Looking at Pictures the Psychology of Images ... or putting the Horse before Descarte

[Dektol Dan]

I Don't Get It

I Don't Get It

You would be better off studying the established eye/brain conundrums of optical illusion psychology. I'm afraid you are wasting time reinventing the wheel.

I already wasted vast amounts of time on it. That was the subject of my Master's Thesis in art.

 

[RichC]

[1] The only thing I disagreed with was the rules part but the language is what can take work to the next level and help build bodies of work and help with personal vision. So Stewart by all means keep it up.

[2] You would be better off studying the established eye/brain conundrums of optical illusion psychology. I'm afraid you are wasting time reinventing the wheel.

I already wasted vast amounts of time on it. That was the subject of my Master's Thesis in art.

[1] It might be useful to clarify what is meant by "rules". In this case - and hopefully Stewart agrees - they are simply the mechanisms governing visual communication in pictures: they are a combination of the artificial (i.e. cultural) and the natural (i.e. physiological, such as what our minds do when colours are juxtaposed).

Regarding "cultural rules", we have learnt these from centuries of looking at and making visual art such as paintings. They vary depending on where you live in the world, so, for example, Indian photography often draws heavily not on European painting but Moghul art with its flattening of planes and lack of perspective. Western conventions have of course been exported across the globe and are thus widely understood.

So, what Stewart is describing is analogous to the rules of language: i.e. visual grammar.

Knowing the rules of composition - this visual grammar - is important for all picture-makers, whether painters or photographers, if they want to communicate effectively. It's not about being hidebound and having to follow the Rules (with a capital "R") for their own sake, but simply being aware of them. (Following the "rule of thirds" slavishly or religiously including an odd number of main subjects is not how to make successful pictures.)

Going back to language, it's impossible to be a good writer without having an effective grasp of grammar - so you understand why words and punctuation marks are arranged in certain ways conforming to "rules". You can then follow, modify or ignore "the rules" deliberately rather than through ignorance (the former enhancing your message, the latter a hindrance). Similarly, you need to be aware of visual conventions to be a good photographer.

[2] See point 1.

[3] I'll shut up now and let Stewart continue...

 

[airfrogusmc]

I stated in post #25 the language frees you from rules like RoTs and as Weston said if everyone follows the same rules there can be no freshness of vision and only creates pictorial cliche's. I deleted the post that showed those photographers like Weston that support my position. And then when following rules which rules do you then follow?

Some landscape photographers follow a rule of 5ths or as some call it a rule of 4/5ths? Those that follow the RoTs when then dismiss that work because it's not the RoTs. Learning language which Stewart also talks about is freeing from those rules. You then can make images based on the elements in the frame and how they work together to make visual sense. And at some point composition also can become a personal way of seeing but not if you are following a pre set rule of composition.

One thing that is rarely discussed is content, intent and how multiple images are working together to make a larger whole and to maybe say something bout who is creating the work.

I think this is a very interesting topic that Stewart brought up and I like the way he presented it.

 

[OurManInTangier]

... sorry, bit of a delay. I just got a new macbook and it's not playing nicely with the other stuff

I really don't want to come over as a know-all here, or force anyone to read it.

I did worry how it would be received before I started ... I don't mind reasoned argument but lets not bicker

Simon; ... I thought that was what art colleges were for?

Let's not forget the proliferation of young women and a young man's desperate need to appear arty, knowledgeable and ace in a reefer jacket in the eyes of those women. I can report it was epic fail across the board, though the jacket was undoubtedly cool, just not on me.

 

[Shirley Creazzo]

Fascinating subject. After also having studied this stuff and then had a long job history in production I think I have come to a somewhat different conclusion. I find these rules to be most useful after, rather than during production.

I suspect these design principles, formulas, rules and algorithms are often useful to psychologists and human behaviorists. They also serve a purpose for those who, after-the-fact, want to figure out why a certain approach worked - or failed. They are applied for the most part, to try to explain what makes a a visual representation a good one. Reviewed by new emerging photographers they possibly can be digested and help in choosing a method and style of operation.

Think there may be little purpose in the attempt to employ these in the act of taking a photograph, or for that matter, painting a picture. If it was otherwise everyone who read and memorized all this material would be taking/making museum quality and award-winning visuals - all of them with a certain similarity. What I find elusive, and not mentioned here, is the talent that in some people has them knowing and recognizing what is - or will become - good art. Seems it is only after we have decided the merits of any visual that we go looking to see what was done right or wrong or not done at all.

