You are seeing with camera #1 a pair of eyes, then you capture something with camera #2 on film or a digital sensor, all to present it to camera #3 another pair of human eyes-. Photographers must consider the way the scene is perceived by each camera, and how they relate will have a huge influence on the way your image will finally present.

First Camera -Human Vision-
We are seeing everything, the mass unorganized beautiful chaos of nature, the bright white seamless in the otherwise cavernous black hole of a photo studio, the history, symmetry, and grandeur of an ancient European cathedral. The full emotion and information of the original scene can scarcely be replicated. If, in fact, the original information and emotion is wanted to be replicated. If you are shooting in a studio there is the technical chaos of lighting equipment, is that the story your trying to make? Or do we remove all of the madness of real life to transport the model into the make believe white world of Apple advertisements?
As we decide to add and remove information from the situation you change the end viewer’s possible perception, because they will only see what they are given.

Second Camera -Sensor or Film-
The snap of a shutter has two opposing functions; capturing and eliminating information. After a shutter has chattered there is now a copy of information which otherwise would have disappeared all but from memory. However at the same moment the FOV has eliminated a ton information about the scene. (Also think about dynamic range, colour reproduction and situational information the camera can’t capture) The ability to delete information from the viewer’s perception comes with tremendous opportunity to make stories and present ideas, but it also can be a responsibility for photojournalists; what you don’t know can hurt your perception

Third Camera -Human Vision-
The human eye is now presented with an image, which represents part of the original scene, and depending on the photographer’s method and intent may misrepresent, or infer new ideas and information.

When photographing the information included or excluded will have a profound impact on the way an image is viewed. A specific example for sports photographers is the infamous ‘guy in the sky’ picture; an athlete airborne but without context of the location, event, or stunt. Although these photographs can reveal some things which full scene photographs may not, the excluded information can make the image confusing, unnatural and even disappointing (fellow athletes really want to know what is going on, so they can appreciate the photograph)

The Camera doesn’t lie, our perception is gullible and arrogant.

-Click for the Introduction to, and Directory for; Foveas and Photographs series

The angle of view is the amount of a scene an optical system gathers information from. Or much simpler; how much a lens can see. When making photographs we need to take both cameras involved into consideration; your eyes and the expensive black box in your right hand.

Cameras (the type with a sensor or film); The field of view (FOV) of a camera has an amazing range if it has the ability to change lenses. Personally my bag has the angle of view range from 180 degrees to ~ 4.5 degrees (10.5mm fisheye to my 70-200 used with a 1.7X teleconverter (-note these are on crop sensors measured corner to corner)

Our eyes; 180 degree FOV corner to corner, undistorted.
This ones a bit more complicated, bear with me for a moment when I go Pythagorus on your ass; human vision covers about 160 degrees horizontally, and 130 degrees vertically, toss that into Pythagorus’ fun little math game you come up with 200 degrees diagonally. However we don’t see rectangularly, we have a more ovular field of view, so i rounded it down a bit. To give you the comparison a Nikon 10.5 fisheye covers 145 degrees horizontally, and 99 degrees vertically.
Long story short your eyes are always seeing more than almost every lens you will use, unless you start working with specialty lenses like the nikon 6mm which has a 220 degree field of view.

You see more than this image’s FOV (10.5 fisheye lens on crop sensor)

However, at the same time you would have seen much more detail in this situation. You would be able to tell me that on John’s (the guy with the video camera) jacket there is a blue logo. Those of you with really good vision would even be able to read that its a logo for Bell.

Fovea; the eye’s ‘telephoto’
The amazing part about human vision that makes this possible is the fovea. A small part of of the retina which has a very high density of ‘cones’, light sensing cells which are specialized for colour recognition. If John was standing in area of your peripheral vision you would have a much more difficult time seeing the Bell logo. If you would be able to see it at all, at the same distance. Throughout all of the eye there is a distribution of rods, they are more specialized for low light situations. There are less rods around the edge of your vision and more towards the center.

Since our vision is gifted with the amazing resolution packed into the fovea’s cones we are able to see details on far away objects as if we were looking with a longer focal length lens. Like this shot;

If you set out to take pictures which capture what you are seeing its not likely you will be successful, you’ll always be losing the width, or foveal details of subjects.

