Perception and Imaging

Photography as a Way of Seeing

Richard D. Zakia, John Suler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315450957
• Edition: 5
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Photography

When you look at an image, what do you see and feel? What do you want your audience to see and feel when they view your work? For over thirty years, Dr. Richard Zakia helped thousands of photographers hone in on their creative vision through the inspirational, informative text and images included in his classic book, Perception and Imaging.

More than a step-by-step photography instruction manual, Perception and Imaging explores the fundamental act of photography – seeing – through a uniquely comprehensive combination of technique, history, visual perception, philosophy and psychology. No matter your level of technical skill, you can learn to think more clearly about what you wish to convey in your images.

Fully revised to account for the unique influences and consequences of the digital revolution and online photosharing, John Suler newly addresses digital impermanence, sensory and cognitive overload, and the selfie, and their effects on perception. Additional coverage also includes microexpressions, Rorschach inkblots and subliminal reactions, transference, and synectics.

1 Selection

Many an object is not seen, though it falls within our range of visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray, i.e., we are not looking for it. So, in the largest sense, we find only the world we look for.

Henry Thoreau

Figure 1.1“Noticing Notan” by John Suler.

GANZFELD

Imagine a world in which there are no visual elements. You can see but your visual field is completely homogeneous, with nothing that the mind can select for perception. That situation rarely exists in our everyday life, except if you are in a very dense fog where everything is uniformly bright, an experience reported by airline pilots, truck drivers, and skiers. Such situations approximate the homogeneous visual field called Ganzfeld, a “complete field.”

The artist tries to wrest truth from the void.

Barnett Newman

What is it like to experience Ganzfeld? You can discover for yourself by covering your eyes with a white plastic spoon or half a ping-pong ball— or, easier but less effective, by closing your eyelids in a brightly lighted area or staring into a uniformly white surface.

Only feeling is real. It was no “empty square” that I had exhibited but rather the feeling of nonobjectivity.

Kasimir Malevich

Experiments in which subjects were exposed to a homogeneous visual field for a prolonged length of time led to some interesting results. The subjects attempted to fixate on something as a reference point. Failing to do so commonly resulted in their feeling disoriented. Some subjects imagined they saw vague shapes or variations of tone where none existed. Some even experienced hallucinations or a temporary loss of vision.

The results from these experiments in visual sensory deprivation indicate the necessity of having something in the environment that the visual system can select as a discernible form in order for the visual system to function properly. If the mind cannot see anything in particular, it starts to generate its own perceptions, from within. Even when the visual field is not completely homogeneous, perception of the observed scene might be inaccurate unless appropriate visual cues are present. For example, an illuminated ball in an otherwise dark room is perceived as different in size and distance by different observers. When air is released from the ball to decrease its size, some observers see it as a constant size but moving away from them.

FIGURE–GROUND

The black triangle in the white square in Figure 1.2 represents a simple heterogeneous visual field. The image, like most scenes that we encounter in our daily lives, consists of interdependent attributes known as figure and ground. Figure–ground relationships play a fundamental role in “composition,” which is how the arrangement of visual elements in an image appear to the viewer. Several important observations can be made about how the mind selects perceptions in figure–ground relationships:

1.Even when the figure and ground are in the same physical plane, the figure often appears nearer to the observer.

2.Figure and ground can be seen sequentially but not simultaneously. (With a little effort you can see a white square with a triangular hole.)

3.Figure usually occupies an area smaller than does ground.

4.Figure is seen as having contour and form; ground is not, until it becomes figure.

Figure 1.2Homogeneous and heterogeneous fields.

In our world of heterogeneous fields, people select what attracts their attention as figure. Depending on their interests at any particular moment, people walking down a main street will see:

Look at any landscape photograph. You see the shape of things, the mountains and trees and buildings, but not the sky.

Kurt Koffka

1.a clock telling the time of day if they are hurrying to a meeting;

2.a theater if they are looking for entertainment;

3.a bus or taxi if they are looking for transportation.

In a film, video, or multimedia, a good musical accompaniment will not call attention to itself.

Reneé Evan

Figure 1.3Figure–ground is a selective process. What object did you see first?

Whenever we look at a heterogeneous visual field, what we perceive as an object is the figure, which is always seen against some background. The first step in perception is this distinguishing figure from ground. Sometimes it is easy to do, sometimes not. A convincing demonstration of the figure–ground relationship was presented by K. Koffka in 1922 with an equivocal fence design (Figure 1.4).

Figure 1.4Equivocal fence phenomenon. What do you see?

Your first impression of Figure 1.4 might be that of black lines against a white background. If so, the black lines are figure. If you look a little longer, you might see four narrow white stripes, bars, or fence slats. They are now figure and the remainder of the picture is ground. But why did your mind select the four narrow stripes as figures? The two lines that make up the narrow slat are closer together, so there is a greater tendency for the viewer to group them into a figure. Three important points can be made here:

Give me mud and I will make the skin of Venus out of it. If you will allow me to surround it as I please.

Eugène Delacroix

1.The closer together two elements, the greater the probability that they will be grouped together and seen as figure. We will discuss this law of proximity in more detail later.

2.It is impossible to have figure without ground. Perception requires both.

3.It is impossible to see the four narrow slats and the three wide slats simultaneously, because something must serve as ground for a figure to be perceived.

Figure–ground relationships are used in many diagnostic tests. Most of us have taken tests for defective color vision in which we try to group certain color spots to see a number or design. The inability to discriminate groups of color spots as a figure identifies the presence of defective color vision.

Figure–Ground Boundary

Figure 1.5 shows a single contour line that serves as a boundary for the facial profile of an old man (right side) and the torso with head profile of a woman (left side). It is possible to see either the woman or the man, but not both at the same time. Each side can be seen only when the other side becomes ground. Figure needs a ground from which to emerge.

Figure 1.5Figure–ground boundary. Profile of an old man or a woman?

The contour line shared by both images is called a common contour or a shared contour. Competition for the contour is called contour rivalry. The common border creates a visual tension, a pull in one direction and then the other, that resolves when the decision is made to see it belonging to one side of the contour or the other. This can alternate, producing dynamic opposition as well as ambiguity. The importance of closure in resolving contour rivalry will be discussed in Chapter 2.

The border line between two adjacent shapes having double functions, the act of tracing such a line is a complicated business. On either side of it, simultaneously a recognizability takes shape.

Maurits Escher

Graphic Symbols

Artists often cleverly use figure–ground relationships in the design of graphic symbols, especially logos. In Figure 1.6 you might at first see the black arrowheads pointing like a compass in four directions, and later notice the large letter M in the white area. The black areas are closed and therefore easier to perceive as figure than the open white area. As with all figure–ground relationships, you can alternate between seeing the arrows and the M as figure, but you cannot perceive both as figure simultaneously.

Figure 1.6Figure–ground: If you decide that the dark areas are figure, you see arrows. If you decide that the light areas contained within the dark area are figure, you see a letter. Courtesy of MAPCO Inc., Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Similar Concepts to Figure–Ground

Psychologists refer to figure–ground relationships, but people in oth...