This Is Not What Kenny Loggins Meant.

More photo talk, yes. This is a capture from the only existing recording of a live giant squid. The video itself captured by Japanese scientists in water far too deep for sunlight to penetrate is the first actual record of any giant squid behavior. Pretty sweet if you ask me, real live sea monsters. The ocean has been a constant source of bewilderment and danger to mankind, and the otherworldly appearance and behavior of such an elusive beasty does naught but remind those of us without gills that there is much we do not know. The image itself is grainy and pixelated, poorly lit and moving only to the eyes of the scientifically analytical. The quality of the photo cannot be improved and if we miss that failure, we miss much of the gravity.  The reason that a better, more artistic image could not be captured is that the rarity and exclusive habitat of Architeuthis makes the fact that there was even a camera around when it showed up an extremely rare occurrence. Most images associated with the giant squid are mythic, secondhand accounts of something so fearsome and bizarre that an entire folklore has swum up around it. We have all seen the paintings and old art prints derived from sailor's accounts that describe the giant kraken munching adventurers and lurking below every schooner. This is that same monster, but actually recorded alive for the first time. This is humanity's first glimpse at a rare species and the equipment on hand is indicative of the scientific nature of the image. The squid came into frame to feed upon a baited line and was soon gone after several minutes of tugging, leaving behind a tentacle. Such an ominous and bizarre creature has been haunting the minds of landlubbers for generations and we finally capture it on film and it hardly tried to eat us. What a let down, it even revealed itself as fragile and timid, go figure. To me this image and the concepts it evokes speak not so much of the animal itself, as in reality this "sea monster" is no threat to people, but  of our human relation to the idea and image of a myth. All we need to do is see an image that says: "Giant Squid" and our mind goes crazy building fear of the natural world beyond our perception, while the only way to really get close to the squid is to travel hundreds of feet below the surface in a tiny robot submarine and wait around with a baited hook for weeks.

The image itself is not a photograph, though technique is not entirely gone, the importance of the image is not how it was taken but that it was taken for the first time. When or if deep sea photography improves enough to fully capture Architeuthis, some discussion of technique might prove useful. Until then, grainy snippets of a rare find will have to do. Science!