Doing the “tomato activity” I’ve become more aware of how a camera captures everything that I point it at yet I may miss all that “background stuff” behind “my focus object.”
At birth our eyes see everything in our field of vision but we soon learn to focus and eliminate extra stimulus. If we didn’t’ we’d be overwhelmed. But cameras capture everything.
Have you ever taken a picture of a person or object and realize afterwards that you “missed” the angry waiter in the background or the ugly object behind that beautiful flower or tree? I’ve taken tons of photos of flowers only to find out when I look at them afterwards that there are ants on those beautiful petals or a moth eaten leaf behind the bright red rose.
At birth our eyes see everything in our field of vision but we soon learn to focus and eliminate extra stimulus. If we didn’t’ we’d be overwhelmed. But cameras capture everything.
Have you ever taken a picture of a person or object and realize afterwards that you “missed” the angry waiter in the background or the ugly object behind that beautiful flower or tree? I’ve taken tons of photos of flowers only to find out when I look at them afterwards that there are ants on those beautiful petals or a moth eaten leaf behind the bright red rose.
Notice the flower in this post. If you look closely you'll see two ants just sitting there!
Using digital cameras we haven’t had to learn the discipline of seeing everything before us (like our camera’s eye does) since we don’t have to pay for film and film developing. With photo editing we can even eliminate the flaws with a bit of extra work.
However, if we learn to spend more time really seeing what we want to photograph and pay attention to everything that’s really there, we’ll begin to develop the “art” of photography – because it’s not really the camera that’s doing the work of seeing, capturing and enjoying. We are.
Using digital cameras we haven’t had to learn the discipline of seeing everything before us (like our camera’s eye does) since we don’t have to pay for film and film developing. With photo editing we can even eliminate the flaws with a bit of extra work.
However, if we learn to spend more time really seeing what we want to photograph and pay attention to everything that’s really there, we’ll begin to develop the “art” of photography – because it’s not really the camera that’s doing the work of seeing, capturing and enjoying. We are.
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