It might be a common memory for many artists, but yes, when I held the camera in my hand and saw the world through the viewfinder, I entered the magical world of seeing my surroundings through the lens. Since then, I have been friends with the camera, communicating with it in a silent language and trying to understand each other. During my undergraduate years, I lived in a hostel in Mumbai, India, with three roommates—two were humans, and one was a machine we called “Cameo.” I liked the name because it sounded similar to the word ‘camera,’ but later, when I discovered its meaning, it became even more relevant. According to Webster's dictionary, the word ‘Cameo’ refers to a celebrity playing a small role in a film. However, this ‘celebrity’ in my life has played a significant role.
Wherever I traveled, Cameo and I captured the world together. As part of a usual process, my mind and eyes observed everyday life, storing it in my memory, while Cameo preserved it as images—a “photograph.” Later, when I printed the photographs, I would give Cameo a pat on the back for doing good work. This “good work” meant producing a photograph that accurately reflected the colors, textures, and light my mind saw when I released the shutter.
Every time I looked at these printed photographs, I was amazed at how Cameo could create images almost identical to what my eyes perceived in reality. This curiosity led me to explore the internal mechanics of the camera. When changing lenses, I noticed the inner workings of the camera body, where I found a simple mirror and a convex lens—elements that reminded me of my once-boring physics classes. However, this time, the learning process was different. It was self-driven, an exploration of my companion’s nature.
This urge to explore the unseen world of visual imagery fascinated me, igniting a desire to understand the language of machines. The world inside my camera intrigued me, and I became keenly aware of every step Cameo took in creating a photograph. According to the Oxford Dictionary, a “photograph” is defined as “a picture made by using a camera that stores images in digital form or on film sensitive to light.” The word “image” refers to “a picture, photograph, or statue that represents somebody or something.”
Cameo is a digital camera that produces digital images—visual data containing stories, experiences, and memories through interactions between living and non-living elements, as seen by a photographer. When looking through the viewfinder, we see through the lens while simultaneously connecting to the visual imagery in our minds. There is a constant comparison between what the photographer sees and what is visualized mentally. The terms ‘mind’ and ‘brain’ often shift in my explanations, as the brain and eye perform mechanical functions, while the mind observes and feels the invisible. A continuous series of actions shape perception.
“The mind by nature is in constant agitation; it is constantly transforming itself into the shapes of the objects of which it becomes aware. Its subtle substance assumes the forms and colors of everything offered to it by the senses, imagination, memory, and emotions. It is endowed, in other words, with a power of transformation or metamorphosis which is boundless and never put at rest.” (Zimmer, 2013).
The human eye functions as an optical instrument, working every second. “It is a complex process that occurs through different phases where visual information is perceived, recognized, transformed, and processed in three stages: optic, retinal, and neuronal. Our eyes form an image of the outside world, the brain interprets the image from each eye in real time, and vision is the incredible result of highly coordinated teamwork.” (Viñas-Peña, 2021). While the human brain and eyes communicate through neural impulses, the camera communicates through binary language—the language of codes. These codes construct a digital image. When examining a photograph as a “specimen,” every visually readable element raises a question in my mind with an answer that remains unseen. I can visually divide it into different components—visible and invisible. This realization made me appreciate how the digital camera is a collaborative invention, decoding light to produce a “photograph” (photo = light, graph = drawing).
In 1839, Sir John Herschel defined a photograph as “a picture obtained by any process of photography.” Other suggestions, such as "sunprint" and "sun-picture," were linked to how sunlight makes an image possible. When light falls on a subject, the most easily noticeable elements are color, shapes, texture, and light itself.
For me, these elements are divided into two categories:
Visible: Color, shapes, texture, pixels, and the material on which it is printed.
Invisible: Color spectrum, photons, binary digits.
As a specimen, I chose a photograph I captured using a film camera—an image of a bird handler against a white wall. Since it was taken on black-and-white film, the colors appeared in only two tones: dark areas in black and light areas in white. In black-and-white roll films, no chemical process couples with color dyes. The darkness of blacks and the variation in shades depended on the color spectrum and how the light fell on the subject, as detected by the photosensitive material.
We see the visual color spectrum in our daily lives. It is a subset of the electromagnetic spectrum visible to the human eye—visual energy. “The light receivers in our eyes (rods and cones) can only observe a limited subset of this energy. These same light waves are captured by the digital camera’s image sensor. All colors are vibrations or wavelengths of energy, the only energy visible with human eyesight.” (Understanding the Basics of Color, 2022).
To analyze a digital photograph, I mixed two paint colors and photographed them—black and white. Black absorbs colors, while white emits all colors. When mixed, they create grey, a shade often considered a “non-color” in the color spectrum. To decode the photograph further, I used a “hex editor,” a software tool that translates images into binary language. The basic hex code reveals how much red, green, and blue (RGB) exist in a color. These codes are essential for designers and developers to communicate about color schemes. For instance, pure black (#000000) has no red, green, or blue (RGB) values. By decoding an image, I could see the numbers behind it and wonder how light carries such invisible information, which the image sensor reads and deciphers.
A thought-provoking question arises—what if there were no light? Would an image still be created? The answer is yes, but it would be an entirely dark image. The absence of light results in complete darkness, as light is what highlights visual information. When light reflects off a subject and is captured by the camera, a photograph forms, revealing visual details. This also makes me consider the role of shadow in a photograph. Shadows define shapes, create depth, and reveal the direction of light.
In a photograph, the absence, presence, or amount of light dictates the visual details. To explore the digital structure of an image further, I zoomed into my black-and-white paint photograph using Photoshop. At maximum zoom, the black and white shades merged into tiny grey squares—pixels.
These small squares carry binary code information, allowing the screen to display accurate colors.
Observing and optimizing an image at the pixel level introduced me to the digital microcosm within a photograph. This microcosm is a galaxy of binary digits that collectively construct an image. Even when printed or digitally stored, a photograph contains an unseen world—a continuous dialogue between light, data, and perception.
It is a realm that exists alongside us but remains invisible to the unaided eye.