Eileen Palmer '11

Random Image Generator

Independent study in photo fall 2010 with Professor Meggan Gould

To marry my interests in mathematics and photography, I set out to develop an algorithm for making pictures.  I explored the idea of establishing rules for how and when to create images, and I became interested in how I might establish these rules, or parameters, in the first place.

I eventually arrived at a combination of choice and randomization to create the rules in what I began calling games.  Within each game, four parameters were chosen to dictate how and when the image was made.

Parameters were both environmental and technical.  Environmental parameters included presence or absence of others, number of steps taken to make the image, and my position as the photographer while shooting. Shutter speed, focal length, and angle of the camera were among the technical parameters.

For each game, there was always a parameter that dictated how many minutes I would wait between frames as well as a reset parameter that indicated the number of images per game.

The value of each parameter was determined using a random number generator.  For example, if the parameter was the time between frames, a number between 1 and 60 was generated and that number was the number of minutes between the capture of each image in that game.

With each game, there was a great deal of structure as dictated by the parameters and their randomly generated values.  However, many degrees of freedom existed within each game and it was because of this flexibility that I was able to insert my creativity as the photographer.  It was a balance between control and chaos.

These groups of images are a subset of the games I played.  For each exhibited game, the shape was predetermined and the sequence randomly generated.

Eileen Palmer '11

Eileen Palmer '11

Eileen Palmer '11