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Verisimiliar
Main Entry: veri·sim·i·lar
Pronunciation: \ˌver-ə-ˈsi-mə-lər, -ˈsim-lər\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin verisimilis
Date: 1681
1 : having the appearance of truth : probable
2 : depicting realism (as in art or literature)
— veri·sim·i·lar·ly a
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The photo above by Henry Wessel Jr is perfectly magical verisimilitude. He couldn’t have described it better. Isn’t the world amazing?
I was thinking about verisimilitude because I wanted to submit a picture to the New York Times Lens blog contest, A Moment in Time with pictures from Sunday, May 2, at 15:00 (U.T.C./G.M.T.).
I didn’t get a chance but enjoyed thinking about this from the FAQ:
- How much may I alter the image?
- Not much.
- You may certainly crop the edges. You may also perform minor adjustments, like color balancing, that are intended to increase the photo’s verisimilitude; in other words, to make the image on your screen resemble the scene that was before your eyes as closely as possible.
I spend a lot of time trying to get the colors in my pictures as close to what I saw as possible but I’ve also been trying to get my camera to see something I can’t without it e.g. depth of field blur, motion blur, lens flare, highlight flare… any kind of “mistake” I can make the camera make. Sometimes I pray–for the record I’m agnostic–that something weirdly magical will happen. I wonder what Henry Wessel Jr was thinking when those birds came into the frame.
