How does photography work?

[student]

What is it more exactly that the camera is taking pictures of?

[Natasha]

1 hour ago, student said:

What is it more exactly that the camera is taking pictures of?

The IS-ness of reality.

[Viking]

12 minutes ago, student said:

What is it more exactly that the camera is taking pictures of?

2 levels I can think of to answer this question, but it depends what are you really asking for. To know reality, or to know practically.

1. The know reality- taking pictures of you, god, everything, there is no camera, a camera is just a distinction your mind creates. The camera, what it's taking pictures of, it's all the same thing, consciousness. There's no really point asking that question if that's the answer you're looking for, in my opinion, because you assume that there's a "camera", you assume there's something distinct from it which the camera takes pictures of, your whole phrasing of the question is dual. you can't answer dual questions with non-dual answers, because they have hidden assumptions.
2. Practical- If you want to know what the camera is taking pictures of "practically", "scientifically", in a way in which corresponds to the level of consciousness you're asking that question from, in other words, that there exists a "camera" and an outside world with it, the answer is light.  A source of light like the sun or a lamp emits light, which hits things around you. When the light hits things it gets scattered from that thing into the camera sensor. The light interacts with the sensors, and with a bunch of technology it gets represented in pixels on a screen or on a piece of paper.
   Now, what light is, is a whole different question. Ultimately you can't answer that question dually, because the answer to "what is stuff" can't come from science, but it comes from nonduality and experiences and wisdom of nonduality.
   The current theories that try to explain what light is, tell us it's photons. A photon is an elementary particle, meaning there's nothing more basic than it. There are currently around 17 elementary particles according to the Standard Model. So it's not really an explanation, but science just kinda says "It exists, and we don't really know what it is".
   A way which explains light in a more "explanatory" way and not just says "it exists" is a little old one, but I think it's fun, so- Light is electromagnetic waves. Electromagnetic waves are waves of a magnetic field and an electric field. An intuitive way to describe what an electric field is, is "a force that a charged particle can exert on another charged particle". So if I have a charged particle, it "does" an electric field all the way to infinity, and if i put another charged particle somewhere, that field will push or pull that particle. A magnetic field is the same but more complicated. So basically saying, light is a wave of "potential force" on particles, lol.
   So we have light, which travels in space for example, and it passes through a charged particle. That charged particle will experience force. That's what light is, pure force  

You see, there's a bunch of "mental maps" you could make to answer your question, and none of them is the true one. The only truth is the one you can experience and which you can't think about  

[Forestluv]

@student I like the image of a camera. A camera can capture an aspect if IS-ness. Yet have you ever noticed that a picture can’t quite capture it all? . . I was in Sedona two weeks ago basking in the essence, energetics, vibrations of all around me. I wanted to capture this essence with a few photos, so I could re-experience it later. Yet the pictures couldn’t capture it all. They are pretty pictures, yet they can’t capture the totality of actual aliveness Now. 

It’s similar with the mystical nature of Now. Sometimes there is a mystical appearance that seems extraordinary and my mind wants to  “capture” it. Well, I can’t bust out my iPhone and take a picture of a mystical experience. So my mind tries to capture it by creating a thought story about it. “I was mediating in nature and then I dissolved and went into this lucid state and there was no me, just awareness of another magical dimension. There is nothing “wrong” with that, just as there is nothing wrong with taking a picture. Yet just as the picture cannot capture the full essence of the atmosphere, a thought story of an experience cannot capture the full essence of the direct experience occurring Now.

Sometimes it’s nice to take pictures and create thought stories of experience. Other times, it’s nice to leave my iPhone and my thinking mind in the car and take a hike just being the infinite totality of Now.  

[student]

Thank you all for your answers.

I was not asking about the technical aspects of a camera nor I was asking about the creativity of a human, which with the use of a camera can create art.

I am not speaking about a camera in relation with another "object" (a person).
Just the camera itself.

If everything is a hallucination and perception doesn't exist. If everything is made up, if the inside is the outside and vice versa and there is no duality.

Then an object (a camera) what is actually seeing? What is that image that has just been captured? Is that "reality"? What is that? Is a capture of some fantasy?

For some people, the camera capturing something, is proof for an immediate, material reality.

So what is the camera capturing?

4 hours ago, Viking said:

 

1. The know reality- taking pictures of you, god, everything, there is no camera, a camera is just a distinction your mind creates. The camera, what it's taking pictures of, it's all the same thing, consciousness. There's no really point asking that question if that's the answer you're looking for, in my opinion, because you assume that there's a "camera", you assume there's something distinct from it which the camera takes pictures of, your whole phrasing of the question is dual. you can't answer dual questions with non-dual answers, because they have hidden assumptions. 

Yeah... Dreams within dreams. I think the camera is actually taking a picture of itself. It's actually a "strange loop".

Welp... I think I found the answer = )

[Sempiternity]

2 minutes ago, student said:

 

So what is the camera capturing?

Yeah... Dreams within dreams. I think the camera is actually taking a picture of itself. It's actually a "strange loop".

Welp... I think I found the answer = )

Yes. If in a sleeping dream you had a camera and took a picture, that camera, the image it produces, the environment around you, and you, are all part of that dream. And everything in that dream is made of consciousness. All of reality is the same, all made of consciousness. 

[Leo Gura]

Contemplate how a camera works in your dreams.

[kieranperez]

I love this question!

[Truth Addict]

18 hours ago, student said:

How does photography work?

By magic!

18 hours ago, student said:

What is it more exactly that the camera is taking pictures of?

Light pixels on a screen/coloured dots on a paper/unexplainable magic!

If you're looking for a pragmatic answer, then google your question.

[LastThursday]

I think to know what a camera is taking pictures of, you need to understand deeply why there are cameras in the first place.

The idea that springs to mind is that a camera turns impermanence into some sort of permanence.  In other words it's a trick to allow us to keep re-experiencing a thing over an extended period of time. It's the embodiment of a tug of war between the ever-shapeshifting forms in the world, and the source of our completely unchanging stillness. How could the forms of the world ever create permanence? No, the permanence comes from elsewhere.

So looking at a photograph is to look into the stillness of the void - not into a reality that it supposedly captured. The reality is inks on a paper or pixels on a screen.