What is the relation between picture (image, film) and reality?

Everything we ever see is a picture, technically speaking: a mentally photoshopped depiction of….exactly what, we don’t know.

@thorninmud That’s an excellent answer. So we could be given a photoshopped picture of something, and then our minds photoshop it again.

Does this have something to do with your film class?

@Jeruba No, it has everything to do with me as an artist. I wish we learned this in film class…

@thorninmud‘s Photoshop model is a good one. Just as images can be manipulated in Photoshop, so does our mind manipulate images. Most of the time we are unaware of it,but optical illusions are based on creating images that reveal some of the behind the scenes processing.

Our visual system turns images upside down. There was an experiment which had people wear glasses that turned the images upside down. After a while the subjects perceived the images as being right side up and had to adjust again after the glasses were removed. @thorninmud could provide far more examples.

Our experience also filters our perceptions, causing us to focus on some things and to ignore others. Then there are the tricks played by memory, filtering and, more than we care to admit, editing our experience.

Determining what is real and what is image is not as straightforward as it may first appear.

A photograph for me is a still of time. A mood is captured, truths are revealed a story essentially is told. I like all ranges of photography, lo fi, hi fi, blurry, hd it doesnt matter.

Generally speaking, pictures are rarely seen as reality. Even discounting the recent culture of Photoshopping, and the resulting skepticism viewers bring to a given image, think of anytime you’ve seen a real picture of an event you haven’t experienced personally. A good example for most would be recent images from the revolution in Egypt. As graphic as most of those pictures are, how removed from reality are your emotions upon viewing them? How would you feel differently if instead of sitting at a computer viewing the image, you were present to view them in person? In this sense, the relation between an image and reality is whittled down to basic knowledge, where you “know” a thing, but still don’t understand it as an experience.

Then you have to consider the intent of an image or film. Depending on the style you may see what you would normally, what you should be seeing, what you aren’t seeing, or any other of an infinite number of perspectives the originator could push onto the viewer.
For example, take a long exposure picture of a city at night. When you stand there with your camera what you see in the viewfinder, and the image that comes out is completely different after 30 seconds of light being collected. The resulting image is not reality by our standards, and yet perhaps it’s an exact depiction of reality for a creature with much better night vision.

In short a picture is the story the author wants you to see. It can fall anywhere on the spectrum of reality/fiction/other, and how you see it is based on your personal experiences and a limited ability for remote experiencing.

For me, the answer to this question depends upon one’s personal understanding of what reality actually is. I would answer by saying that reality is the means by which we interpret information detected by the senses within the cognitive centers of the mind. The information would be altered according to whether one is more linear, or creative in their response to life, as well as being in adherence to their own psychological profile and the level of self awareness they embrace.

Images invoke response. It has been scientifically proven that the human body cannot distinguish whether the response is coming from an image, or an actual experience.

Heart rate, blood pressure, muscle contractions, adrenalin release and many other physical responses occur during the viewing of an image. To the body then, what is reality if both picture and actual experience invoke the same responses?

That is how healing through various mental techniques work. Images are presented that invoke a specific response in the body. Therefore, is not the response and resultant effect real?

I sustain that all reality we experience is born wholly of our own perception. We perceive, process what we receive, and then respond to our OWN conclusions of what everything means..

A swamaji I studied with for several years told me once that everything in the physical world was neutral, a blank canvas, and that each mind paints upon that canvas the reality of the world they perceive. We live within the living art of our own souls. We say what is good and bad, right and wrong. ugly or beautiful, yucky or delicious. And all of that changes unceasingly as the world accommodates millions of points of perception.

All images invoke response, and that response can change from person to person. It is only the degree of involvement one perceives with the image that determines the degree of physical, mental and emotional reality they will INVEST IN IT.

A picture can invoke a sense of peace. Is the peace felt real? A portrait of a loved one can invoke love. Is the love felt real? Are not both feelings in fact the same? And what of imaginings…pictures in the mind? Are they not also infused with emotions to which the body also responds?

All that is real to any of us, is the response we feel from anything. Some fear scary clowns. Does the body care if it is only a picture? Apparently the pic is real enough for the Adrenal glands to respond.

Why are books that invoke a million scenarios so empowered to draw us in? Why are movies so powerful? Why are art museums so wonderful? How about the awe inspired at the planetarium or pictures of galaxies? Our response to these things are as real as it gets for us because it is the same response as our own experiencing of it, only to a lesser degree.