Looking versus Seeing
Vision is not a passive exercise. It is a dynamic combination of physical activity and conscious and unconscious mental processing. The foundation of vision is survival and self-preservation. Our eyes developed for us to be aware of food, shelter, mates, and danger and to assist our brain and the rest of our body to acquire, take advantage of, and escape these things that remain a priority to us today. However, improvements in our affluent way of life have allowed the processing of our vision to become dulled even to the point of becoming a passive exercise. We are less aware of our surroundings because, today, vision is less important for our survival. We live in relative safety, our food doesn’t need to be hunted and chased down, our homes are generally where we left them last, but we do still use our eyes (for the most part) for mate selection. Visually, many of us are in our own world of self-imposed tunnel vision and limited awareness. We follow relatively the same routine in our daily lives and our subjective (selective) vision ignores the commonplace elements around us; people, buildings, cars, colors, shapes, shadows. Our children watch movies in the car rather than look out the window at the passing landscape. Unless a particular visual element stands out by being food, shelter, danger, or a potential mate, we tend to not “see” it. Luckily, the processes involved in photography help restore a more global awareness of what’s going on around us.
Looking: We only see what we look at, and to look at something is an act of choice. Our senses work together and, usually, when we hear, smell, or feel something we turn our head and/or body to look for the source. When something catches our eye, a bright color, a movement, a change in contrast, we turn to look. But we never look at just one thing. Our eyes capture the entire scene, we look at the relationships between the things we see and ourselves; size, distance, direction, shape, color. Our vision is continually active and in motion, identifying those elements around us that make up our immediate environment. We can’t look at something not in our field of vision.
As we look at a scene, we tend to isolate and group elements based on proximity. Elements close together are interpreted to have some sort of relationship; books stacked on a table, two people standing near one another. Things separated by a distance are generally perceived to be non-related. More detailed analysis by our brain, through seeing, makes us aware of more information we can add to our understanding.
Seeing: By closer scrutiny, recognizing and identifying the elements in our field of view, seeing is how we experience, examine, and understand the things we look at. We look at and recognize things before we’re able to speak. Seeing establishes our place in the visible world and the way we see is affected by what we know and what we believe.
As photographers, we look at a meadow and the relationship of the expanse of grass to the trees bordering the edge, mountains to one side, and a blue sky with puffy clouds above. But we see a single tree, its height and girth, the leaves - their color, shape, and the light shining through them, the rough bark, the shape and tonality of the tree’s shadow on the ground, the bird nesting in its branches, the branches moving in the wind, the moss-covered rock at the base of the tree, the pattern and shape of the grass….
A good practice to get into is re-training your vision to See more while you’re Looking. You and your photography will benefit.