High Concept
The Potential Arrival of the Photo-Rating Camera

As 2010 winds to a close, we find ourselves pondering powerful ideas that we hope will come to fruition in 2011. Flying cars. A martini shaker shaped like a martini glass. And this.

Rehnquist. Cowell. Judy.

They’re some of the most influential judges of our time.

But in 2011, if one concept becomes a reality, they might be upstaged by the harshest judge of all―your camera.

Meet Nadia, an opinionated digital camera that judges the quality of your work as you snap, not available now but hopefully an actual product in the not-so-distant future.

So say you’re hiking in Topanga, and suddenly you’re struck by the poetic juxtaposition of sky and spandex. Or you’re at dinner next to a whole pile of Kardashians, who are somehow suddenly and inexplicably posed exactly like The Last Supper. Either way, you’ve got to get this photo just right.

If you were pointing Andrew Kupresanin’s theoretical Nadia camera at the scene, it wouldn’t show you the photo on its display monitor. It would just show you its presumably superior opinion of your craftsmanship, displayed as a percentage grade, to help you adjust accordingly.

So it would give you, say, a 24% if you’re accidentally cutting out the spandex in your sky-spandex masterpiece, or a 98% if you’ve framed every last Kardashian (even Khloe) so perfectly that even da Vinci would be proud.

Da Vinci would’ve loved the E! network.