MediumWhat Do You See?. We tend to see what we’re looking for | by Ed S | Full Frame | Oct, 2026 | Medium
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The home of enthusiastic supporters of Fine Art Photography. We respect its history, admire its present form, and look forward to its future.

What Do You See?

We tend to see what we’re looking for

6 min readOct 30, 2026

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Side door in old European church
©Ed Schlotzhauer

We all have different interests, which triggers different perceptions of things around us. What do you see? That determines a lot about what you will photograph.

Visual mechanics

If we are an average human being, we have fairly similar optical equipment. We have rods and cones, corneas and irises, an optical nerve. In the brain we have the occipital lobe doing the major image processing, the parietal lobe handling spatial recognition, and the temporal lobe interfacing to memory. Memory is important to the scene recognition process.

This is fascinating in a general way, but I’m not interested in any of that for this discussion. I don’t care about the mechanisms of how we see.

If I was shopping for a car and the salesman insisted on going on in great length about the design details of the engine, he would probably lose a sale. I’m not uninterested in that, but I am more interested in what the car will do for me.

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Space ship-like lamps
©Ed Schlotzhauer

Perception

In a similar way, I’m not very interested in the mechanism of sight. I want to know how we use…

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Ed S
Ed S

Written by Ed S

I am a person, not an AI. I have tried for many years to learn how to do photography, to find out it is more about knowing how to do life.

Full Frame
Full Frame

Published in Full Frame

The home of enthusiastic supporters of Fine Art Photography. We respect its history, admire its present form, and look forward to its future.