A photograph is not a replication of what we see, or else it would include the shadow impression of our noses, our brow, and even bits of hair. We generally ignore our consciousness of the recesses our eyes, and we don’t assign an exact shape to what we see. It is definitely not a rectangle. It is definitely not flat. Vision seems to curve around and then taper out.

A camera’s viewfinder doesn’t replicate our normal vision either. Instead, if we are looking through it, the viewfinder narrows the way we see and intensifies our awareness by blocking out what we do not choose to frame. We decide what we are being aware of by framing it. Photographs taken this way turn the awareness into a shareable image with some degree of permanency. The photograph replicates our awareness within the photographic process, not our actual experience of seeing the world without a camera.

In my underwater photography and filmmaking, I rarely look through the viewfinder to get my images. Through experience, I know more or less what type of image I’m getting. I also know that the water acts like a second lens, but with sometimes unexpected results. I’m pushing that visual frontier of the refractions and the mirror/window effects of the water. I’m hoping to see something I can’t see with my naked eyes. In this way of working, the photographs aren’t a replication of my awareness. Instead, they are increasing my awareness after they’ve been made–awareness of how the water and light and digital mechanisms work together. I am becoming more aware of the digital eye, not my own.

If I put on a scuba mask, I might see something close to what I’m capturing, especially in the less abstract footage. But it wouldn’t ever be exactly the same. My art is not in what I initially saw myself, but in my aesthetic choices of what to present after the images have been made. I make new viewfinders out of the crop marks of the editing screen or, more frequently, since I rarely crop my photographs, out of choosing or not choosing the images.

The “Windows” exercise of “21 Days of Mindful Photography” and “Fifteen Exercises in Perception” is meant to increase awareness of the camera’s viewfinder. And yet the books in general encourage you to sharpen and use your actual vision, the one independent from cameras.