The silhouettes of stacked and jagged rocks and dark hills give a realistic impression of the scene they describe, but it is an impression. The camera (without any filters) provides more contrast than is there in reality and there have been occasions when I have increased that contrast further in order to provide a better sense of what the scene felt like.
The Impressionists did a similar thing in painting scenes that, while not perhaps accurately or photographically depicted, gave a more accurate impression or sense of life. Photorealism in painting can be fascinating insofar as the ability of the artist to achieve such accuracy can be amazing, but often these presentations of a scene can have less life in them than a “looser”, more impressionistic handling of the medium.
This is of course my own opinion and you are welcome to disagree. For me, in my own artwork (tapestry weaving), the visuals I use would most often be described as abstract. However, if I say that those works represent a state of mind or specific thoughts, and that these are represented accurately in a tapestry, does that not make the work realistic?
The short soundscape I have included below is both a realistic and unrealistic representation of the sounds to be heard in this landscape on a peaceful evening in SW Scotland. The reason it is realistic is that the field recording accurately describes the sounds to be heard on that evening in that place. It is inaccurate because at the specific time of the recording there was an enthusiastic motor cyclist enjoying his bike on a distant road and the sound of it was floating all the way across the bay – so I have filtered it out because it was only there at the time of recording and not the rest of the evening.
Galloway Sunset Soundscape
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