The Camera as Teacher

We often are told that as photographers, we need to learn to see. Yes, but… There are probably at least 2 parts to that, learning to be more mindful and learning to see as the camera does. In this second case, the camera will show us what it can do. We need to understand the camera as teacher.

Seeing

If we don’t see a scene and recognize its potential, then we will not photograph it. This type of seeing is based on perception and attention, not the quality of our eyesight. I advocate this type of mindfulness in many of my writings.

This kind of seeing can be learned and practiced. A camera is not even required. David duChemin had an intriguing statement in Light, Space, and Time: “We see through the lens of our thoughts.”

I recommend that we become so obsessed with our art that we see almost everything as a potential image and be plotting how to capture it best. Obviously, there are some times and scenes we would not want to do that, but it can be our default behavior. It is good training. When I am driving or walking around, I am usually playing a “what’s here and how would I capture it” game in my mind.

©Ed Schlotzhauer

Seeing as the camera does

Seeing potential shots around us does not assure we will execute them well. There is a huge difference between how we see the world and how our camera records it.

As we become serious about our art, we must become serious about learning our tools and medium. These are our means of expression. A pre-visualization of the greatest scene we have ever imagined is not much use if we cannot realize the shot.

The camera has its own strengths and weaknesses that characterize what it can and cannot do. Any medium does. This is not a limitation so much as a creative opportunity.

Our eyes

Our eyes are marvelous devices. And when I say “eye” I consider the whole path from the lens into our brain. Our visual system.

I will not try to. analyze this, only point out a few ways our visual system is completely different from a camera.

Our eyes and our camera both have a lens and a “sensor”. The eye’s sensor is the retina. This is about the extent of the parallels.

Our camera has a flat, 2-dimensional silicon sensor that captures the scene all at once, in parallel. That is, the entire sensor is exposed to the light coming through the lens while the shutter is open, and this makes one image capture. The pixels are all equally sensitive to light.

Our eyes, though, are not uniformly sensitive. There is a region of the retina that has the most resolving power (the fovea). So, unconsciously to us, our eyes are always scanning our field of view. This process is called saccade. Our 2 eyes jump and focus together momentarily on a point. Then we move on to another point. We repeat this several times a second.

Through this process, our marvelous brain works with our eyes to paint this information together into a smooth, seamless visual sensation in full 3D. We effectively have real time HDR, panoramic vision, and image stitching – in 3D.

©Ed Schlotzhauer

Meaning

Even more exciting is that our brain also constantly tries to make sense of what we see. Scientists postulate that we utilize a bottom-up then top-down analysis process to understand scenes and to develop meaning. And we do this in. milliseconds.

We tend to see what we pay attention to. If we are looking for something or if we are concerned about something, we see it more readily. The brain constantly attempts to give us the meaning we need in what we see. The process seems also to be directed by our knowledge and expectations.

Our cameras do not search for meaning. At least, not yet. Eye tracking is not meaning. People detection is a focus aid, not meaning.

©Ed Schlotzhauer

The medium of photography

All that helps to let us see that the camera does not see like we do. So if we want to use the camera as a tool for our art, we must learn what it does. Then we can use it for what it can do and stop wishing for what we would like it to do.

We point our camera at a scene and press the shutter, but the results are not what we expect. Was this a failure on our part? Perhaps it is better viewed as a learning opportunity.

If we used a very fast shutter speed, movement in the scene was frozen. This is different from what our eyes perceive.

Maybe we used a very long shutter speed and discovered that all the motion is blurred. Again, our eyes do not perceive this.

Or we shot it with a wide aperture of, say f/4, only to find that much of the image is out of focus. But we are used to our eyes “seeing” everything in focus.

If you hand hold your camera you may be disappointed to find that many of your frames are not as sharp as you intended. After all, our eyes seldom perceive things as unsharp, but in the camera there is a balance of exposure settings to juggle to get a crisp image exposed properly.

We pointed the camera at a brightly lit daylight scene and found that some highlights were overexposed, and some shadows were underexposed. Our eyes usually see everything correctly exposed. The automatic HDR we employ can lead us to forget that the camera can’t do that.

Through experiments like these, and many more, we eventually learn how the camera will capture a scene under almost any condition. It takes some experience, and a lot of thrown away images. The camera gives us feedback by faithfully recording the scene according to how we adjusted it. We may not always be happy with the result. Failure is a great teacher.

©Ed Schlotzhauer

Limitations help define art

But eventually it is no longer mysterious. We learn to control the tools we have and make them work for us. Our camera becomes a means to realize our vision.

Along the way, we discover something marvelous. These limitations we had to learn to work around are opportunities for artistic expression.

For instance, we have a whole new perspective on time. The camera can slice time down to thousandths of a second to stop motion. Or it can keep its shutter open for seconds or more to show the effect of motion over time. Our eyes and brain cannot do this, so now we can open whole new views on the world.

We can intentionally underexpose a foreground to create a dramatic silhouette. Or we can intentionally overexpose the scene to produce a dreamy washout. Basically, we can alter the exposure values to any degree we wish to create the effect we like. They do not always have to be “correct”. What we see with our eyes is almost always correct.

We can superimpose multiple layers or remove distracting elements. Want to feature the form of something? Black & white is excellent for that. With the right tools we can peer into almost total darkness or shoot a picture of the surface of the sun. We need our camera and software to do these things. Our eyes can’t.

A good tool is a force multiplier. It allows us to do things we could not do unaided.

As we listen and let the camera teach us what it can do, we discover new artistic possibilities. Maybe we want to use them. Maybe not. That is up to us and how these things fit in our vision. But the toolbox becomes larger and better stocked as we learn more.

So, when you look at an image and think “Wow, what just happened here?”, maybe that is an opportunity to discover a new feature of the world of photography. One that you might be able to exploit to your advantage. The camera can become our teacher.