Charlie Shugart Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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tomandmarj wrote:
Charlie - the image is straight up, and I'm not sure why the lower right is out of whack.
just perspective?
regards, tom
Aw, c'mon, Tom .
I say I'll shut up and then you ask me a question?
Politeness must come first :
This is a complicated issue, and although I've thought about it a lot- I don't pretend to have all the answers.
But here's a try:
The truth is that when we look up at a tall building, the lines DO converge toward the middle. And that IS what we see.
But our brains know the lines DON'T converge, so we stand their looking up and thinking all the vertical lines ARE vertical.
Let me mention that our eyes don't really see ANYTHING; they just basically transfer light to our brains, and all the "seeing" and "thinking" is done there, with much of it done automatically.
The basis of photography is that cameras record the same thing our eyes see, not the same thing our brains interpret it as being.
At this point let me mention that with all the latest wizardry of the digital age, the camera is now doing more things than were done by normal 35mm film cameras. The latest digital cameras can- to a certain extent- perform some of the interpretations done by our brains.
But that doesn't change my original premise.
Okay, take a deep breath:
In a way it boils down to this: a choice of what is literally shown by the camera,
or what the photographer and viewers "perceive," which is sometimes thought of as: "perception becomes reality."
When a photographer has the camera exactly level from side-to-side AND from front-to-back, the photograph will be the truth- using a 50mm lens, which is the same angle as human vision.
If the lines of a tall building converge- so be it- if you want the truth. (Same truth with railroad tracks.)
But what if you can't handle the truth? ()
What if you want all the vertical lines in the picture to be straight, parallel and vertical?
4X5 cameras have swings and tilts that permit you to get all those lines straight and vertical before you take a photograph. But that's not the truth- it's an in-camera manipulation.
Most of us don't use swings and tilts, but we can accomplish almost the same thing in post. And that also is not the truth; it's a manipulation.
So, what do we choose? The "truth" that looks wrong?
Or the manipulation that looks right?
Does perception become reality?
And now I must take a nap, because this has been too much yapping even for me .
Charlie
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