Pablo Picasso jumped out at me when I was poking through my quotes files when looking for a subject to chat about today… And note that it is being released on time and not a day late. Seems that you want your Sunday photo/art quote on Sundays.
“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” Pablo Picasso
Pablo brings up a very interesting point of view and I agree 100%. Now I don’t necessarily like all of Picasso’s creations, but he does make me see things in a different light. Which brings me to the idea your camera doesn’t see as your eye does. The pupil expands and contracts when viewing shadows or bright areas in a scene. It happens so fast and automatically most are not even aware of it. Why does this matter? Well our job as a photographers is to translate a three dimensional scene with luminance values that can’t fit on the paper we are printing into a two dimensional space… and make it look as our eye sees it. That’s why it’s important to know how the camera sees and be the translator.
Many photographers say, “I only shoot natural light!” or I would never put a filter on my lens, that’s cheating!” I actually remember saying similar things when I was first creating images – before I really started to understand a camera and lens’s limitations in reproducing the scene in front of me. Until you understand that supplemental light helps to tame the dynamic range of a scene or that filters were created to answer challenges of being able to ‘fit’ all the light into a finite printing space you will have difficulty creating images that share what you see.
HDR photography, when done properly, is one of the ultimate ways of taming the dynamic range of a scene. There are some images that have the ‘look’ that makes you say, “That’s an HDR.” Those aren’t the images I’m talking about. I’m talking about the images that you go, “WOW!” Because the scene is presented so realistically you can’t believe how beautiful it is.
The next time you come across a scene you believe will make a wonderful image think it through and make sure others see your vision and not just what a camera may happen to capture.
Do you see what I do? My excitement came from the juxtaposition of the four different architectural styles and nature all in one place at one time… Or do you see something else?
Panasonic Lumix GX7 Lumix G Vario 35-100 f2.8 51mm 102 35mm equivalent 1/50 sec. F13 ISO 500
Image © Bob Coates Photography
