When is a photo better than being there?

[Andybazyoung]

I feel, to experience making an image, there is nothing better. However, to then see whatever you have made may bring back euphoric memories, smells, hearing, listening, tasting etc, it may even be more euphoric. Here I totally agree with those who feel the photograph is indeed as good, or better than being there.
Having said this, I also feel the genre of photography certainly, for me, matters greatly. I feel making a macro image, which I love by the way, cannot have the same experience/feeling as making an image that has movement, feeling, emotion etc, etc, etc.....
On the other hand, there are experiences in my life I do not want to remember - ever!
Which brings me to my conclusion; You, me, them, others will, and do have differences and those differences make up the beauty, horrid, mad & experiential world we live in, & that is why we are so different & that is why we enjoy doing our own thing. To have great forums like Cambridgeincolour to discuss such issues is a bonus.
Bye the way, since joining you lovely lot, I have learnt so much from everyone who have posted. I look forward to reading posts and hearing from you all.
Thank you all
Andy

[NorthernFocus]

I feel, to experience making an image, there is nothing better. However, to then see whatever you have made may bring back euphoric memories, smells, hearing, listening, tasting etc, it may even be more euphoric....

This describes my passion for photography. It allows me to re-live moments in time with nature over and over again. This also provides one of the biggest challenges if/when attempting to produce images that appeal to others. To be able to capture even a small bit of the magical experience to share with others is truly challenging.

[Colin Southern]

As long as I was there to take the picture, sure, why not. I could stretch your point and suggest that using a high speed, high resolution video camera would be even better and one could see the dynamics of the flight motion.

In both cases, unless one was on site, we still would only have a partial understanding of the bird. Frankly, I would chose being there over looking at a still, except under some very special circumstances. An image gives us a tiny subset of what is happening.

I take your point, but I still think mine is valid. In that context I think of a photo as being a bit like a microscope in that even if we're "there", we still can't see (and thus) appreciate fully what it is that we're seeing. In photography birds captures by long lenses are probably a good example; to the naked eye they're just small flying shapes and yet in a good photo we can see all of their beauty. Same for macro.

Perhaps photography over being there isn't "better or worse" - maybe it's just different. A photo of a shuttle launch would never have come close to the experience of being there; but then again, seeing a insect without a microscope will never reveal it's true beauty as well as a photo.

[Mike Buckley]

Perhaps photography over being there isn't "better or worse" - maybe it's just different. A photo of a shuttle launch would never have come close to the experience of being there; but then again, seeing a insect without a microscope will never reveal it's true beauty as well as a photo.

That's why being there in the first example is better and reviewing the photo in the second example is better. When experiencing a scene or a photo is better or worse depending on the situation, that doesn't mean that the lesser experience is bad or not worth doing. It just means that one way is better than the other way, just as we might consider two athletes to be world-class even though one of them might consistently be better than the other one.

[AB26]

assuming I am at a safe distance.

[rpcrowe]

Let me chime in on one factor... I think, "being there" is far superior to any photograph of a place you have never visited because you are able to assimilate everything about the area; including sounds, odors, temperature as well as to assimilate portions of the areas which are not within your frame.

However, while I don't want to say that an image of an area I have visited is superior to visiting the place; the image lets me "revisit" the area many more times. I cannot speak to the perception of other photographers when they view their images (lets say travel images for this discussion) but, I can emotionally turn back the clock and re-feel (if there is such a word) the emotions I felt at the time I was taking the picture. I can revisit the joy, sadness, tiredness, energy, frustration and other physical and mental feelings that I had while I was shooting.

I cannot say that this is true for others, I am just stating my own observations. When I look at images that I shot, I remember far more about the shooting venue than I would if I just tried to recall that venue without any illustrative prompts that my images impart...

So my images let me travel back in time....

[Saorsa]

The only time that a photo is better than being there is when it's someone else's photo and you can't get there.

A photo cannot show you the scale of the Grand Canyon. It cannot give you the smells and sounds of a rodeo. It cannot give you a human interaction with the person in the portrait or the smell of a flower.

As much as I love capturing an instant, it is only an instant.

