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    What Is Light?: Physics of Photography 101

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    P. M. Valeri
    Learn in this episode about what light is and why it's important for you as a visual artist to understand.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    What Is Light?: Physics of Photography 101

    Uploaded by

    P. M. Valeri
    73 views2 pages
    Learn in this episode about what light is and why it's important for you as a visual artist to understand.

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    What is Light?

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    Learn in this episode about what light is and why it's important for you as a visual artist to understand.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    73 views2 pages

    What Is Light?: Physics of Photography 101

    Uploaded by

    P. M. Valeri
    Learn in this episode about what light is and why it's important for you as a visual artist to understand.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 2

    Vistory Creative 1 What is Light?

    POP 101

    What is Light?
    Physics of Photography 101
    Besides being, in my opinion, the most important thing for a photographer or
    cinematographer to understand, light is a special kind of physical
    phenomenon. It has a lot of controversial history and a really interesting
    background, but above all, light is the way we as visual artists can make a
    living.
    Light is both a particle and a wave, a phenomenon described in one of
    science’s least intriguing terms, particle-wave duality. Most things we interact
    with (or “sense”) are made of matter, with the exception of sound, which,
    importantly enough, is a different type of sense that light borrows from, too
    (more on that in a second).

    Light is both a particle and a


    wave.

    “Matter” here just mean protons, neutrons, and electrons. We don’t have
    to go really any deeper than that, so we won’t. Matter is anything that has
    mass. Matter is comprised of particles, tiny, undetectable but heavily inferable
    units from which everything else is comprised.
    Well, when a proton marries a neutron and has a little electron baby, it’s
    known as an atom (well, maybe that’s not the best analogy, but they’re a close-
    knit community). Electrons, like small children, have various states of energy
    and run all around the nucleus of the proton and neutron. Depending on how
    much other matter and energy bump into the electron, it will have more or less
    energy. These states of energy are known as valence levels. When an electron
    loses a set amount of energy, it emits it as electromagnetic radiation (tah-dah,
    we have light!). Depending on how many levels of energy it lost and what kind
    of atom it was, a different power and wavelength of light is emitted.
    It’s important here to note that light is a massless particle. Yes, you read
    that right. There is no mass, at all, in light. It is just a form of energy. That is
    why we don’t measure light in terms of volume or weight like we do every
    other particle with mass, but in units per second, in this case, joules. 1 Joule
    Vistory Creative 2 What is Light? POP 101

    per second equals 1 Watt. However, light is also still a unit like any other
    particle. We can count individual photons.
    What’s up with those waves? Waves in a quantum field like electricity or
    magnetism are merely interactions between particles, carrying only energy,
    not necessarily mass. If you’re confused like I was when I first learned this, let
    me give you an analogy. Think of the difference in water and a wave. Water is
    the matter. The wave is the interaction of that matter with one another,
    creating a sense of motion. Now, a quantum wave like light doesn’t have to
    have motion. But it sure as hell does need particles and interactions between
    them.
    Waves travel in a way that measure with graphs. Those graphs, like
    waveforms and spectra, show the power of the light at various points in time.
    At the top is a peak. At the middle is the node. And the inverse of a peak is a
    valley. The distance between peaks is where we get the frequency, which is
    almost the same thing as wavelength. And the wavelength determines how we
    perceive the light by providing the various hues that we see.

    Recap
    That was a lot of information, so let’s recap:

    • Light is a particle and a wave (particle-wave duality).


    • A particle is any unit of matter (except light is massless!). This means that
    individual “packets” of light called photons can be counted.
    • A wave is the patterned interaction of individual particles. Think water
    versus a wave.
    • Particles determine intensity of light, also known as power.
    • Wavelengths determine color, also known as hue.

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