding our own artistic voice and capturing the world in a way that resonates with others. Ansel Adams tells us that, "You don't take a photograph, you make it." We all have the capacity to make it in life. They say that life is how we make it and I guess photography is no different. I like how a piece of trash on an ordinary day turned into an opportunity to make a photograph and tell a story and be artistic. We do not have to wait for the right moment, we can create the moment. Photography is the art of capturing not just what the eye sees, but what the imagination envisions.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

God opens doors

By
It is 1203am and I have decided to write. Saturday I spent the night coding. I was trying to get a FastAPI app up and running, all from my budget Android phone. The test cases were written to use Puppeteer. I ended up using Replit for that. Coding is more challenging when using a mobile phone. Not impossible but more challenging. I hardly blog about technology and coding anymore but the love is still there. I still have a dream of creating my own coding and youtube studio with a nice desk setup. That is nice but what should I make this blog post about? What do I want to write about? What should I write about? I love creating presentations. That is something I could do to revive my youtube channel. I love Maths too. I have this feeling that I could solve one of those longstanding Maths problems that seems impossible. Sometimes, like right now, I feel like abandoning my blog post. It is going nowhere. Maybe I should get up and go wash the wares. I wish God could tell me what to write abo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mundane

By
It is 123am and I have decided to write. I have this new idea for a book called Mundane. It would be me writing about the ordinary. We chase the extraordinary but there is beauty in the ordinary. There is beauty in the simple. There is beauty in the everyday. What about God? We often think about God in grand terms. But what if God is simple too? What if God is mundane? What if we look for God in the everyday moments? I sit in this dark room with the air conditioning on. The fan is also on. The curtain is down but I imagine the moonlight shining on the grass outside. The cats are probably sleeping. I wonder if anyone else in the neighbourhood is awake at this hour? Is there another writer around who is also writing about the mundane? The fan breeze helps the air conditioning cool me down. These nights are warm otherwise. A mosquito flies across my screen. Hello friend or foe. I cannot quite decide which one. If I had a swatter you would be gone. I check my notifications and there is an ...
Post a Comment
Read more

What we do not know

By
It is 1245am and I have decided to write. I had this weird alienish dream and it ended with me winning by simply stating "the truth is that we do not know". In the dream everyone was having an opinion of what was happening as if they knew. On to something random. I had this question. What is the most unrandom thing? Then what is the most random thing? What if everything is equally random. My friend Chatty thinks that randomness is not an absolute property—it is a relation between you and the system you observe. Randomness is not absolute—it depends on perspective. Something perfectly ordered can seem random if you do not know its pattern. So in a sense, everything can be "equally random" relative to the observer's knowledge, making randomness more about perception than an intrinsic property. The more we know the less random things become. Let me make a detour. Suppose we do not predict things but things predict us. For example, when I flip a coin, did I predict ...
Post a Comment
Read more