This simple picture of a leaf is interesting, I think, because of the way the backlighting makes the leaf stand out from the background and gives it a richer, deeper color. There’s something about this sort of lighting, perhaps similar to stained glass windows, that we find visually appealing.
It takes two separate elements coming together to make this effect, and I think the combination illustrates a subtle aspect about our minds, especially the nature of consciousness.
This is a picture of the ceiling inside Hoffman Covered Bridge. It was used as an entry to a photo contest of sorts, one that highlights photographers at work.
For the most part, this blog is mainly focused on my Virtual Reality (VR) photography. When I started it, VR photography was still fairly uncommon. That’s no longer the case as VRs are commonly used in advertising and gaming, Google uses them in Street View, smartphone apps make it easy to take and view them, and experiences are becoming richer with fully-immersive headsets. Even so, there still seems to be a place for them in the art of photography, and I still enjoy the process of making them.
I like to apply this to waterfalls in particular, because doing so reveals other scenic things. As beautiful as most waterfalls are, they’re often located in surroundings that are also striking. Lush canyons, austere cliff faces, bubbling brooks, and so on. When we take a single still picture, the surroundings are rarely included. By taking a VR, other elements become visible. It’s as if you are there, and can look around and appreciate the whole environment.
VRs capture a more complete, and in some ways more honest representation of a scene. This has been pointed out in journalism, for example. When taking a standard picture, simply framing the shot is an editorial decision. What to include versus what to leave out influences how the viewer responds, what they learn or perceive, etc. This sort of thing can have profound influence on how one interprets a scene.
In addition to the photographic aspect, continuing to work with them has developed my understanding of VR photography as a metaphor, revealing new ways they show how we think about the world around us.
Virtual reality photography has been around a while, but is becoming more widely known as new ways emerge of experiencing media. In particular, people expect rich ways of exploring remote locations, and the emergence of touch-sensitive displays makes VR pictures very compelling. In addition to photographic value, they offer an intriguing metaphor for seeing things in the real world — for understanding our whole reality.
VR photographs are viewed interactively. They are images that show all fields of view available from a given location. Three hundred sixty degrees around, and one hundred eighty degrees vertically, the viewer is essentially inside a sphere with the ability to look in any direction and often to zoom in for greater detail.
What can this tell us about the nature of reality?