Abstract

This paper explores an expanded perspective on the relationship between photons and the photographic process through various articulations in the field of optics and photonics. This framework will illuminate a more thorough explanation of processes that formalize a "register" as interpreted in Dawn M. Wilson's essay "Invisible Images and Indeterminacy: Why We Need a Multi-stage Account of Photography", and in general, a more complete understanding of image-data acquisition-sequences. Central to this examination is electromagnetic energy (photons of light), and where I introduce Light-energy indices, the variables associated with spatial and temporal frequencies, and optical radiances as representing and vectoring characteristic features of the photographed subject through space. In this sense then, determinate - global (general shape and lines) and distinctive (textures and fine detail) features - are the constituents that optically inscribe a register, thus proposing that a register is more akin to a blueprint - inscribing various indices that need some type of rendering process to reveal a depiction of the exposed subject. This is opposed to contemporary orthodoxy championing the so-called "latent image" - the false-referent paradigm that a fully realized pictorial representation of the subject hides on a register after exposure, and a mainstay Wilson argues in her work and is widely contemplated elsewhere (Wilson 2021; Wilson 2022; Wilson 2023; Lopes 2016; Windsor 2023). Ultimately, this paper proposes an explicit causal link between the subject that is framed before the lens, and what I interpret as Inscribed Structured Patterns of information that embody a register – that will be argued – establishes a more scientifically and philosophically accurate referent identifying a register – that is addressed in the last section of the essay.