Think to displaying the image; the viewer’s FOV is likely to be full of distractions and visual elements beyond your control. Look at the image above, I can’t control the coffee mug, pencils pens, speakers and everything else on your computer desk, which is in your FOV right now. All I have is the visual space on your screen which I get to play with. Inside that little box I’ve simplified and removed visual elements, organized and structured the frame in a way that is more likely to keep your eye inside it, rather than skipped over or through.
A photographer skilled in organizing visual space and composition makes successful photographs because he is using his eyes and visualization skills to present a beautiful organized image to your eyes. The camera is only a tool to facilitate that vision.

If you are shooting for a gallery, or other large presentation, you can shoot for more detail as the presentation will allow much more compositional complexity. The final image is going to be filling more of the end viewer’s FOV, and have less distractions around it. -Think Edward Burtynsky and his massive prints from large format film-

-Click for the Introduction to, and Directory for; Foveas and Photographs series

Almost everyone is seeing in 3d stereo vision; two cameras displaced horizontally which give slightly differing perspectives of the scene. Our brain (specifically the occipital lobe) overlays the two live stream images, and uses the minor differences in perspective to determine depth and motion of the objects around us. Our vision is tremendously amazing when you think about it; the volume of visual information that our brain handles, live capture, overlay, and 3d rendering of images. The versatility and quality of human vision in many ways trump any modern human made cameras.
And there are even more advantages to having having stereoscopic vision that first meets the eye. (Don’t worry, i too will probably get tired of that pun quickly)

3D; The Depth Of Field (DOF) replacement.
About a year or two back | read or watched a seminar about what stock agencies were looking for in the current market. During one lady’s part of the presentation she said something to the effect of; “Don’t give me all these pictures with an endless depth of field, my eye doesn’t see focussed from 1 meter to infinity” Although she isn’t wrong, she wasn’t quite correct.
Close one of your eyes, hold your hand out a full length and focus on your finger, then something 10 meters away, then the horizon. (yes, get some exercise and move away from your computer) Pay attention to how sharp the areas are which you aren’t focussed on.
Play with that for a while, although its not sharp from front to back you can still see a lot. Its defiantly not a short depth of field like a aperture 1.4 lens focussed at 2 meters with a silky background.
Now open both eyes and do the same thing, paying attention to what you see in the areas you aren’t focussed on.

When you see with both eyes in stereo vision the background is much less discernible. Each eye’s depth of field hasn’t changed, instead the brain is receiving conflicting information from each eye about what lays in front of or behind the subject you are looking at. The image from your left eye has one background for your subject, while your right eye has a slightly different background for the subject. When your brain overlays these conflicting background (or foreground) images the result is a single image which includes both backgrounds at the same time. Since the images are unaligned it makes a messy unsharp background, a DOF from stereo vision. Your brain can still discern what is in front or behind, however its not sharp, and it isn’t distracting.
When that lady told the audience that she didn’t see detail front to back she was right, however it is because of stereoscopic DOF, not so much one eye’s aperture influenced DOF.
When you view the world with two eyes the DOF created by stereo vision makes the subject much more dominant, because everything around it isn’t sharp. However cameras don’t shoot in stereo, so subjects are much more susceptible to blending into the background, or generally having less impact. We do have ways to compensate; a fast lens has the capability for a short DOF -wide aperture. We can also learn lighting skills and angle choice which make the subject brighter than the background, which helps the subject stand out in the image.

