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Reality and Perception

Written by Cornelio

Tuesday, 22 January 2008

Boston Winter CityScape: Just Before Sundown
Winter 2007
Back Bay area
Boston, MA, USA

View of the Back Bay area skyline from across the Charles River, Memorial Drive near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge.

Reality and Perception

There is a belief that photographs don't lie, i.e., they are a representation of reality. This perception is of the reasons why people accept images captured in photographs as real and true, and thus used quite often as evidence in court and as "truth" of our world in publications.

But, is this really true, or accurate?

Compare the image shown here for example with an almost exactly the same image Before Darkness Reigns -- taken about a minute before the image show here. In fact, without this added information, it would appear as if this image shown was taken before the other image, Before Darkness Reigns, rather than the other way around. In reality, this was exposed just slightly longer to reveal a more clear foreground (notice the most green on the dock not evident in the other image). It would appear too, as if the Charles River was quite tranquil. In fact, there was a slight breeze, more evident in the undulation of the Charles River in the image, Before Darkness Reigns. In fact, the waves would have been much higher had the shutter speed been faster, suggesting a stronger breeze and explaining the more significant windchill effect when the images were taken. [I was freezing cold, I was starting to have "cold burns" and pin pricks as my fingers were slowly getting numb.]

Here, there was no deliberate attempt to alter or falsify the image that is presented (see note below). But, in fact, even this statement is relative.

With digital photography and post-processing tools now available, it is so easy to alter what we present, even before we capture the image and to some, after we capture the image. In most of the shots shown in this series, for example, I used the "Vivid" rather than the "Normal" option because I thought after reviewing my initial images in previous shots, it was a more "realistic" representation of the actual colors of the images -- with the current setting of my camera. [I am literally taking my first baby steps into the world of digital photography, there are so many buttons in the Nikon D200 I have yet to learn, to capture the "perfect" picture.]

In movies, like Forrest Gump, for example, by juxtaposing images, it is now possible to make people of the past become part of the present. But, we know that movies are make believe, so that we still can distinguish sometimes what is real and what is not. However, it is now accepted in newsroom to use backdrop scenery in studios to give a semblance that the people are in natural setting. Here, it is still easy to discern that the setting is unreal.

With these advances in audio-visual tools and computer technology however, it is now possible electronically "to cut and paste" portions of images and audio -- to literally do anything you want.

Obviously, the genie is out of the bottle. We could not turn back the time, just a decade or so ago, when it would have been easy to detect a forgery or alteration shown in images and audio-visuals.

The impact on us however is more far-reaching, psychologically and sociologically. We tend to be more cynical with what we see and what we hear. How many of us believe the people we "talk to" in the internet? We become guarded and refuse to share the person that we are.

In the song, the "Sound of Silence", there is a phrase there: "People talking without speaking..." -- that is what we have become.

Cornelio

_________________

N.B.
The image was uncropped. Except for "unsharp image" and the automated resizing and "screen image optimization" to reduce the diskspace usage, no further image manipulation was done.

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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 22 January 2008 )

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