2026 note · Fractals
Same settings, same picture
A fractal can be rendered again from its settings. A family group photo can't, which is why photographers plan those pictures before the day.
Every fractal on this blog came with a promise most pictures can't make. A fractal is a formula and a handful of settings. Keep the settings and the picture can be made again, at a bigger size, on a newer machine, years later, and it comes out the same. Three weeks after posting Reborn, the author put it out again as a desktop wallpaper, which is the kind of second life a fractal's settings allow.
Pictures without settings
Photographs of people don't work like that. There is nothing to save and run again. The light moves, the moment passes, and the people in the frame go home. For most photographs that's fine, because another one will come along. For a few it isn't.
The plainest case is a family occasion. At a wedding, the group photographs bring together people who may never stand in one place again: a grandmother who tires early, an uncle who flew in for two days, cousins who live on different continents. If a group is missed, there is no re-render.
Saving the settings in advance
What photographers do instead is the nearest thing to keeping the settings. They decide the pictures before the day:
- A list of groups agreed with the couple beforehand, with names, not just roles.
- An order that stops people being called back and forth, usually largest groups first and anyone frail or young early.
- A family helper who knows faces and can bring people over.
- Time held in the schedule instead of squeezed between drinks and dinner.
The list can be a sheet of paper, a shared document, or a wedding shot list app that collects the names from the couple and sorts the groups. What matters is that it exists before anyone lifts a camera. It is the one part of the day that can be planned like a render.
Back to the plates
The nine renders are listed in the fractal gallery, each linking to the author's own copy.