[AB26]

Re-thinking and carefully considering the question at hand I feel obliged to re-enter this discussion from a little different perspective.

Photography is the art of painting with light. The objective of the photographer is to capture images created by light. How these reflections of light is captured is dependant on the skills of the photographer. Photographers use different methods of capturing reflections of light. Natural daylight, flash and other sources of artificial light. Light can be manipulated in camera and images can be produced to be very pleasing to the eyes and senses. In post software images are either enhanced or manipulated.

Big money is spent on lenses and other photographic equipment to get a different perspective of the subject at hand, different from what the eye can see. All the tools the photographer uses is to capture subjects in moments rendering images provoking more emotion than being there in that moment in time, because the eye cannot see what the camera can see.

When is a photo better than being there? In the hands of the skilled Photographer – always.

If you disagree, you will be wasting your money capturing images with any more than the most basic of image capturing devices. You will be wasting money and time setting up a studio or using flash. You will be wasting your time in doing any sort of PP. You will be contradicting the very reason you are using a better image capturing device, like a DSLR, flash and studio lighting, long lenses and filters, camera settings and tripods, download images to a computer and do post processing. You are contradicting the reason you are eager, learning how to take better pictures.
If you disagree you should only be using a lens rendering the image from the perspective of the human eye, allow the camera to do all adjustments in full Auto Mode, only shoot Jpeg and never use any post software.

If your only goal is to capture memories of a specific moment in time you can do it with a P&S or iPhone.

I thank you Mike, for posting this thread, it made me realise where I want to go with Photography. Capturing images that is better looking than being there in that moment in time.

[Mike Buckley]

Andre,

Photography is not limited to capturing reflected light. It can capture light that isn't reflected and it can capture scenes that have no light.

When is a photo better than being there? In the hands of the skilled Photographer – always. If you disagree, you will be wasting your money capturing images with any more than the most basic of image capturing devices.

I disagree with both of your points. If I've got the choice of making a photo that doesn't come close to experiencing the scene and making a photo that does come closer, I choose to spend the money on equipment that helps me do the latter. Your theory would indicate that someone who wants to go from point A to point B faster than any transportation mode will take him should resort to walking rather than using one of the faster transportation modes available.

[chauncey]

It's really a tough call...as I age it takes me a whole lot longer to take that shot, to work the scene, maybe to see things differently than I first noticed or to wait for the "correct" light to happen. Probably taking a lot of shots during this whole process...as a side note, it's really difficult to reshoot critter shots, something about them not having the proper temperament. Then...
More fun stuff, the PP, the conversion of that image into, not necessarily how it was from a technical standpoint, but...closing you eyes and dreaming what it could have been, into what you dreamed that it would be before you even came upon the scene.

There's a huge difference between a photographer taking a picture and capturing the moment and...a photographer creating a moment that merely existed in his mind. Perhaps that is the very reason that Adams never "created" a print the same way more than once...he equated the negative to the symphony but his print was the performance.

[NorthernFocus]

Looking at someone else's photography may be the only possible substitute for meeting a person, seeing an animal, visiting a location, etc. If the photo is well done, then it may be an excellent substitute. I love looking at such imagery and my mind can fill in the blanks with whatever my imagination can conjure up.

Seeing an image created by others of a person met, animal seen, location visited, etc, helps me retain that memory, indeed can keep such memories alive.

But when I've taken the time to create an image of a scene, and I mean create an image, not merely take a snapshot, the memory is indelibly etched in my mind. The smells, sounds, other things that happened that same day, etc. Looking at the image, perhaps years later, transports me back to that time and place. I can almost smell it, feel the sun/rain, etc. But even without the image, I can close my eyes and have the same experience. Perhaps enhanced by imagination or wishful thinking but a real memory none the less. But it was the time spent and the focused attention that created the memory. The act of capturing the image, not the image itself that is the valuable memory. For the pleasurable moments/places/things in life, I'll take being there every time. Photos are gravy.

[KCBrecks]

When is a photo better than being there? That's easy Mike - When you aren't of course.

