Reality versus vision

So many photographers get caught up in reality. To me, they are basically using their cameras as copy machines. Striving to make an exact copy of a scene. Sometimes it works, and many times it does not. It all depends upon the moment and the vision of the photographer, more so if you are like me, a photographic artist.

A couple of weeks ago I photographed a session at a haunted house. The session started at 10 AM and went on most of the day. There were photographers and models/actors still around when I left at about 8 PM. The problem? It was daylight and a bright day at that. Not really the scene for gremlins, ghouls, zombies, and monsters. In order to fulfill the vision reality had to be altered.

Take the photograph above, for example. It is fitting for the setting, at least to me. We have a possessed nun interacting with a zombie. The original, reality-based photograph, not so much.

The original, reality, doesn’t have the same feel as the altered reality version. First of all, for me, the zombie doesn’t look real ( I know zombies aren’t real). Second, that house, isn’t what most of our imaginations envision for a zombie scene.

Another example is the ceremony in the cathedral. The altered reality version versus the reality version.

There certainly is a lot you can do with lighting and camera settings but again, those are altering reality in a different way.

The mere act of taking a photograph we alter reality. We alter reality by the choices we make in setting up the shot. We alter reality by the lens and aperture we choose. We alter reality by freezing a fraction of a second into the reproduction of a subject or scene. We alter reality by the media we use to capture that moment. For me, I don’t always let the reality of the scene limit my vision of how the emotion of the scene or subject felt to me. My goal as an artist is to bring you into the moment of time and the place I was at the moment I photographed it, just as a painter would do with their paintings. For me, it’s art not a Xerox copy.