The Picture pales against the lived experience

Red stop lights against deep orange dawn light in the purple of the night blend (16 April 2024)

This grab shot of the dawn light is good enough as writing prompt, but as a likeness to the visual experience via eyeball and brain it is a poor representation. Probably a fancier camera and more time to compose the shot, or at least to finesse the exposure, would give a result that is closer to the original feeling of awe and wonder. But even that would be two-dimensional with imposed borders to the viewing area. The raw experience was immersive in three dimensions and with time’s passing to make the colors change and the clouds move. In the original moment there was no picture frame to cut off the adjacent context since the central vision supplied the sharp details and color, while the peripheral vision filled in the surrounding spaces and range of light values. And, of course, at this busy intersection the cross-traffic was streaking past at speed, lending to the sense of surprise at such fine beauty in the distance even as commuters motored along with their minds on the road, the radio or some other audio accompaniment to pass the time, but maybe oblivious of the breaking light of this morning.

By analogy from the experiential gap between image and reality, there is something similar that happens in a larger sense. One’s life experience is filled with things that defy verbal description or maybe exceed one’s power of reasoning, too. Communicating to others inevitably loses something in the translation from raw event to spoken (or written or recorded) words. Unintended meanings may well tag along while other things that felt significant, fail to elicit similar impressions on others who were not present. Thus, it is worth acknowledging this gap between original instance of something and any rendition that is derivative to the source material. For practical or economic purposes the frail and provisional version of the sturdy original might function all right as a place holder, as the basis to begin a discussion, or as something suitable to illustrate a point. So there is value in a sketch, photo, recording, or verbal summary. But there should never be any confusion between the “real thing” and its portrayal later.

More Immersive by Degrees

Sometimes an event or a subject is so compelling that the viewer immerses him or herself in the moment of the camera’s shutter release, no matter how low quality the image is. The freeze-frame of President Kennedy’s murder is a bit blurry, but it is so significant that viewers scrutinize the image over and over again. At the opposite extreme are advertisements for a product that is dressed up with celebrity endorsement or other surrounding interest so that viewers stop momentarily to view the image. In this case the power to draw the person into the picture comes from things like skillful composition, hinting at narrative tension of an unfolding story line, and superb lighting and optics. These circumstances to the subject lend it the appearance of important meaning; something out of the ordinary.

City park on an overcast October morning

This photo is a single shot and does not particularly reach out to immerse most viewers. Perhaps somebody with childhood memories of this park would be able to trigger happy days spent there, but for strangers it is an ordinary piece of public space in a residential neighborhood to the east of downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Stitching two photos into something like human wide vision is more immersive

Even though the focus is blurred in this panorama photo, the fact that the frame now is wider than the first photo means that it simulates something more like normal stereoscopic human vision. Stitching a 3rd overlapping exposure to these two would just about reach the 170 degrees of one’s peripheral vision side to side, although not the corresponding sweep of vision from ground to sky.

Fully focused and reaching from the foreground to background, this one is most immersive.

Extending the same logic about producing a visual experience that is immersive, it stands to reason that the closer the approximation to waking human vision, then the more immersive and life-like the exercise becomes. This means using camera gear and technique that yields vivid, well-focused, wide field of view photographs. A bigger photo sensor makes it possible to record a bigger range of light values from shadow to highlight. Software to merge two or three images set to proper exposure and also to underexpose (thus recording the brightest features well) and also to overexpose (thus recording the darkest features well), known as HDR or High Dynamic Range, is another way to extend the limited ability of digital cameras to match the estimated 14 f-stops from bright to dark that human eyes can discern. Making panorama photos allows a lens rated neither wide nor telephoto (thus ‘normal’ like unaided human vision) to record a set of overlapping images to form a single large canvas this is something like human visual experience. Cinematic methods like blurred background (bokeh), makeup, costume design, and three-point lighting (face, hair, background) can take the subject and amplify its vividness and present a look of extraordinariness. For moving pictures synced to sound (and later with orchestration overlaid) the quality of audio produces a sense of immediacy as the sound waves hit the ears of the people watching the scenes play out.

Returning to the starting point of this essay, the effect of immersiveness can be deepened and broadened by adding step by step these many factors. For viewers with a strong imagination a black and white that is scratched or torn is enough to transport the person to another place or time. For viewers with a weaker imagination in order to immerse the person the experience must include the maximum effect: high quality color, panoramic, and maybe with added flair from cinematic enhancements. But for all viewers the reward for immersing oneself in the place and time recorded by a camera is to expand the size of one’s world of experience and the chance to reflect back from the new standpoint on one’s own place and time in contrast.