When I visited one of my favorite sites, wired.com and read an article by Justin MCLachlan about a photographer who graphs her pictures, I was instantly intrigued.  Nikki Graziano, a student at Rochester Institute of Technology, is able to combine her skills in math and photography in a very creative way.  Nikki Graziano takes a literal approach to the word photograph. Photo-graph. Get it?

A photograph by Nikki Graziano

What I like about Graziano’s work is that she captures every day images, like a wispy cloud in the sky or a mound of sand on the beach, and is able to create a mathematical calculation from it. Apparently, when I finished high school and came to college to be an English and Communications major, I still wasn’t able to leave math behind.  Graziano shows that a mathematical formula can be created for almost anything.

If I were to see the original pictures Graziano took without the graphs, I would easily dismiss them as boring and amateur. Graziano helps us understand why she captured a particular image by adding a graph. The graphs act as a flashing cue for viewers to see the symmetry in things that may not be noticeable at first glance. The mathematics of the images makes the picture, if not beautiful, at least interesting to hold the audience’s attention.

I also like that Graziano captures organic images. I’ve seen many photographs of architecture and symmetrical buildings, and although I enjoy those as well, sometimes it’s refreshing to see photography in other forms, especially more natural settings.

A photograph by Nikki Graziano

Now, the only question is, can anyone double-check her equations to see if they are correct? Math was never my strong subject.