The Quandary of “I Was There”
Notes from my daily photography experiments #9
As I was walking through the dark streets for my photo of the day, I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sadness each time I looked down at my viewfinder. There was a separation between what I saw and what I had shot. While it is a common predicament often rectified by an hours-long operation in Photoshop or Lightroom, it can be disheartening that it is not there instantly for you.
Each time there is that issue, I feel that it is paramount to use the camera in a way not to capture the exact thing in front of you, but to capture what you see in front of you. I believe there is a stark difference between the two. Each person's mind perceives things very differently than that of the next. This is what gives us our unique taste. We have our own personal lens that we put over everything we lay our eyes on.
Because of this, I have a hard time bringing both what I see and feel into the camera in its entirety. It is not the one sense that absorbs the scene. In the moment I captured this image, it was the hum of the electric light hanging above the plant, the person who nervously walked past, the voluptuous bounce of the leaf in the wind. Even video can’t always capture the full scope of what our brains absorb into themselves.