As I am writing this, squatting on my bed, I can look up and see Lake Hammond in Florida on a sunny afternoon, Pinchmill Pond down the road from me on a bright autumn day, a fat, fluffed up robin in a bush, the rocket motors of the Saturn 5 at Kennedy Space Centre, Daytona Beach, Spurn Point beach North Yorkshire, Ingleboro with Clapham Station in the foreground and Black Rock Sands, North Wales. Mostly as A2 posters pinned up on the top of the wall. They invoke places I love and if I never get there I can use the pictures to help my mind reconstruct them for me.

When I get bored of them I can replace them with others, how about a trip to Germany, or Ireland, or the Scottish Highlands? I can then have the fens or Broadland or the Norfolk Coastline. Better still Hadrian's Wall and the Roman Forts or The Welsh Mountains perhaps. And I don't have to get on a train, boat or plane to do it, but I can if I want as I have shots somewhere of those.

If I am there, then that is the best of all but if I am not then a picture I made is better than anything else.

[Mike Buckley]

When is a photo better than being there? That's easy Mike - When you aren't of course.

Excellent point!

[lukaswerth]

The overwhelming consensus in this thread seems to be that presence is better than a picture of it.
I beg to differ. I think the two issues are not necessarily comparable and the comparison rests on a wrong or too narrow conception of what a photograph is, or can be.
There is often the implicit idea that a photograph is a transparent index of reality, something like a view through a viewing aid (telescope, microscope) made permanent. The implication of this view is that a photograph is indeed a pale reflection of reality, and that being there is better all the time - yes, all those smells and other sensations.
But when we look at a photograph we look also at the photographer's style, her eye, her ability to single out something significant or something which becomes significant through the singling out. Furthermore, any picture necessarily is an interpretation of what is represented (even if this interpretation is left to the camera's jpeg engine): color vs monochrome, contrast, you name it (a mail in this thread had a good point about Ansel Adams).
This means a photograph isn't transparent, it is not, or not necessarily a substitute for being there, it is, or may be, the photographer's frozen intentional view or simply intention, something she has to show to the recipient. In other words, when you are looking at a photographic picture, you are not simply looking at a reflection of something, but at someone's intention - this is also what fascinates me at least about it.

Lukas

[Mike Buckley]

You make some really great points, Lukas. However...

The overwhelming consensus in this thread seems to be that presence is better than a picture of it.

That's your one point that I completely disagree with. I wouldn't even say that our thread has achieved a consensus, much less an overwhelming consensus.

[lukaswerth]

You make some really great points, Lukas. However...

That's your one point that I completely disagree with. I wouldn't even say that our thread has achieved a consensus, much less an overwhelming consensus.

Mike,

okay, sorry for that. It was my impression when glancing over the posts, I may have been wrong, must read them more carefully. Grant me that I wrote "...seems to be..." and not "...is...".

There is one point, however, which I missed, and would like to add: sometimes it is the very imperfection of a photograph which is capturing. You might want to check out/google Miroslav Tichy, a sort of a social dropout in communist Czechoslovakia who made pictures with a self-made camera, pictures of the women he met in his town which look like fractured, stained reflections - intensely personal. It is entirely his interpretation which lifts the found scenes to an engaging interpretation of a reality encountered. It would not helped at all if you had been there, the scenes would most probably have appeared absolutely trivial.

Lukas

[Mike Buckley]

Another good point, Lukas!

[dabhand]

For me I guess it depends on how important the subject of the is to me and to the ability of the originator to capture an image which is meaningful to me.

For example and not being detrimental to their work - the bug images Brian and others do fascinate me as I find them really interesting but I don't understand diddly about entomology (probably including how to spell it) - so in that case I prefer the images to being there.

On the other hand the sea, coastal features, shipping and most things marine related are of great interest and importance to me and I've seen too many images with articles in juxaposition which just never should have been created, thus for me, if it shows the subject in incorrect context, eg the current fashion for 'milky' water, it's not worth more than a casual glance - in that case I'd prefer to be there.

From personal experience though, any image of 40 foot seas in hurricane strength winds is far preferable to being out at sea in them in a small boat.

steve

[davidedric]

Would you rather look at an image of a raging bull Elephant charging or would you prefer to experience that captured moment yourself?

Been there, done that Definitely better to be there - although had a few problems with cameras shake and motion blur