Saturday, December 20, 2014

nothing but a wave is a wave

© Joselito Briones
 
so... i was watching a bbc show a few days ago, about quantum mechanics (only because i've watched everything else vaguely interesting - thanks, hola!) and when the show's host/narrator (the charming jim al-khalili) got to the experiment where he showed a particle or something something being fired on two gaps between 3 cards (table menus?) which i saw for the very first time, and heard his declaration of love to the interpretation of some man named bohr, i couldn't help but object, vocally, to mr. al-khalili  - who of course ignored me and continued rattling on and on about all the "weirdness" (he seems to love the word).  as anyone mildly interested in something but isn't concerned enough to try to know much about it,  i was convinced i knew all the answers to his questions.

a week later, the second installment of the show came.  i watched it, of course, and decided i have had it.  enough weirdness. or enough of mr. al-khalili saying the word "weird", grateful as i am to him for explaining things in ways easily understood.  i googled for youtube videos and found more explanations of quantum mechanics, tailor-made for ass-wipes like me who couldn't be bothered to learn the science and can't even comprehend how to do the math, let alone actually do it.  findings:  they all love the word "weird".  verdict: i'm sorry bohr fanbois, but i'm definitely team einstein on this one.  nobody cares, i'm sure. nevertheless,  thinking about it cost me my sleep last night.  when i woke up this morning, just to make sure i understood the experiment, i looked up the double-slit experiement in  wikipedia.

let's do some experiment in our own backyard.  if you drop a ball from a height - it falls straight to the ground.  classical physics describes it perfectly, and can predict how long it will take for the ball to hit the ground if you have enough information about the ball, the distance from the ground from which you're dropping it, and knowledge of the laws of classical physics. you can describe in simple terms where the ball is at any point from its dropping point to where it hits the ground.  this is our basic sense of reality.  it's simple enough because except for gravity, it disregards everything else that's between the ball and the ground.  and why not? even if there are things there, or events, they don't affect the predictability of how the ball falls to the ground.  practical science at work. now do the same with something very light - a feather maybe?  will it fall straight to the ground?  i think it will show that whatever is between the feather and the ground that was negligible with the weight of the ball now matters into consideration because of the lightness of the feather.  in this case we can only know simply where the feather is at its dropping point, and where it touches the ground. as with the double-slit experiment. but, just because we don't know - or at least we can't, easily, technically describe where the feather is at any point between the dropping point and where it hits the ground - doesn't mean it ceases to exist between those two points.  we're just too dumb to know.  if maybe we have enough computing power to consider into the equation everything between the dropping point and the touchpoint - altitude, weather pattern, wind direction, magnetic fields, atmospheric density, etc., etc., then we wouldn't even question reality.  the problem with classical physics is that it limits the parameters so that it's easier to determine practical answers to everyday problems. the problem with the bohr interpretation of the double-slit experiment is that, while it doesn't take into consideration all the possible (not even all the plausible) parameters - after all, we can only take into account things that we know of either physically or by mathematical equations - it proposes to give the starting point to a unified answer to everything. 

so... you think all these ramblings and all i'm saying is that we should abandon everything because we can't know everything.  no, this is not a cop out. 

classical physics at least knows its limitations.  if you can only do your computations using information that you know, at least take the initiative to block everything else in the experiment so they don't affect the outcome.  you have the ball/feather, you have gravity and at least with the ball, which you already know will travel more or less a straight path, you have the distance between start and end. i vaguely remember a high school teacher saying that some scientists did the dropping of thing experiment in a vacuum and found that without any matter obstructing the objects between the two points of travel, the objects tested, ball or feather, behaved the same.  of course high school was a long way ago and it could've been just a conjecture ("if you drop a ball and a feather in a vacuum... then...") but i have no problem believing it.  now, what if what you're dropping is even lighter than a feather, so much so that whatever else existed between the two points that was negligible with the weight of the ball or the feather now matters into consideration?  what if you drop just a particle?  will it behave like an object which are also made of particles? my bet is, as with the matter between the ball/feather removed by doing the experiment in a vacuum to see a unified answer, whatever else in that space that would affect the single particle but not the ball/feather should also be eliminated.  how? by doing the experiment in a void?  this is where my disclaimer of not being knowledgeable in the field of physics comes in handy.  because i have no idea if a complete void is even possible.  and even if it is, possible, would the particle or the ball/feather even "drop"?  and no, this is still not a cop out.  not about to stop here yet.

i must admit that the only reason why i'm brave enough to write the theory i arrived at last night is because, after looking up "double-slit experiment" this morning to see it in more detail, i came across this from qanta magazine, an article that basically explains exactly what i thought.  had i not read it, of course, i wouldn't even be writing this blog.  instead, i would've been writing this secretly and somehow putting it in record that this theory is something i thought of, while as with others who doesn't know enough, spending all my idle moments thinking "what if", thinking of every scenario on how to put it out there. but, alas.  it's been done. so here goes:

what if - nothing but a wave is a wave?

what if, say, you have a wave going through a double slit experiment.  a simple enough wave, like that on a surface of water even.  it's easy enough to imagine that a feather resting nicely at any point on a trough of this wave will eventually hit the experiment's wall at a point that's a part of a wave pattern. simply put, what if the particle shot through a double-slit experiment can't be a wave? then the only other possibility is to say that the particle is carried by a wave.  can you imagine my disappointment when i read the qanta magazine article that shattered my illusion of originality of thought on the matter?  ok, you can stop laughing now.