No memorizing of the rules: point your toes, arch your back, keep your body perpendicular, get sufficient spring off the board, will make an olympic diver of everyone who remembers them. The rules will only help those few who have it in them to become an olympic diver.

Maybe people with talent digest - internalize - those rules which will guide their art and then pay them little heed again. Surely no street photographer, with time being of the essence, is peering through his finder and thinking about the rule of thirds, repeating shapes, or balancing lines. He knows when something is right. Even the still life photog is unlikey to be setting up according to a litany of rules and guides. If he has a "bent" he instictively knows what will work.

Analyzing art is great sport and an interesting pastime. Wondering what made something work is intriguing. But none of this will make an artist, I suspect Much as people want to find the aha! moment and discover the magic - or the gear - or the rule - that made a particular artist, or photographer or, for that matter musician, or sculptor, good at what he did so they can repeat the phenomenon, that is not how things work I think. Perhaps - likely - that is because what leads to the success of artists and, perhaps many others as well, is buried deep in their brains, or possbily in their DNA. Seems to me that is the case..

 

[Hsg]

When all the great artists have made their name by breaking every rule there was in art schools, why is it that photography should follow those arcane art school rules?

This is a valid question.

 

[bobbyrab]

When all the great artists have made their name by breaking every rule there was in art schools, why is it that photography should follow those arcane art school rules?

This is a valid question.

Equally valid would be to ask you who the great artists were, and what rules did they break and did they know they were breaking them.
Like almost any discipline or craft, rules are taught to aid learning and later to be twisted bent or broken once you understand them. I think Stewart just wants to lay down the rules as they have been taught in western art, I don't imagine he's suggesting they can't be broken.

 

[Hsg]

Equally valid would be to ask you who the great artists were, and what rules did they break and did they know they were breaking them.
Like almost any discipline or craft, rules are taught to aid learning and later to be twisted bent or broken once you understand them. I think Stewart just wants to lay down the rules as they have been taught in western art, I don't imagine he's suggesting they can't be broken.

I think this is an interesting thread because it shows a certain approach to photography, but at the same time every approach must be questioned, so when I question the validity of the approach postulated by Sparrow, it deserves an answer.

 

[Sparrow]

-----------------------

Groups of individual items in close proximity our mind treats both as what it is, individual items ... and as a single whole object. Not only that but the mind seems to enjoy finding them, as though the mind was rewarding itself for being clever, it will go on to trace their outlines and invariably see them as having a common purpose ...

... this sort of thing


il-29a par Sparrow ... Stewart Mcbride, on ipernity

While they are clearly just a few black rectangles on a white ground we all see them as a single sloping plane that have length, width and because of the distortion depth too. (Personally my mind is trying to straighten the vertical axis to make it a building's windows or rows of shelving) In any event we like groups and make all sorts of assumption about them, imagine designing a rug like this ...


il-30a par Sparrow ... Stewart Mcbride, on ipernity

... I'd be checking my third-party cover was in place before marketing that baby

Now to photos, among the other things going on in this just notice how your eye is arrested by those steps as it follows the natural line through the photo, the composition follows the line the path but it is that group of rectangles that's the interesting bit ...


16471422829 4d23ec4c56 c par Photo ... Dirk, on ipernity

... again you may see it better like this ...


16471422829 4d23ec4c56 cA par Photo ... Dirk, on ipernity

... it's all about the repeating steps with that similar rectangle in the bottom right echoing them and stoping the eye dropping off the bottom of the photo. Again in this photo of mine, the photo is of no merit except for those rows and columns formed by the windows and the repeating rectangles in the road markings yet it gets more attention than the subject deserves

In effect when I'm out and about patterns and like objects are a couple of the things I'm alert to, however they do attract the viewers attention and as always things are lurking in negative space to catch us out ...


16634247766 02cc4165c4 o par Photo ... Lynnb, on ipernity

... the high contrast isn't helping to distract from the patterns those step-laders have ... they're hardly noticeable at first but if you relax and just gaze at it, it distracts from the good bits of the photo

If you look through Henri, Chim or Capa's work you'll see it all the time, I've always tried not to look at study other photographers but they crop up all the time ... this one keeps getting credited to Henri, I'm not sure, it really doesn't fit in with his work at the time ... but whoever took it broke the rule either by accident or design ... the scatter of this pattern is the reverse it's a lack of pattern but it's dissonant not wrong

... if that was the artists intention

next ... Similarity

----------------

 

[bobbyrab]

I think this is an interesting thread because it shows a certain approach to photography, but at the same time every approach must be questioned, so when I question the validity of the approach postulated by Sparrow, it deserves an answer.

