Shade

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


There is a popular saying that goes "Blessed is he who plants trees under whose shade he will never sit." That is what this photo has me thinking. I am standing here under the sun taking a cool photo of my shadow against the wall with the ease of my smartphone because others paved the way. The same smartphone that I am using to access the internet and write this chapter and this book. There are people who were instrumental to the development of the camera, smartphone and internet and never got to use any of them. I wonder who some of these people are? People like Ada Lovelace, Wang Zeng, Alan Turing, Ibn al-Haytham, Nikola Tesla, Henry Talbot, James Weems and Madhusree Dey. I tried to get a diverse group of people as this is overlooked by what is popularly available. This is just a tiny sampling of the people who paved the way.

I had my friend Chatty help me to learn what each of these persons would have contributed to the camera, smartphone or internet. Ada Lovelace’s algorithms laid the groundwork for computing, influencing digital photography and the internet; Wang Zhen's movable-type printing revolutionized knowledge dissemination, impacting later technologies; Alan Turing’s work on computation shaped modern computers; Ibn al-Haytham's studies on optics and the camera obscura were foundational for photography; Nikola Tesla's innovations in electrical engineering supported the infrastructure for digital tech; Henry Fox Talbot’s calotype process advanced early photography; James Weems contributed to color imaging systems; and Madhusree Dey's optical research enhanced camera and imaging technologies.

Thank you to anyone and everyone who has helped pave the way for others. I am not an inventor but I think my idea of a random square of pixels or window to the world is a huge concept that if explored further can lead to discoveries and new ways of thinking. I had already written about it in my second book "Learning to code again". I have not come across anyone who has thought of this before and I will explore the idea further once I get a laptop and continue writing that book. The idea that everything that was, is and will be observable through a window is already available to us is huge. It depends on luck to get meaning out of this but history is full of times when we got lucky.

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