Special effects and digital photography

Abstract

If it walks like a duck, Swims like a duck, And quacks like a duck, It may well be a chicken, .. (Paul Fuqua) The human eye can be described as a camera that takes about ten pictures every second. It telegraphs to the brain the information that each picture contains. It cannot work faster for the retina needs appreciable time to receive and transmit each impression as well as get ready for the next one. Since the invention of photography man have been using it as a tool, to make it do what the human eye cannot, such as: speeding up time or slowing it down; to learn how things actually behave; of making things that are too distant, too small or too faint visible to the human eye. As photography developed it became invaluable to science and technology. The camera brings into being the most striking and useful views of the world even when it deliberately lies. It can alter what the eye would normally see into what the eye would like to see. It can make subtle shifts of perspective and radical distortions ofform. In the early history of photography photograph's was only taken of familiar objects; things that the human eyes can see. Faces, landscapes and buildings were the most familiar images. Photographers started experimenting and playing around and with the development of better equipment (such as faster emulsions, bigger lenses and flash equipment) photographers soon realised that they possessed a powerful instrument that could perceive and record things that the eye cannot see. For as long as people have contemplated the world, they have been fascinated by the seemingly impossible and, thereby, unexplainable ... (Sage 1996: 4)