How Does a Landscape Photographer See Through a Camera?

The most important skill for a photographer to acquire is the ability to look at the landscape and visualize what the camera will record. This is never a single vision, but a multitude of possibilities, because photography offers a versatile range of controls and devices with which to manipulate the appearance of the image. A picture taken by different photographer will look different depending on the ability of the photographer to select and edit a landscape and understand how this happens.

It is interesting to look first at how human vision differs from the camera’s viewpoint. The eye and the camera both have a lens that’s capable of focusing on objects over a range of distances; both use a light-sensitive medium to record images; and each has a variable aperture to control the quantity of light that enters. Stretching the metaphor a little, the eyelid is like the camera’s shutter: an opaque barrier that opens to let light in. While this is a convenient analogy in the context of the classroom, the eye to camera comparison isn’t valid when the time comes to take pictures. Our eyes may resemble the camera, but the act of looking has little in common with the art of picture-taking. The image projected by the camera’s lens appears faithfully reproduced on sensor or film, but the image we see when we look directly at the subject is filtered and interpreted by the brain, which combines previous experiences of the subject. Our eyes scan back and forth across the subject over a period of several seconds, as we examine in detail just one part at a time. And though we have the impression that we’ve seen everything sharply, our eyes actually perceive fine detail over just a small area in the middle of the field of view. The rest of the eye forms a much less detailed picture of the scene. The brain, however, remembers the whole scene - all the elements that add up to a comprehensive view of the subject.

Since we have two eyes, we see two, slightly different, views of the scene. The difference between them allows us to see depth and spatial relationships.

The camera views the scene quite differently. The shutter opens and closes very quickly, so the picture shows how the landscape looked at just one instant in time. And because there’s no “scanning”, the camera records only one part of the subject in sharp focus; areas closer and farther away look less sharp. The camera registers a fixed rectangular or square part of the scene, with hard edges, like looking through a window on the world. Incidentally, the normal lens of around 50mm in focal length has a field of view that is the closest to that of the human eye. But despite this, the single eye of the camera makes pictures that lack depth - although the photograph retains indirect pointers that provide hints about the distances between parts of the landscape.

In practice these limitations allow you to select parts of the landscape that are capable of expressing more than a broader view would ever do.

Find out more things about Camera Photography and Tips To Take Photos. Check out Basic Camera Photography for more information.

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