Weekly retrospective #34: Reality / Perception

Maybe the titel will direct you in the wrong direction. Let me explain what I'm looking for.

A few years ago I read an article about biological field research and the author of the article has had the following statment: Even if you only watch a closed environment ... you will change it.

You cannot simply watch indians in the Brazilian jungle without changing their existence. Another good example are the ads the Rolling Stone magazine launched, I guess it was around 1985. On the left page you saw a picture with the title "perception", on the right another picture with the title "reality". The idea behind was to reveal some wrong perceptions about the muisc industry (if I remember correctly).

Photography fits in such a category. Let's photograph a person, a sunset or something else by a hundert photographers and you will get hundret different images. No, it is not about the cameras they are using. Each photographer take another viewpoint, different exposure times and so on. They will show a projection of their own interests, wishes, sights, beliefs and so on.

Photography in my opinion is always a kind projection onto a medium (film, web, canvas etc.) This projection gets "colored" and "filtered" by the personality of the photographer. The viewer then will receive that projection and run it through the own "filter set" of sights, wishes and interests. As a result you will like the image (when you share a few of the same "filter" settings), or you don't like it becasue it doesn't fit into your filter scheme.

So no photo, even it is unaltered through any processing (analogue or digital), won't show the reality, only some kind of perception. And this is one aspect why photography changes our whole general view to the world. Just think about wild life fashion photography, portratit photography and wedding (!!!!) photography. None of these contents has to do with the real world. A moment to think about.
Below you will find some examples for this week retrospective.

Altered images taken a few years ago with a cheap bridge camera and altered on the iPad .
You know what I mean with perception reality ... now you do.

Enjoy!