It’s inescapable. The simple act of deciding what to include and what not to include in your shot is shaping whatever slice of reality you’re trying to capture. From your position. Literally from your mindset. From your subjective aesthetic. From your focal length. With your film stock. With your camera’s sensor. With the characteristics of your lens. With your camera’s “Out of camera” processed JPEGs. With your processed RAW files.
We’re working with two-dimensional representations of frozen moments in time here — also not reality.
Plus technical limitations (dynamic range).
Not to mention that even if you could record your reality, we really have no way of knowing if it matches someone else’s.
…
The takeaway is that it doesn’t matter. Photos make us think, feel, remember. All fuzzy things that are hard to define.
The word that comes to mind is bias.
It’s inescapable. The simple act of deciding what to include and what not to include in your shot is shaping whatever slice of reality you’re trying to capture. From your position. Literally from your mindset. From your subjective aesthetic. From your focal length. With your film stock. With your camera’s sensor. With the characteristics of your lens. With your camera’s “Out of camera” processed JPEGs. With your processed RAW files.
We’re working with two-dimensional representations of frozen moments in time here — also not reality.
Plus technical limitations (dynamic range).
Not to mention that even if you could record your reality, we really have no way of knowing if it matches someone else’s.
…
The takeaway is that it doesn’t matter. Photos make us think, feel, remember. All fuzzy things that are hard to define.