Do any of you guys and girls ever suffer the disappointment of having visited a location - taken many images and then thinking on viewing them later on the computer that you really didn't capture what you saw.I can sometimes go out and capture many images and be quite thrilled with the results and then on other occasions get annoyed that what I saw in real life I just didn't manage to capture in an image.

Is it just me or do others get irate with themselves thinking that some how I should have done better or is it possibly that at times what looks good in nature just doesn't convey itself in a photo.

Eddie   

Mate, trust me it happens to us all recently there was a post where they talked about this kind of thing... I'm sure someone like Kort could give us a link cause I think I remember him posting it or atleast being part of it So please dont feel bad some of these things have an atomosphere to them that sometimes seems impossible to capture... often I end up going to such places over and over and over to try get something and often without much luck... care to show what you got though?

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" Do any of you guys and girls ever suffer the disappointment of having visited a location - taken many images and then thinking on viewing them later on the computer that you really didn't capture what you saw. "

One of the fundamental things to understand about photography is that you can never quite capture what you see... Once you made that switch in your head, it's much easier to get over that disappointment. If you only want to capture what you see, a photograph will never be more than the next best thing... but not the real thing. On a sidenote: I can't see any great reward or satisfaction in just capturing what you see...

Maybe the keyword is 'SEE'... Try to capture what you feel, what you sense, what you hear or smell, instead of what you see. Sensitivity for the subject is of great importance (not to be confused with 'mood'). A person will be more sensitive to a given subject and less sensitive to another subject... but that sensitivity is something that can be trained. Capture the image from within you, let your senses dictate how it should look like, find the essence of what you want to show... and the image can be as you 'saw' or envisioned it... with an added value, even better than the real thing.

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Maybe the keyword is 'SEE'... Try to capture what you feel.....

Exactly, this applies to most if not all genre of artistic expression I've encountered.
I don't think I've ever had a finished product turn out the same as the inital thought.
I put myself into that "Zone" and feel my way through, guess that's why I refer to most
art as "Expression". It's an emotional drive that gets me to the final destination.

Trust your expressive inner nature, climb into the Zone, and CREATE.

This makes me think of that short dialogue between Whistler, a great 19th century painter and an amateur. When the amateur said : "I want to paint what I see." , Whistler replied: "then wait 'till you see what you painted."

One of the big problems is that your eyes are always fixing something different. Even the widest wide-angle cannot capture what you see. Add to this sound, smell, the feel of being there  and compare that with a flat pic on a monitor or on a sheet of paper, and your own longing to be back there and relive that , the excitement and concentration.

I guess it's normal and also very positive to be disappointed about your captures. It's never perfect. Luckily the digital darkroom can do a lot to soften the pain. Keep in mind that a number of years ago you risked even more: you came home from a forthnight abroad with loads of slides films (or other) and then you could invest a small fortune to have them developed, knowing that at least two-thirds would not make it to the basic level. Ah! The wish to go back! If I had... I should have...

Now with digital you photograph as you fancy, but then you had to calculate how many shots you could invest in that subject.

It's positive to be critical because it means you want to do better. But don't let it fret your self-confidence too much. Don't compare with others to see how bad and hopeless you are with all your expensive equipment. You are practicing perfection and little by little you learn.

Perhaps the main goal of photography is not to take pictures but to learn to observe how you interpret what you see?

A slice of life, a split second of anything almost is different from the total we sense in our bodies and minds.  A person says, "That picture doesn't look like me"..but it does look exactly like them but is not the "them" we intrepret with our array of senses.   I see photogrqaphy much the same.  There is difference in a technical "forensic" capture and one of expression.

I certainly have not perfected it but to capture the essence of what a scene "means" or "speaks" to me is where I go.  Certainly, there is often failure in that, then again, there comes the image speaking with more words than we remember from the live scene.    Oh my that is a joy.      Tom.

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yep i happens all the time.... also it can happen the other way..something you take that  just to fill in a few moments and thinks not turn out any good ..turns out the other way .... james

I noticed that ejn made an interesting observation that,

I just didn't manage to capture in an image.

Yep ... it happens sometimes to me, as well. 

As an example, I saw a rabbit sitting on my lawn.  I was able to take a good,
clear shot through my dining room window ... but the rabbit seemed to be a
lot smaller than I expected (remembered) later when I reviewed the image on
my PC. 

Similar effect with a picture of a cardinal through a side window. 

I think it is partially a visual perception issue -- the mind sees  something
interesting (and does some sort of an on-the-fly edit) whereas the camera
sees and records what is actually there. 
--
Martin

p.s. WRT the rabbit, I considered using Photoshop to selectivly enlarge
the image to make the rabbit about 2X larger.  It's still on my (long) ToDo
list.  LOL. 

yep me too ! it happens to me sometimes... when i forgot to take pic with my feeling, in place of my my brain :os