Glossary

Plain-language definitions of terms used across the photography and technology writing on this site.

AI & software

Agent: A system that uses reasoning and tool use to act on behalf of a person or program, often loosely pairing an LLM with abilities like code execution or browsing.
Content negotiation: A server feature that returns different representations of the same resource (for example HTML or Markdown) based on the Accept header the client sends.
JSON-LD: A JSON-based format for embedding structured data in a page that search engines and agents can parse, formatted as linked data.
llms.txt: A proposed convention: a Markdown index of a site's pages with descriptions, published so LLM crawlers can discover content.
robots.txt: A file that tells cooperative crawlers which paths they may or may not fetch.

Alt text: A written description of an image's content, read aloud by assistive technology and used by crawlers to understand images.
Focal point: The visually important region of an image, used to choose crops when the same photo is shown at different aspect ratios.
Genetic algorithm: An optimization method inspired by natural selection, used here to reconstruct portraits from colored polygons by evolving toward a target.

Static site: A website whose pages are pre-built into plain HTML files and served directly, without a server-side application at request time.
Sitemap: A machine-readable list of a site's pages; it helps crawlers find and keep up with content.