Last night, Club Member Stanley Chism, presented an academic research titled “Looking at Art and Photographs from a Neurophysiologist approach”.
Here is the program announcement:
“When we look at a photograph carefully, we analyze the image with the intention of gaining the ‘deep information.’ Moreover, when we judge a photograph, we put into words the ideas that are stimulated by an image. This program will take images as offered and analyze them in terms of the emotional and cognitive processes that are evoked. I will illustrate how babies look at art and how adults process contrast, line, form, shape, color, tone, and the mood of several images. The best judging of photographs and other art objects occurs when the viewer strives to gather the ‘deep information’ and the emotional pleasure evoked by the image. The best language to use in discussing a photograph is the shared experience of viewing it.”
Most of us felt both intrigued and curious. Will this help us make better photos? Although Stan did a good job using everyday terms, we were still dealing with neurophysiology models and principles. I took some notes that I’m sharing below. Those are pretty rough and I may have missed some bullets.
1- The first set of data that comes to the brain through the eye is Luminance and Colors
2- The second step is about the composition, lines, patterns, shapes, and masses.
3- Then the brain interprets. It’s the semantic processing. Note that the retina is ignorant from a semantic perspective
4- Then comes the interpretation. The brain applies a narrative “filter”
The eyes are looking for the most important information. For example, when observing someone’s face, our eyes repeatedly go from eye to nose to mouth. Those represent the most important information.
Our cortex has “templates” which makes us expect to see things in a certain way. For example, when looking at someone’s face, we expect the eyes, the nose and the mouth to be located along a set of defined axis. Stan shown us a rotated silhouette of two people standing together. No-one could recognize it until it was correctly oriented!
We also looked at some of those famous “optical illusions”:
Image courtesy of www.optical-illusionist.com
Memory and processing is what makes us understand a photography. We look at a photo with an intended “agenda”. Our eye tracking on an image is different depending on the context and the reason we are looking at the photo. Stan shown an image and a related set of eye tracking records from subjects being tested. Depending on the type of questions that were being asked, such as “how old are the people in the picture?”, or “what are the people doing in the photo?”, the eye tracking pattern was very different. The eyes where scanning for different type of information. The people were looking for the deep information. Here is an example of a result of an eye tracking study (Edouard Manet – Olympia).
The sudy shows that people look for 4 major areas, with a main focus on the center of the painting, where the hand stands.
Understanding a photograph is multidimensional, there a re multiple modules involved. A good photograph feeds all modules from the luminance to the narrative layers.
We concluded with a discussion related to the importance of the title of a photograph. The title guides the brain to what the deep information is and forces the eyes to look for that deep information.
And now, back to the camera! My next post will be a photo, I promise!