good morning Hank it's Tuesday you're
looking at the sky above Indianapolis
last night well sort of I've been
thinking a lot about what cameras see
and what they don't to my eyes the sky
last night looked bright light pollution
bounced off the clouds as they blew
slowly Southwest the camera can't see
the crisp edges of the clouds or the
glimpses of Venus behind them on the
other hand set a camera still and let it
take in light for a long time and it
will see much more than the eye can
before we started making youtube videos
in 2007 I'd never actually owned a video
camera in fact I almost never took
pictures of any kind I only have about a
dozen photos of myself from between the
ages of 18 and 27 when I got that first
video camera I quickly learned that
while 2007 camcorders were good at
capturing static spaces built by humans
apartment walls bookshelves car
interiors they became utterly
overwhelmed by the actual world even a
few leaves fluttering in the wind turned
my 2007 camcorder into an impressionist
painting when you make video you try to
keep the light steady and the background
noise steady and the camera steady
outside
nothing is steady cameras are better now
of course and even though we repeat to
ourselves mantra like that the images we
see online are only a tiny sliver of a
person's experience it's harder to be
aware of the distance between what you
see and what the camera sees
I remember photographing myself and Sara
in the vast and empty salt flats of Utah
being careful to angle the camera so
that it wouldn't capture the many other
people photographing themselves in the
vast and empty salt flats of Utah but
even though I know that people only film
the moments they want me to see even
though I recognize that pictures don't
capture reality so much as crop it I
can't help but feel like images are
really real images are proof these
images prove it was cloudy last night in
Indianapolis but images are also
necessarily distortions this isn't the
sky I saw last night not really but it's
also the only record I have of that sky
way way before Instagram or snapchat
Susan Sontag described in her essay on
photography quote the cameras twin
capacities to subjective eyes reality
and to objectify it how do we hold those
twin capacities in our mind together how
do we look at an image and see that it
is both real and distorted how do we
remain aware that whether we're talking
about the night sky or Instagram feeds
or video blogs no matter how much the
camera captures it will always fail to
capture almost everything I can know
this stuff intellectually but as a
practical matter I am overwhelmed by the
power of images my mind can't help but
believe what the camera sees Santa also
wrote that quote needing to have reality
confirmed and experience enhanced by
photographs is an aesthetic consumerism
to which everyone is now addicted I
sometimes feel like something isn't
really real unless I've documented it as
if my memories and even my life itself
will just slip past like the clouds
through last night sky more than
anything I take pictures as a way of
trying to fix myself in time a way of
saying I was here I was here I was but
the pictures won't last either of course
and the risk of seeing everything
through a camera is that you miss
everything the camera doesn't see I
can't show you last night sky not really
but you can see tonight it won't
photograph well and it won't last and
you won't remember it forever but it
will be beautiful and important
nonetheless Hank I'll see you on Friday