einstein is also to blame, of course.  if he hadn't set a precedence that a particle can be a particle and still be wave (light), bohr wouldn't even think of questioning reality (i think).  imagine if, instead of coming into the conclusion that a light particle is both a particle and a wave, he considered the possibility that it is simply a particle carried by a wave. 

and what is a wave after all?  all my life i've always thought that a wave is just a pattern of movement.  it was so easy for me to dismiss the copenhagen interpretation because it was just as easy for me to to dismiss the possibility of a light particle-wave.  for me a wave will always be just a pattern of movement, and light particle is not a wave - it moves along a wave pattern, either on its own or is carried by something that moves with a wave pattern. just as the particle in a the double slit experiment is either moving on a wave pattern or is carried by something that moves on a wave pattern. is that too simplistic?  sure, but i find it easier to digest than the idea of the moon not being there when we're not looking.

 XXX

Monday, April 21, 2014

Monday, April 07, 2014

addicted to gadgets and technology - my latest series in alamy

© Joselito Briones

same guy from the previous post. this is just a play on how in the old times men carried their cigarette packs folded in their t-shirt sleeves.  rebel-bad-boy sort of stuff - and also wearing one's addiction on one's sleeve - only this time it's addiction to gadgets and technology.  i submitted this concept to stocksy, but the editor said he didn't get the context, so i did a reshoot of the same thing and submitted it to alamy.  it's part of my latest series there.

© Joselito Briones

image above is part of the series.

XXX

Friday, April 04, 2014

i hate this model

© Joselito Briones
because he wore my clothes better. there.

i do love tho that i didn't have to source clothes for him to wear (we wear the same size, all my stuff is fair game) and that he was a real trouper during the shoot.  stocksy said it wanted some sartorialist-style street fashion photo, so there.

vintage pirate coat from vivienne westwood (this one is charles'), suede chukkah boots from a.p.c., iggy jeans from agnes b., hooded sweater from diesel (which the model smirked at, comparing the style of the hoodie to foreskin) and hat from dior homme.

XXX

Tuesday, April 01, 2014

romantic ideas

http://www.stocksy.com/attator/shoot/7797
© Joselito Briones
remember when i said the people from stocksy sometimes suggest what to shoot?  i was gonna do a gay-themed series of photos, but there wasn't necessarily an inspiration board for this, so i thought, why not just do the moodboard for couples?  here's what the editors of stocksy think are good couple photos. great, right?  i thought, those are mostly young (except for one) white (except for one) hetero (except for two?) couples. what if just try to recreate those moments, but with a gay black couple? (photo above, they're models of course, and may or may not be gay in real life).  i was curious to see if they'll be perceived to be just as romantic (not at all? even more so?).

http://www.stocksy.com/attator/shoot/7812
© Joselito Briones
but then there were just so many hours in a session and i ran out of steam, so i continued the next day with another pair of models (photo above).

the results, plus a lot of variations (i tend to veer off path when shooting), are in this gallery (first day) and this gallery (second day). they're not all there yet as i'm still going through the photos and might actually do a third day of shoot for the set-ups that i missed, but they'll end up in those galleries.

this, for example, is a lame attempt at "a touch to the lips" - i should've gone closer, over the shoulder of the guy touching the other, more intimate - ah well.  and this, which i like, is a combination of "love at every age" and "roof".


 XXX

Friday, March 14, 2014

more directions

© Joselito Briones
in another post i mentioned about how i directed the models on what to do, and last weekend i joined a group shoot where another photographer said i'm actually good at it, so i thought, how about i share more on what i tell the models before clicking the shutter?

in the photo shown above, i told the taller model to dry his hands (we were doing dishwashing photos before this), the other model to help him remove his apron, while asking his opinion about something important that he has to decide on but doesn't know what to do about.

this is part of an lgbt series of photos that i'm doing for stocksy.

 XXX

Friday, January 31, 2014

Thursday, January 30, 2014

don't you just love it when they get it?

© Joselito Briones
all i said was, you're these bored party people, spoiled brats - they came up with this, from a shoot i did last sunday.  in the photo are diego, michelle, mitchel, and hallie.

photo stuff update:  i guess sales are picking up (and i hope it continues) - bme (best month ever, if you're not familiar with stock photographers' sales talk) for alamy, stocksy, and imagebrief.(well, considering this is my first month)  and tho not bme for pond5, still not bad.

XXX

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

first rm sale via alamy

http://www.alamy.com/image-details-popup.asp?imageid={FBE75A8D-6F4C-4A30-A73F-88397953F8F0}
© Joselito Briones

i've had several rf sales from alamy before, but this was the surprise first rm sale.  good timing i guess, since i've just uploaded some new stuff there.

photo above was taken in bagan, myanmar (formerly burma), on a lovely hot air balloon ride at sunrise.

XXX

correction:  oops. i did a double check and turns out it was rf (royalty-free) after all.  i was confused because the sale was for an amount that another agency used to charge for rm (royalty managed). ah well.

Sunday, January 12, 2014

my mother's crew of sewing women on a website's splash page

© Joselito Briones
above is a photo of the women sewing doormats in the hut next to our family house in the philippines. it's currently used by a company in their website. my mother's the one standing at the back, taking a break from making their lunch to be in the photo.

XXX

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