Photography and Calculus

The week before my life changed for ever, I was flying to Savannah, GA for a few days at my parents house near Hilton Head while they were on vacation. On the plane I found myself sitting next to a guy who told me that he was fascinated by calculus. I explained to him that I know very little about higher math and he explained that at least in his view calculus occurs between the limits of 0 and 1. At this point I told him that if you set the numerical limit of no light at all as 0 and the numerical limit of complete light as 1 that photography functioned in the same way. I told him the key to interesting photography in my eyes was to see how close you could push your subject toward either limit. We then had a fascinating conversation for the rest of the 1 hour flight about the commonalities of the two subjects. There are often commonalities between seemingly unrelated subjects. Sometimes it just takes a little communication and understanding of each other in order to find those commonalities. But when you do find them, the experience is often golden.