As you know by now, the word See for me is a very active word.  Really seeing the world around us is a skill that needs to be cultivated.  We, too often, go through our days not really seeing the beauty, the awesomeness, that is right in front of us.

Recently there have been advertisements in photography magazines showing all the eye movements and thoughts that  go through a photographer’s mind when creating an image.  The idea had really stuck with me, so I did a bit of digging the other day and discovered the ad was actually based on a little experiment that Canon did.

The experiment involved special eye tracking equipment to record the eye movements of 3 different people while they were looking at an image.  Those 3 people were a non-photographer, a photography student, and a professional photographer.  It’s is really fascinating to observe how much each of the people sees.

This is not to say that non-photographers can never see at that level.  I believe it’s more a learned habit than innate. Though there may be some innate talent, photographers have also trained themselves through much practice to see all that is in a scene.  I think there’s no reason non-photographers couldn’t be equally observant if they cultivate their powers of seeing.

Watch the video and let me know what you think: