DAY 328

PHOTOGRAPHIC CURIOSITIES

Photographing the Invisible

NOW YOU DON’T SEE IT...NOW YOU DO

Acertain mystique has always surrounded methods of photography, which allowed us to view what was previously invisible. In the early years of the X-ray, Dr. Duncan MacDougall theorized that the technology might even be used to see the departing spirit of dying patients (see page 125).¹

We may not be able to see the human soul, but SODAR (Sonic Detection And Ranging) technology does allow scientists to visually depict and track the wind. Alternately, sonar and radar present us with alternate methods of seeing objects that cannot be photographed by traditional means.

Heat-based imagery, such as thermal imaging and infrared photography, cannot necessarily see through walls—such cameras typically photograph the waves that bounce off an opaque surface. Nonetheless, a person standing behind a wall or door may change the temperature of the adjacent surface, thus showing up as an irregularity on a thermal photograph.

Perhaps the closest that we come to truly seeing through walls occurs in the form of ultrasonography—the technology that allows doctors to take detailed photographs of a human fetus without ever invading the mother’s uterus with a camera.

In fact, nearly every form of alternate imaging technology has only replicated the innate abilities that bats, insects, whales, dolphins, snakes, and fish have always possessed. For all of our technological “advancement,” we may only be scratching the surface of what some of our fellow creatures are able to see. —DJS