I did answer, Stewart is not saying you have to follow the rules, he's just explaining what they are which is quite a different thing.

 

[Sparrow]

yep, more or less ... no evangelism here, it's on the first post

 

[airfrogusmc]

When all the great artists have made their name by breaking every rule there was in art schools, why is it that photography should follow those arcane art school rules?

This is a valid question.

That is why it so important to learn how to communicate with the language and not set in stone rules and I also agree that I think Stewart is not saying anything much different. He seems to communicate and read images using it quite well.

 

[bobbyrab]

Rule one. Don't learn any rules for fear of being restricted by them.

Perfectly valid as well if you prefer.

 

[Sparrow]

When all the great artists have made their name by breaking every rule there was in art schools, why is it that photography should follow those arcane art school rules?

This is a valid question.

well your welcome to your opinion but I'm not sure you can simply use all of the 'great artists' to support it.

As I fancy you couldn't name me a second cubist? ... or a single futurist? ... or say just how far the Pre-Raphaelites were pre Raffaello? ... without Google being involved

 

[Sparrow]

Rule one. Don't learn any rules for fear of being restricted by them.

Perfectly valid as well if you prefer.

true ... but that being the case why read past the second sentence let alone bother to comment

 

[John E Earley]

Fascinating subject. After also having studied this stuff and then had a long job history in production I think I have come to a somewhat different conclusion. I find these rules to be most useful after, rather than during production.

I suspect these design principles, formulas, rules and algorithms are often useful to psychologists and human behaviorists. They also serve a purpose for those who, after-the-fact, want to figure out why a certain approach worked - or failed. They are applied for the most part, to try to explain what makes a a visual representation a good one. Reviewed by new emerging photographers they possibly can be digested and help in choosing a method and style of operation.

Think there may be little purpose in the attempt to employ these in the act of taking a photograph, or for that matter, painting a picture. If it was otherwise everyone who read and memorized all this material would be taking/making museum quality and award-winning visuals - all of them with a certain similarity. What I find elusive, and not mentioned here, is the talent that in some people has them knowing and recognizing what is - or will become - good art. Seems it is only after we have decided the merits of any visual that we go looking to see what was done right or wrong or not done at all.

No memorizing of the rules: point your toes, arch your back, keep your body perpendicular, get sufficient spring off the board, will make an olympic diver of everyone who remembers them. The rules will only help those few who have it in them to become an olympic diver.

Maybe people with talent digest - internalize - those rules which will guide their art and then pay them little heed again. Surely no street photographer, with time being of the essence, is peering through his finder and thinking about the rule of thirds, repeating shapes, or balancing lines. He knows when something is right. Even the still life photog is unlikey to be setting up according to a litany of rules and guides. If he has a "bent" he instictively knows what will work.

Analyzing art is great sport and an interesting pastime. Wondering what made something work is intriguing. But none of this will make an artist, I suspect Much as people want to find the aha! moment and discover the magic - or the gear - or the rule - that made a particular artist, or photographer or, for that matter musician, or sculptor, good at what he did so they can repeat the phenomenon, that is not how things work I think. Perhaps - likely - that is because what leads to the success of artists and, perhaps many others as well, is buried deep in their brains, or possbily in their DNA. Seems to me that is the case..

Nicely summarized. I'm enjoying the lessons presented here but deep inside I know I could study them to death and still when I'm ready to click the shutter.....I let my unconscious mind take over.

 

[airfrogusmc]

The more you learn and the more the language becomes part of you the more you see it in others work and the more it shows up in your work. Bresson called it a developed instinct.

Art is in the artist but it can be nurtured in the right environments.

 

[Sparrow]

... pressing the shutter button is up to the photographer ... and the photographer is the product of his education; is the response I would make in debate ...

... on here I'm not trying to score point, just recording it

 

[airfrogusmc]

... pressing the shutter button is up to the photographer ... and the photographer is the product of his education; is the response I would make in debate ...

Absolutely agree.

 

[airfrogusmc]

Thought this might fit in nicely here.
http://erickimphotography.com/blog/...esson-can-teach-you-about-street-photography/

http://erickimphotography.com/blog/...aphy-composition-lesson-13-multiple-subjects/

http://erickimphotography.com/blog/2013/10/16/street-photography-composition-lesson-4-leading-lines/