Weightless

When I joined the Oxford Student I was referred to be several people as ‘the new Matt Bryant’. Matt was in the year above me studying Physics at Jesus College (my subject and college) and was a photo editor at the OxStu this time last year (scientists are a rarity in student journalism, hence people’s surprise). Today I met the supervisor for the project I’ll be doing next term, who informed me that Matt had done the very same project a year ago. Given there are 100-plus Physics students in each year and that there are dozens of projects on offer, this would seem kinda spooky.

This project was something like my third or fourth choice so I hadn’t really looked into it that much. By some happy coincidence it turns out that it’s pretty interesting if you’re into photography as it’s to do with measuring optical properties of various systems and trying to improve them. Also, the supervisor dug out this paper for me to read, which it turns out I’d already seen online (I’d credit someone for linking it but I can’t remember who it was): Light Field Photography with a Hand-Held Plenoptic Camera (watch the animation of photos being refocused after they’ve been taken). As I’m not given to reading much in the way of scientific research papers and that I’d not given this project any thought whatsoever, I was just a little bit surprised when my supervisor showed it to me.

Anyhoo, enough about creepy coincidences. Pete seemed to enjoy yesterday’s photo of the squirrel, so here’s another while I find something better to post.