Selective vision
When the information from one eye is not as useful as the information from the other your brain will use the information from the better eye to view the subject. Take your hand and cover one eye -don’t close it- then keep covering and uncovering that eye, you should still be able to read this text. If your brain took the information at 50/50 from each eye it would become much more difficult to read this text with a hand in front of one eye. Instead your brain is choosing the information from your uncovered eye and ignoring the other useless information.
One of the best applications for this property of your vision, is seeing reflective surfaces. If you are looking at something reflective your brain have two differing perspectives of the subject for your eye to chose from. In this way the eye is able to reduce the effect of reflections by choosing the best information from each eye to build the best image it can. When photographing scenes with water -especially near dusk- your camera will pick up much more bright reflected light compared to your vision which is showing more of the water’s colour. Or, if you are looking through glass you can have the same issue, walking outside looking into shop windows there will be a lot of reflections, however you stereo vision should be able to compensate.
When photographic reflective surfaces take note that your camera will be seeing a much more accurate -more reflective- version of what you are seeing. Adjusting the way you shoot to exploit this discrepancy can result in amazing images, or to compensate you can use a polarizing filter which willhelp to remove a lot of unwanted reflection. If you go the route of a polarizer make sure you get a circular -spinable- polarizer, and learn how the spinning motion effects the light.

Not all of your vision is 3d:
Close your right eye and keep looking forward, you lost about 1/3rd of the FOV, now do the same for the opposite eye. Only the area which is seen by both eyes is 3d; your peripheral vision isn’t covered by two perspectives, and therefore can’t be 3d. Although this doesn’t have any important photographic application its still pretty interesting. Cool eh?

-Click for the Introduction to, and Directory for; Foveas and Photographs series

Dynamic range, (as far as photographers are concerned) is the range of information between the blackest black, and whitest white in an image. When we compare the dynamic range of a camera, to the dynamic range we can see with the human eye we find that cameras cover a much smaller range than the eye does. Any tones above or below the dynamic range a camera is seeing appears as a solid black, or a solid white.

This inconsistency between the human eye’s, and camera’s dynamic range can be a big problem, as a photographer won’t be able to accurately represent the scene they are provided with. However photographers can also take this shortcoming of a camera’s abilities, and turn it to their advantage.

When the world gives a photographer a lemon, what does he make? Lemonade or Lemon meringue pie?
High Dynamic Range (HDR) = lemon meringue pie; a lot more work in post production to make something palatable.
Low Dynamic Range (LDR) = lemonade; add two scoops of sugar and water to taste, with a little practice you’l find something that works for you.

HDR images can be created by taking multiple images with bracketed exposure to cover the full visible dynamic range of a scene. In post production the information from all of the images is combined to get a better representation of the original scene’s dynamic range.

To shoot LDR you need a one skill; seeing like your camera. (Throughout this series of Foveas and Photographs ‘seeing’ will be a common idea and skill to develop) Seeing in LDR won’t literally happen, you can’t override your brain’s imaging software, -at least no way I’ve been told- so seeing like your camera’s dynamic range is a skill of visualizing the end product using the information you can see.
To see in LDR go shoot and consciously pay attention to how much information your camera can capture before it begins clipping the whites or blacks, then apply that knowledge about clipping to the way you perceive scenes around you as you visualize.

A great time to start doing this is sunset; look at the objects in the foreground, then the background. With your eyes you see all of it, with detail everywhere, but as soon as you press the shutter button you immediately loose one or the other; a white sky of black foreground.

Kyle asked me if I wanted to go out and shoot some mountain biking last weekend. Shooting as the sun was going down I was faced with the challenge of the massive dynamic range between the setting sun, and the shadows creeping longer across the hill. Instead of throwing 4 flashes into the shot (don’t get me wrong, I was really tempted) I opted for natural light and shot LDR.

The first shot is shooting the shadow side of kyle as he tried to drive his handle bars into the ground (can you really get over how low that is?) the setting sun is just behind the hill (not under the horizon yet).

The second shot was taken after the sun has set, the afterglow of dusk still bright in the western sky creates a great silhouette, it is also isolating the mud thrown around like miniature bombshells

LDR is a very different technique than HDR in many ways; the process, previsualization, post production. I’d like to point out one of the most amazing parts about shooting LDR; the simplicity. When you fill the frame with solid blacks or solid whites you are clearing up the visual space, this blog is already too long to go into how amazing negative space is for composition, however great use of negative space makes great photographs.

If the information you read here follows thru to a future button push (photo) please share the story, photographs and your thoughts. Oh and yes, I do know LDR is commonly used to abbreviate long-distance-relationship.

LDR is the new black -some times literally.

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