Figure 1
Tom Farmer is Associate Professor of Mathematics at Miami University.
I present here a way that students of calculus and linear algebra can use both artistic and mathematical abilities to transform ordinary photographs into interesting pictures having mathematical content. As a quick illustration, Figure 1 shows copies of an input photo tracing the path of a helix and viewed as if they were pasted onto an invisible cylinder. Similarly, almost any three dimensional object that you can imagine -- if you can describe it by mathematical formulas -- might be "colored" using a given photo. This idea is timely, not only because computer graphics is a rapid growth area that is notable for its uses of mathematics, but also because we now have easy access to digital photographic images via digital cameras and scanners.