I’m sitting here reading reports from the earthquake in Haiti. First I was reading some coverage from BBC News, then I was taking in some of what “The New York Times” is offering. In both cases, I feel a hot sting in my eyes. Sadness that does not produce tears. I find my mind trying to make comparisons to the Tsunami in Malaysia and Thailand in 2004 . Are we, as a global community, less shocked and saddened because there are no tourists on pristine beaches in Haiti? Can we really care that much for the people of this country, the poorest in the western hemisphere, when we have already seemed to write off its existence? Then I stop myself from this line of thought, thinking of the neatly painted toenails. I saw them in one of the images, when I looked close. The feed jut from a blanket that covers a mangled body that belongs to a woman, who like tens of thousands of other Haitians, died on Tuesday morning, killed by a geological event that was nothing more than a slight shiver for planet Earth — a slight shiver that in human terms equals a destructive power that I can not begin to imagine. But I do try to imagine how she died, and whether it her last moments were quick and painless or hours of anguish. And then I read a line in which a reporter shares that he can hear the muffled sounds of victims still trapped within collapsed buildings. They are there right now, as I type this line in complete comfort. And as I sit here in my comfort, I read how a doctor explains that, without water, many will die from thirst. The situation in Haiti is going to get a lot worse, the coverage suggests, and the millions affected will still be suffering many months from now, when there tragedy will likely be a distant thought for me.

This personal reaction of mine is not that particularly interesting to you as readers, I image. You are having a similar experience of your own, or you are  more deeply or less deeply engaged in the news from Haiti. It’s a big planet. There is a lot of sadness. We here about it every day. We all cope with it in our own ways.

The reason I write my emotional reaction in this photography blog is because I just stumbled upon “A Closer Look at the Destruction in Haiti,” an interactive Web feature produced by “The New York Times.” Text below the title invited me to “Zoom in on the images below and examine up close some of the damage caused by the earthquake in Haiti.”

The fist image — “Canapé Vert area, Port-au-Prince” — is very hard to read. Thus the zoom slider. I can zoom in and see that the white shape coating the green hill comprises utterly demolished buildings, and presumably dead women with neatly painted toe nails. Perhaps, even as I write this, there are human beings trapped in tight, dark caverns within the rumble depicted in the image, making muffled sounds, sobbing hopelessly or praying hopefully for help that is unlikely to arrive.

The second image I randomly clicked on is called “Downtown damage, Port-au-prince.” It looks like it is taken from a helicopter, but by the time I look at a few more images I realize that this is likely grabbed from a satellite somehow. And that makes me think of Google Maps. And thinking about my online interactive experience has made the stinging in my eyes go away. I’m distracted by the wow factor of the technology. Then I am dismayed by this.

It might be neat to zoom in on “National Palace, Port-au-Prince,” but do I need to? Do I need to compare the presidential palace — the symbol of this fragile countries fragile democracy — in before and after images of it’s utter destruction to increase the impact? Wasn’t it enough to see these same pictures in badly reproduced print form in the “Clarín” newspaper, which I read with that eye-bruning sadness on my bus ride to work this morning?

That’s a rhetorical question.

Now that I look in the “Clarín” to check my memory, making sure I saw the before and after shots there first, I realize that the woman with the neatly painted toenails is actually on the newspaper’s cover,” not in the glut of images I have seen online, as I had thought.

One still image in print form is the image that makes me feel most close to the sadness of the suffering that is taking place right now, as I write, in Haiti. All of the words I read give me data, and I feel like the videos I have watched must expand my sense of what is happening there. But it was staring at those toes in a still image in a newspaper that has given me the most human sense of this tragedy.

As I was considering the Google Maps-like aspect of the “Times” interactive presentation, I clicked on “Port-au-Prince,” and I was surprised to find a young girl staring at me, striding into the right side of the frame, looking surprised and lost, in front of piles of ruble in which a mangled shopping cart stands out. Why in the world would I need to zoom in on this image? I just see big pixels of sun-blasted concrete and blowout highlights, possibly from the metal of the shopping cart. This is an image meant to be taken in as a whole, as shot, at street level, not from a satellite. Looking more closely at the image as a whole right now, I realize that the young girl is not the soul human in the image. Far back in this wide angle view I see a strip of road that is packed with people. Should I zoom in and try to count them? Should I see if I can see any individual expressions or if I can only view the abstractions of pixels?

When I started this post I had intended to quickly mention Robert Capa’s most famous quote (”If you’re pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough”) and then to posit some questions about how close is too close. As in, does the ability to zoom in on pixels actually make us feel less in touch with what we are seeing?

While writing this, I found myself thinking about how New Yorkers might feel on 9/13 if people around the world were zooming in and out of before and after pictures of the World Trade Center. Then I realize they probably wouldn’t care; they were too preoccupied to care. But when I consider this, I think about the images that had the most impact for me after 9/11 — the ones that made me cry all over again. They were the images depicting the walls fliers featuring family portraits of the victims, often smiling, tapped up by family members with messages pleading for help in finding them.

When I started writing this post, I started out with an idea of how I would make this relevant to the lives and thinking of photographers. I also planned to feature at least a few images. But while writing this, especially when writing honestly about my attempt to try to image the trapped victims (who really do exist and who really are dying right now, even if I can’t truly comprehend that), I found myself more moved than I had been made by any of the coverage I read. It seems that, for me, zooming in on images makes me feel distant, while taking the time to write honestly about the images and information I have digested has made me feel much more close.

Tags: "A Closer Look at the Destruction in Haiti", "Clarin", BBC News, Documentary Photography, Earthquake in Haiti, Photojournalism, Robert Capa, The New York Times