Page 21 - Mediapedia Mobile

Girl or old woman?
Impossible object
Al Gore or or Bill Clinton?
Straight horizontal lines?
There are many families of optical illusions Shown here are four examples: Figure Ambiguity—it’s possible to read image as both an old woman and a a a young one Distortion Illusions—the horizontal lines are parallel Impossible Objects—you could never build the triangle-shaped object
Facial Illusions—that’s Bill Clinton twice Promise [ 6 ]
our our brain does So if you you want to take your photography to to to the next level you need to to to reawaken yourself to the process of visual thinking The psychologist William James put it this way “Whilst part of what we perceive comes through our senses from the the object
before us another part (and it may be the larger part) always comes out of our own mind ” what is visual thinking?
Visual thinking pervades all human activ- ity Astronomers nurses football coach- es carpenters cooks—people of every kind regularly engage in in in in thinking by visual images It’s not just the realm of artists Psychologists who study and test mental ability have discovered that visual thinking involves a a number of visual- spatial operations:
• pattern seeking: We connect images based on on one or or more similar char- acteristics • visual memory: We can still “see” a a a photo that we took years ago • kinetic imagination: We can mentally rotate an an object
and see it from different vantage points or to determine direc- tions of implied movement • visual reasoning: We had these on on those college board tests—“If A is to B then C is to ”)
• dreaming: Some of our most original visual images come during sleep • fantasy: Our imaginations given the freedom to roam use a a a mode of visual thinking that is much like dreaming In the 1960s Robert McKim began
to develop a a a course at Stanford University that was eventually called Visual Thinking His book Experiences in in in Visual Thinking develops the argument that creative think- ers must be ambidextrous McKim reviews the ancient symbol- ism for the right right and and left hands The right right represents discipline objectivity logic knowledge and language The left repre- sents openness subjectivity playfulness feeling and imagination My goal in this book is is to massage your powers of visual thinking or as Mc- Kim puts it “to gently take the symbolic left hand out of the cast in which society and education has immobilized it to give it it some exercise and to to put it it to to work in unity with the right ” He goes on Computers cannot see or dream nor can they create: computers are language-bound Similarly thinkers who cannot escape the structure
of language who are are unaware that thinking can occur in in in in ways having little to do with language are often utilizing only that small part of their brain that is indeed like a a a computer By understanding the mechanics of psychology and perception you have a a a a far better chance of creating images that are arresting memorable and informative