The best camera is the one you have with you...
Jan/25/10 11:57 Filed in: Technicalities
or dealing with selective seeing.
A recent trip brought me back to my old home town: Boston, Massachusetts. Well, Boston was not really my home town, but it is close enough. Anyhow, the point is that after two months not being there, I was glad to be back. And, as it is very often, once one has not been at one place for a while, I tend to look at it the next time we are there with different eyes.
On one of the first days in the early morning hours there I was on my way to the coffee shop to pick up some breakfast. It was quite enjoyable ouside and before I left I was actually thinking about taking my camera with me. But I decided not to since I just wanted to pick up something to eat and would go out later anyways. So, I was walking down the street, enjoying the sun shining on my face. Passing a small park and playground I realized the brown-yellow tint Boston has during the winter months (if it is not all white and covered with snow that is). As I was turning around a corner I had to stop and hold my breath: there it was, the view of the ugly backside of Boston downtown that I was looking for all those years I was living there. Modern skyscrapers next to old buildings, all showing there not so representative back with a wide two lane street running towards it and classic brownstones to the left and right of me leading towards the scene. All wonderfully lit by the early morning sun. A picture perfect scene - I saw the photograph I wanted to capture right in front of my inner eye: the city as a backround focal point in the upper right, the street as a line cutting trough the image leading the viewers eye towards the city blocks and the brownstones as a classic frame. And no parked cars in sight. Wow. But, oh no, I did not bring my camera. And there I was thinking: yes, the best camera is the one you have with you. So I made a mental note and decided to come back another morning at the same time.
And so I did. But when I came around the same corner again, I had to stop and rub my eyes. What happened? It was the same time in the morning, the same perfect sunlight, the same scene. The same scene? No, something was different. Big trees must have grown over night in front of the downtown view. Naked, big trees without leaves. They were all over the place. And absolutely chaotic foreground which would render the entire scene as I envisioned it useless. The clean lines I saw the day before were gone, but instead, they were covered by those big tall trees. What exactly happened? Of course those trees did not grow over night. I realized that it is simply when I walked there the first time, I only saw what I wanted to see. A typical case of selective seeing. I ignored the distracting trees, because they distracted me from what I wanted to see - or expected to see. And this is exactly, how the human vision apparatus works: we see and perceive only what we really need or in some cases want. This prevents our brains experiencing a constant data overflow. We as photographers have to force ourselves to really see the scene as it is and not only focus on the main elements of the image but paying very close attentions to back- and foregrounds which can make or brake an image. Now you might say that this is a very trivial thing to do and we do it all the time. But that is not true.
Be honest to yourself: flip through your photo library and see, how often you made a photo which is good in principle but has distracting elements in it, which take away from the overall composition. I bet, that more images than not suffer from this phenomena. Pay attention to what photographs you decided to show to your friends and family and the ones you decided not to show. Now look at the images that you did not show (but did not delete or throw away yet) and take a close look: how many of them did not make the cut because of the disturbing for or backgrounds. That would be quite a few I bet.
The reason for this is that a camera does not see and work like the human eye. It is a mechanical apparatus, that simply records light, a scene that we pointed the lens at and told the camera to record it. Strictly mechanic. With every little detail playing a role in the scene that you compose in the viewfinder. Our vision on the other hand is indeed very selective and we tend to see only the desired elements. The pleasing elements that we think work in the scene that we create.
A beginner or occasional photographer will suffer more often from this experience than a seasoned photographer with a well trained eye. But, from all the photographers I have been dealing with over the years, nobody is immune to this situation.
This was certainly one occasion where I again learned a lesson about the tao of paying attention. And I was not upset that I did not have a camera with me in that very moment on the first morning. I would have taken an unnecessary and disappointing photograph of a scene that otherwise will stay in my mind as beautiful for a long time….