Lake Effect
Natural Beauty
There are many things mathematical about photography.
The triangular relationship of light, ISO and shutter speed. If you shoot film, there is reciprocity, and its failure when the light is low. There is distance and depth of field. So many calculations, formulations, angles, reflections and refractions, all taken care of by our cameras. We don’t ever have to think about the mathematics but it’s there, holding everything together so that we can get our shot.
Nature, too, is underpinned by mathematics. There are fractal shapes in plants, glacial melt waters, bird feathers, trees. You will notice it everywhere if you learn where to look. Repeating patterns, like the tiny hairs on this plant, a thousand diminutive versions perched on each and every parent leaf.
Ask a mathematician if there is beauty in numbers, and she may point to Fibonacci swirls of plants in leaf or flower and dare you to disagree.
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, Debra Broughton and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
