So my question now is this: Is there no hope to get a picture like this to make photographic sense? You know, when you are there in person, that scene is beutiful to see, but when you capture it, all perspectives change, since the eye is very selective, the lens is not, and you get too busy too fast. I seem to be trying to capture too much in a picture, and need to see the same feeling in another way that allows the photographic aspect of it to have the same affect on the viewer as it had on me while taking the entire scene in.
You bring up an interesting (at least to me) topic. How do you capture the scene you see with your eye with your camera.
One thing that stands in the way of doing this, as you point out, is one's brain. It not only selectively attends to what you find interesting, but it also processes other sensory input like smell, temperature, sounds, etc., that all go into creating how you feel when taking the photo. And let's not forget mental associations (e.g., that reminds me of my grandfather's boat...).
The fact that you find the scene beautiful is a result of all these senses and feelings and memories--some are conscious to the photog, some might be subconscious.
To me, the art of photography is presenting the scene in a way that conveys all (or at least most) of this to the viewer.
I attempt to do this with all the compositional tools at my disposal--framing, DoF, shutter speed, exposure compensation, lens, angle of attack, post-processing (b/w, color, sepia, etc), paper, etc.
Of course, I do a better job of this when I realize all the senses, feelings and memories at play for a given scene.
