Vision is influenced / by our preconceptions about reality.

In viewing a scene, / we establish unconscious hierarchies / that reflect our functional relationship to objects / and our momentary priorities.

For example, / when visualizing a hammer in our mind's eye, / we tend to "see" it / in profile or at some other "ready for use" angle.

One would probably not visualize a hammer / as seen from the top / so that the handle is hidden / by the hammer's head.

The functional relationship we have with objects / creates visual expectations / that interfere with our ability / to see "like a camera."

The camera, like the human eye, / sees only shapes and colors.

It documents the world impartially / through a lens / that is similar to the eye.

When we look at them carefully, / photographs are often surprising / because they don't interpret confusing details / but simply serve them up to us / with a mechanical indifference.

And because of their flatness, / photographs often contain areas / that appear as unrecognizable colors and shapes.

Our visual perception is shaped / by an established hierarchy / based on functional relationships, / which interrupts our ability / to see objects as they truly are, / unlike the objective perspective of a camera.