In Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning, the author compares the roles of a painter and an optometrist. The painter forces the viewer to see the world as he interprets it. An optometrist helps the patient to see the world as it actually is.

Photography is a wonderful balance of interpretation and reality. Often abstract paintings are out of reach. The lack of content that can be easily related to fails to draw the viewer in preventing him from experiencing what the artist truly intended.

Viewing the real world, on the other hand, can often be a boring experience – not due to a lack of interesting content, but more often due to the abundance and complexity of it. The human eye is overwhelmed, distracted, and ultimately unable to appreciate the beauty of a scene.

Photographs capture the reality of a scene, while the photographer has the ability to direct the viewer’s attention to the important aspects of the image by using simple techniques such as lighting, perspective, focus, framing, and post-production enhancements.

With photography, the artist and viewer see reality together.