Scenario: You step out of your car. Take a deep breath and open your eyes to a beautiful scene. Reach for your camera. Take a picture, another one, another one... only to discover that the pictures are mere caricatures of what you are observing. You start fidgeting with your camera controls from Auto to Landscape to Manual. Take more shots and somehow none of them work? Getting the tripod out, changing the lens (if applicable) seems not to help either.
You just realized that the camera does not capture what your eyes see. There are two ways that the camera capture is different from seeing: technical and perceptual. For example take the auto-focus feature. Consider the almost seamless change of focus when we are trying to observe details in a landscape and compare that with the camera's slow and almost random hunting focus. The lenses in our eyes and in the camera can adjust their focus. On the technical side, the eyes may or may not beat the camera in speed and responsiveness. On the perception side, the brain does not really care about the focus and uses a mixture of available imagery, quick refocusing, and memory to form an overall sharp picture which is simply impossible for the camera to reproduce. Similarly, when it comes to seeing objects too small or too far, a simple tele or macro lens easily beats the lenses in your eyes.
To get a better understanding of differences between photography and seeing, it is helpful to compare photos [a physical representation of light entering the camera] and paintings [a physical representation of an idea of the lights entering the eyes]. What makes a photo like a painting and vice versa?
One of the major themes of this blog will be on how to actually represent your impression of a scene in a photograph by using camera, lighting, and post-processing.
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