When video taping somthing on a camcorder why do i say "Shine that camera over here?"

In the very early history of the science of optics, some proposed that our eyes actually had some way of reaching out and sensing objects remotely, rather than the other way around (our eyes detect light reflected or emitted from objects). So, maybe somewhere deep in your mind is the idea that the camera is reaching out and shining on to the things you are recording. I think it may be one of those mental models that turns out not to be true in reality but sometimes useful as a first approximation. For example, we talk about the "Sun rises in the East", when we all know that the Sun isn't really rising, and it's just the fact that the Earth is turning toward the East that makes it appear so. But as a mental model, it's been useful for thousands of years, and remains useful today.