A while back, I did some mentoring to a student photographer who asked me in frustration, why can’t I bring out in camera what my eye sees? I don’t really have an answer for that, because the more I do it, the more my eye becomes like the camera. And I told her this is where you have to be patient and endure plateaus as well as growth. If it were that easy, everyone would be doing it. Wait…..everyone IS doing it, LOL! But not everyone sticks with it when they realize it’s more work and expense than they thought. This is the crossroads, where you are in it and make a commitment to yourself, or take the easy road and give up. There is no fence to straddle.

She stuck with the conversation. The camera is a mirror and the lens is the eye. So you have every opportunity to capture something in a way you want the audience to see it. The human eye doesn’t have depth of field and focus points, or even apertures the same way the camera does. If you are inside a room, and shoot out the window, the room in the foreground will be underexposed if the outside view is exposed correctly, assuming you use no flash. Or if you use ambient light to meter the exposure for the room, the backlighting will be harsh if you use it in that photo. Fstops are lens openings, the further it opens, the more light it lets in, and you also get shallower depth of field. Also, your eyes have a greater field of view, and what you see with them, you don’t have to control your compositions, as you do when photographing. As a photographer, I see light differently than the average person. I see people differently. Everything I see is how I see the photo being, not the other way around. Trying to get the camera to see things the same way the naked eye does will only bring you frustration. Think like your camera, and the better you can represent your subject matter how you desire.