I thought you meant “faithful” in the sense of “seeing this is like seeing the real thing”, not “seeing this is learning what your retinas actually get”. If you show a photograph that shows exactly what hit the film (no filters or processing), then dark portions stay dark.
When you see the scene in real life, you subtract off the average coloring that can be deceiving. When you see the photo, you see it as a photo, and you use your current real-life-background and lighting to determine the average color of your visual field. The darkness on the photo deviates significantly from this, while it does not so deviate when you’re immersed in the actual scene, and have enough information about the shadow for your brain to subtract off the excessive blackness.
I thought you meant “faithful” in the sense of “seeing this is like seeing the real thing”, not “seeing this is learning what your retinas actually get”. If you show a photograph that shows exactly what hit the film (no filters or processing), then dark portions stay dark.
When you see the scene in real life, you subtract off the average coloring that can be deceiving. When you see the photo, you see it as a photo, and you use your current real-life-background and lighting to determine the average color of your visual field. The darkness on the photo deviates significantly from this, while it does not so deviate when you’re immersed in the actual scene, and have enough information about the shadow for your brain to subtract off the excessive blackness.
Been a long day, hope I’m making sense.