Tuesday, 10/22

It doesn't look like it does in real life.

The past week and a half or so I've been taking pictures from Front Street in Marquette looking toward Mount Marquette, which has been ablaze with the color of Autumn. Depending upon how the light hits it it can almost look like it's glowing, while a lack of sunlight makes some of the colors pop out.

At least, that's what the naked eye sees. A digital camera? Not entirely--

That's one of dozens of pictures I've taken trying to capture what I see in real life. Unfortunately, technology hasn't quite yet caught up with the amazing tool known as the human eye. Sure, it's a nice picture, and sure, you can see all the different colors in it, but those colors don't look exactly like they do when I'm looking at the mountain.

What are you gonna do?

I'm using a quite a good camera, which captures colors of flowers and other items quite well, but for some reason just doesn't seem to like that particular hill. I know I'm shooting it with a long lens, and that may distort the image I'm capturing a little. Maybe I just need to learn how to use Photoshop and tweak it so that the final image replicates what my eyes see.

Even if it wouldn't be exactly what my eye does actually gaze upon when looking down the hill.

I realize I have nothing to complain about. I'm sure someone trying to take the exact same picture 50 years ago with an Instamatic would be even more disappointed than I. And someone could look at the shot in another 50 years and think to themselves about how cool the “old” downtown Marquette looked with the mountain all lit up. But I know what my eye saw, and I know that the image doesn't, for whatever reason, quite capture that look.

I guess that, no matter how much technology improves, it still can't match what nature has given us... at least not until the cyborg optical implants of the future can merge their vision with our brain power. I mean, if it worked for Steve Austin (the Six Million Dollar Man, not the pro wrestler), it can probably work for us, right?

8-)

(jim@wmqt.com)